The Make America Healthy Again movement has taken on many issues over the past few years: pesticides, processed foods, vaccines.
Now it has another target, and it’s one that President Trump likes to promote: coal.
In a letter sent to Trump and several other members of the administration last week, a group of nearly 200 MAHA activists said they were concerned that the data center boom was leading to an increase in the burning of coal.
In April of 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at reviving the coal industry, which has struggled in the face of cheaper forms of energy, including gas and renewables. As part of the push, his administration directed federal agencies to explore whether coal plants could power artificial intelligence data centers.
More than a year after that order, the MAHA letter-writers said they were concerned that the administration’s enthusiasm for coal could have adverse health consequences.
“We cannot demand clean labels on processed food while tolerating mercury, soot, arsenic, and coal ash near our homes, schools, farms, and waterways,” the group wrote. “When coal burns, the pollution has to go somewhere. It goes into the air, water, soil, fish, and ultimately into the bodies of American families.”
The authors of the letter say they’re speaking up now because of the boom in A.I. data centers. But most new A.I. data centers are powered by natural gas, not coal.
Nevertheless, the MAHA letter-writers are correct that coal emissions are rising.
Beyond the executive order, the Trump administration has pursued a broad campaign to promote coal. It has ordered some coal plants to remain open. And this summer, it announced $700 million in new federal funding for the industry, including money to help build the first two new coal-burning power plants in the United States in more than a decade.
Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, releasing toxic contaminants and powerful planet-warming gases when burned.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, defended the White House’s strategy.
“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,” she said in a statement. “The Administration is delivering while protecting our health and safety.”
Zen Honeycutt, the founder of the advocacy group Moms Across America, rose to prominence as a force in the MAHA movement and was the lead signer of the letter.
But along with some other so-called MAHA Moms, Honeycutt has recently soured on Trump as his administration has continued to promote products and practices that they believe are harmful to human health.
Other signers include David Murphy, founder of United We Eat, and Charles Eisenstein, a speechwriter for the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now health secretary.
Honeycutt said she only recently became aware of the administration’s efforts to promote coal.
“It just got on our radar in this past month,” she said. “It was very disturbing to me, because I did some research on coal and I learned that it is the primary source for heavy metals.”
Honeycutt said that when she learned that types of coal ash were used in common materials including cement, drywall and, in limited use, fertilizer, her alarm bells went off.
“That exploded in my brain,” she said. “That this is why, most likely, we have high levels of heavy metals in baby food.”
She added that the swelling controversy around data centers had brought the issue to her attention now.
“This got on our radar and we realized the massive health implications that are connected to increasing production of coal,” she said.
Honeycutt said she and the other MAHA activists had looked into the health risks associated with burning natural gas, which is also a powerful pollutant.
In the letter to Trump, Honeycutt and the other MAHA figures suggested that the White House consider solar as an option to power data centers.
“We should accelerate domestic energy solutions that strengthen the grid, defend local communities, and reduce toxic air and water pollution, including responsibly sited American clean power, solar paired with storage, advanced geothermal, grid modernization, and efficiency improvements,” they wrote. “Responsibly sited, American-made, farmer-compatible solar paired with storage deserves a serious look from anyone who wants affordable power without combustion, mercury, soot, or coal ash.”
El Niño’s power, in 3 charts
This year’s El Niño is already intense, and it’s not done growing. Scientists expect that by December, when El Niño events typically reach their peak, this one will wind up as the strongest in at least 80 years of precise record-keeping. And perhaps as the most powerful in centuries.
It’s expected to alter weather patterns around the planet and could drive an additional 49 million people into hunger, according to a projection by the United Nations’ World Food Program. It will also temporarily boost global temperatures that were already rising because of climate change.
Here are three charts that show the formidable power of this El Niño. — Mira Rojanasakul and Chico Harlan
More on El Niño from The Times and around the web:
