Nearly two hundred voices from the Make America Healthy Again movement are pushing back against one of the administration’s own policies, arguing that the rush to power artificial intelligence with coal could undo the health promises that built the movement in the first place.
In a joint letter dated August 21 and addressed directly to President Trump, a coalition anchored by groups like Moms Across America, Children’s Health Defense, and the Food Revolution Network laid out a case that reads less like a policy critique and more like a plea from parents who feel a core promise is at risk.
The letter was copied to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and the members of the MAHA Commission itself.
The signatories, who include Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt, Children’s Health Defense president Mary Holland, Food Revolution Network co-founder Ocean Robbins, and Charles Eisenstein, who once wrote speeches for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, say they support the administration’s broader health agenda.
What worries them is a collision course they see forming between two of the White House’s own priorities: winning the global AI race and cleaning up the air, water, and soil that shape children’s health.
Their concern centers on the physical footprint of the data centers now being built at a rapid clip across the country to train and run AI systems. These facilities do not just consume electricity. They draw enormous volumes of water, require new transmission lines, need backup generation, and often get sited on land with a complicated industrial history.
Communities near proposed sites have been raising questions about groundwater contamination, strain on local power grids, climbing electricity bills, stormwater runoff, fire risk, and whether they will have any real say before permits get approved.
The letter’s authors say they are not opposed to AI development or to American technological leadership. Their objection is narrower and, they argue, more urgent: that the electricity needs of data centers are being used to justify a return to coal.
That connection was made explicit in an executive order the administration signed in April 2025, which named coal “critical” to meeting rising power demand from data centers and other needs.
The order also instructed federal agencies to identify regions where coal-fired infrastructure could be paired with AI facilities. Since then, the Department of Energy has announced hundreds of millions of dollars in funding aimed at keeping existing coal plants online and, in some cases, expanding their capacity.
For the MAHA coalition, that policy direction cuts against everything the movement has stood for. The letter argues that a health agenda focused on removing glyphosate, pesticides, heavy metals, synthetic dyes, PFAS, and plastics from the food supply cannot logically stop at the dinner plate while ignoring what comes out of a smokestack.
Burning coal, the letter notes, releases mercury, a neurotoxin capable of damaging a developing brain and nervous system, along with fine particulate matter small enough to lodge deep in the lungs and, in some cases, pass into the bloodstream. The ash left behind can carry mercury, cadmium, thallium, radium, and arsenic, contaminants that can work their way into waterways, groundwater, and drinking water if not carefully contained.
The letter frames these as immediate, physical risks rather than abstract environmental concerns, pointing out that a child’s lungs, a mother’s milk, and an infant’s developing brain are not shielded from what a government allows into the surrounding environment.
At the same time, the coalition is careful not to hand over a blank endorsement of solar power either. The letter acknowledges that many in the MAHA movement have real reservations about solar, including how much land large installations consume, reliance on foreign manufacturing supply chains, and labor standards in that supply chain. But it draws a distinction between solar broadly and solar done well, arguing that responsibly sited, American-made projects compatible with existing farmland, paired with storage, deserve serious consideration as an alternative to combustion-based power.
The letter also points to advanced geothermal, grid modernization, and efficiency upgrades as paths that could meet rising demand without adding to the toxic load on communities.
The letter closes with six specific requests to the administration:
- drop coal expansion as the default response to data-center power needs,
- keep and strengthen existing safeguards covering mercury, air toxics, coal ash, heavy metals, and coal wastewater,
- require transparent review of where data centers get built and how they’re powered,
- protect local communities’ right to weigh in through existing environmental review processes,
- direct the EPA, DOE, HHS, USDA, and the MAHA Commission to formally study energy-related toxic exposure as part of the chronic disease picture,
- bring together farmers, physicians, faith leaders, local officials, energy experts, and data-center developers to hash out health-focused standards for AI infrastructure.
The White House, for its part, has defended its energy record. Deputy press secretary Taylor Rogers pointed to the administration’s first term as evidence that fossil fuel policy and environmental outcomes aren’t necessarily at odds.
“Greenhouse gas emissions dropped to their lowest level in nearly thirty years during President Trump’s first term, proof that we can both lower energy costs and ensure clean air and water for Americans,” Rogers said.
Rogers framed the current approach as a course correction from prior climate policy rather than a retreat from environmental responsibility.
“President Trump was given a mandate to roll back the radical climate policies that are burning a hole through taxpayers’ wallets and jeopardizing the American Dream for future generations,” Rogers said. “The Administration is delivering while protecting our health and safety.”
That leaves an open question hanging over the AI buildout: whether an administration that has staked political capital on both cheaper energy and a healthier population can reconcile the two, or whether one priority will end up winning out over the other.
For now, the letter’s authors are betting that enough attention paid to the health side of that equation might shift how the next wave of data centers gets powered before ground is broken on the next plant.
