It feels a little uncomfortable to say this out loud, but I think many of us are feeling it.
Those of us who showed up because we believed in making America healthy again are disappointed. Maybe no one is organizing it into talking points, and maybe there isn’t a formal coalition putting out statements, but if you spend any time in the real conversations, on farms, around dinner tables, in private messages, you will hear it.
There is a quiet disillusionment settling in. Team D.C. has been stopped from pursuing dramatic change that is desperately needed. Courts have intervened. Pharma-owned politicians have blocked reform. Corporate kingpins have thrown their weight around and put up barriers, despite the voter mandate. Pharma-funded media has stepped up its smears.
Before anyone jumps in to tell me I am wrong, let me acknowledge what is real. There have been wins. You can point to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stepping into a position of influence. He has good and earnest deputies heading agencies under his control.
You can point to shifts in how we talk about chronic disease, changes in food guidance, and even funding beginning to move toward regenerative agriculture. These things matter. They are not nothing.
But they are not enough to match the scale of what was promised, and they are not enough to meet the moment we are in. The disappointment is not rooted in what has been done. It is rooted in what has not happened in light of the crying need.
Underlying this disappointment is something even more familiar. It feels like business as usual.
Corporate interests continue to shape policy against the interests of the American people. We are used to that. We have lived inside that reality for decades. But for a moment, many of us believed something different might happen. We believed there could be a real shift, that there could be courage, that the system might actually turn toward health instead of profit.
We believed there was just enough of a rebel in our president, paired with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s long-standing commitment and a public that was beginning to wake up, that together it might be enough to bring real change. We were wrong.
What we are seeing looks far more familiar than it does transformative. The chemical agriculture system remains intact, and the same subsidies continue to prop up corn, soy, and the inputs that degrade both our soil and our health. There has been no serious federal move to restrict the chemicals embedded in that system. Instead, we are hearing conversations about protecting them, even framing their use as a matter of national security, while exploring liability shields for the companies behind them. That is not reform. That is reinforcement.
The food system itself has not been structurally challenged. Ultra-processed foods still dominate the shelves, and taxpayer dollars continue to support their consumption. There has been no meaningful restructuring of SNAP to prioritize nutrient-dense food, despite widespread acknowledgment that diet is at the center of the chronic disease crisis. We continue to fund the very problem we claim we want to solve.
We have also not seen a serious push to decentralize food production and processing. Policies like the PRIME Act, which could expand access to local meat and support small producers, have not been treated with urgency. Without structural change, messaging becomes decoration.
Regenerative agriculture is becoming more mainstream, and I will acknowledge that this administration has helped bring it into the broader conversation.
That matters. But at the same time, we are continuing to subsidize a system that we all know is broken. How do we know it is broken? Because it requires more subsidy every year, not less. We are not weaning farmers off dependence on government programs or crop insurance; we are deepening that dependence. The need grows year over year, which is the clearest signal that the system itself is not working. In any functioning free market, that kind of sustained failure would force adjustments.
And we see the same pattern when we look at human health. By nearly every marker, fertility, metabolic health, life expectancy, we are moving in the wrong direction. We are sicker, not healthier, despite spending more than ever on food and healthcare. The outcomes are declining while the investment continues to rise.
But no meaningful adjustments are being made. The promise of MAHA was adjustments.
Even leadership, which should be the clearest signal of direction, feels uncertain. The nomination of Casey Means appears to be stalled, and several MAHA-aligned voices have struggled to find durable footing inside the system.
The new pick for the CDC director is a sign. This agency took the lead in imposing preposterous strategies for controlling an infectious disease. These involved crushing small business, locking kids out of school, putting up Plexiglas, mandating public mask wearing, and then forcing unnecessary and dangerous shots on millions of people. The new pick was part of the system. In any case, there is no evidence that she objected. Her record is one of backing mandates.
This feels like business as usual.
Even among those inside, there is a sense of constraint, as though the space to act is narrower than expected. It is a reminder of how difficult it is to move even one aligned voice into a position of real authority. Without people in place, policy does not move.
Where there has been action, it has largely been cautious and politically safe. But making America healthy again was never going to be politically safe. It was always going to require confronting the systems that fund campaigns, influence policy, and shape the marketplace.
So when people say they are disappointed, what they are really saying is simple. We thought this would go further. We thought there would be more courage. We thought the momentum that was built would translate into action that matched it.
And maybe that expectation was misplaced.
It is OK to feel disappointed. It is OK to feel frustrated, even angry, or to feel like we were duped. But that energy cannot stay stagnant in our bodies. It has to move. It has to flow into our communities through the decisions we make every single day.
Because the truth is, the government was never going to save us. It was never designed to move faster than the people. It responds to pressure, to markets, and to what we tolerate and what we demand. Right now, we are still funding the very system we say we want to change.
The only real power we have is how we spend our money, our time, and our energy, and that power has to be exercised consistently. It is easy to vote one day in November. It is hard to change how we spend our money every single day. It is hard to change how we eat every single day. It is hard to choose, over and over again, to support something different when the system is designed to make the alternative less convenient.
It can be hard, for example, to say no to the doctor who promises that pills and shots will make us healthy, even when we know it is not true. It’s always easier to go along with what authorities are demanding rather than risking popularity and approval from elites.
But that is where change actually happens.
Every dollar we spend is a vote. Every time we choose convenience over quality, we reinforce the system we are frustrated with. Every time we outsource responsibility for our health to institutions that profit from our sickness, we give away the very power we are hoping someone else will use on our behalf.
The future is not going to be built in Washington. It is going to be built in kitchens, on farms, in small businesses, in the maternity ward, in the pediatric clinic, and in the daily decisions we make over and over again.
We say we want resilience, but we keep choosing convenience. We say we want change, but we keep funding the status quo. That is not a political problem. That is a personal one.
If we want a different future, we have to build it with our dollars, with our habits, and with our willingness to do things that are less convenient but more aligned.
This is not the end of something. It is a reminder.
The responsibility was never theirs. It has always been ours.
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