By SEJAL GOVINDARAO, ALI SWENSON and MICHAEL PHILLIS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — On New Year’s Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans’ air and water.

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He announced new restrictions on five chemicals commonly used in building materials, plastic products and adhesives, and he cheered it as a “MAHA win.”

It was one of many signs of a fragile collaboration that’s been building between a Republican administration that’s traditionally supported big business and a Make America Healthy Again movement that argues corporate environmental harms are putting people’s health in danger.

The unlikely pairing grew out of the coalition’s success influencing public health policy with the help of its biggest champion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As health secretary, he has pared back vaccine recommendations and shifted the government’s position on topics like seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol.

Building on that momentum, the movement now sees a glimmer of hope in the EPA’s promise to release a “MAHA agenda” in the coming months.

At stake is the strength of President Donald Trump ’s coalition as November’s midterm elections threaten his party’s control of Congress. After a politically diverse group of MAHA devotees came together to help Trump return to the White House a little more than one year ago, disappointing them could mean losing the support of a vocal voting bloc.

Activists like Courtney Swan, who focuses on nutritional issues and has spoken with EPA officials in recent months, are watching closely.

“This is becoming an issue that if the EPA does not start getting their stuff together, then they could lose the midterms over this,” she said.

Christopher Bosso, a professor at Northeastern University who researches environmental policy, said Zeldin didn’t seem to take MAHA seriously at first, “but now he has to, because they’ve been really calling for his scalp.”

MAHA wins a seat at the table

Last year, prominent activist Kelly Ryerson was so frustrated with the EPA over its weakening of protections against harmful chemicals that she and other MAHA supporters drew up a petition to get Zeldin fired.

The final straw, Ryerson said, was the EPA’s approval of two new pesticides for use on food. Ryerson, whose social media account “Glyphosate Girl” focuses on nontoxic food systems, said the pesticides contained “forever chemicals,” which resist breakdown, making them hazardous to people. The EPA has disputed that characterization.

But Ryerson’s relationship with the EPA changed at a MAHA Christmas party in Washington in December. She talked to Zeldin there and felt that he listened to her perspective. Then he invited her and a handful of other activists to sit down with him at the EPA headquarters. That meeting lasted an hour, and it led to more conversations with Zeldin’s deputies.

FILE – EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin listens during the annual Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference on June 3, 2025, in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

“The level of engagement with people concerned with their health is absolutely revolutionary,” Ryerson said in an interview. She said the agency’s upcoming plan “will say whether or not they take it seriously,” but she praised MAHA’s access as “unprecedented.”

Rashmi Joglekar, associate director of science, policy and engagement at the University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, said it’s not typical for an activist group to meet with the EPA administrator. She said MAHA’s ability to make inroads so quickly shows how “powerful” the coalition has become.

The movement’s influence is not just at the EPA. MAHA has steered federal and state lawmakers away from enacting liability shields that protect pesticide manufacturers from expensive lawsuits. In Congress, after MAHA activists lobbied against such protections in a funding bill, they were removed. A similar measure stalled in Tennessee’s legislature.

Zeldin joined a call in December with the advocacy group MAHA Action, where he invited activists to participate in developing the EPA’s MAHA agenda. Since then, EPA staffers have regularly appeared on the weekly calls and promoted what they say are open-door policies.

Last month, Ryerson’s petition to get Zeldin fired was updated to note that several signers had met with him and are in a “collaborative effort to advance the MAHA agenda.”

Zeldin’s office declined to make him available for an interview on his work with MAHA activists, but EPA Press Secretary Brigit Hirsch said the forthcoming agenda will “directly respond to priorities we’ve heard from MAHA advocates and communities.”

The American Chemistry Council said “smart, pro-growth policies can protect both the environment and human health as well as grow the U.S. economy.”

EPA’s alliance with industry raises questions

Despite the ongoing conversations, the Republican emphasis on deregulation still puts MAHA and the EPA on a potential collision course.

Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health program director at The Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration has a particularly strong alliance with industry interests.

As an example, she pointed to the EPA’s proposal to allow the broad use of the weed killer Dicamba on soybeans and cotton. A month before the announcement, the EPA hired a lobbyist for the soybean association, Kyle Kunkler, to serve in a senior position overseeing pesticides.

Hirsch denied that Kunkler had anything to do with the decision and said EPA’s pesticide decisions are “driven by statutory standards and scientific evidence.”

Environmentalists said the hiring of ex-industry leaders is a theme of this administration. Nancy Beck and Lynn Dekleva, for example, are former higher-ups at the American Chemistry Council, an industry association. They now work in leadership in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which oversees pesticide and toxic chemical regulation.

Hirsch said the agency consults with ethics officials to prevent conflicts of interest and ensures that appointees are qualified and focused on the science, “unlike previous administrations that too often deferred to activist groups instead of objective evidence.”

Alexandra Muñoz, a molecular toxicologist who works with MAHA activists on some issues and was in the hourlong meeting with Zeldin, said she could sense industry’s influence in the room.

Molecular toxicologist Alexandra Muñoz poses outside a hearing room at the Tennessee State Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

“They were very polite in the meeting. In terms of the tone, there was a lot of receptivity,” she said. “However, in terms of what was said, it felt like we were interacting with a lot of industry talking points.”

Activists await the EPA’s MAHA agenda

Hirsch said the MAHA agenda will address issues like lead pipes, forever chemicals, plastic pollution, food quality and Superfund cleanups.

Ryerson said she wants to get the chemical atrazine out of drinking water and stop the pre-harvest desiccation of food, in which farmers apply pesticides to crops immediately before they are harvested.

She also wants to see cancer warnings on the ingredient glyphosate, which some studies associate with cancer even as the EPA said it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed.

While she’s optimistic that the political payoffs will be big enough for Zeldin to act, she said some of the moves he’s already promoting as “MAHA wins” are no such thing.

For example, in his New Year’s Eve announcement on a group of chemicals called phthalates, he said the agency intends to regulate some of them for environmental and workplace risks, but didn’t address the thousands of consumer products that contain the ingredients.

Swan said time will tell if the agency is being performative.

“The EPA is giving very mixed signals right now,” she said.

___

Govindarao reported from Phoenix.

By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press

Don Lemon said about a dozen federal agents came to his Los Angeles hotel to arrest him last week, even though his attorney had told authorities he would turn himself in to face federal civil rights charges over his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church.

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Lemon told ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that sending the agents was a waste of resources because law enforcement wouldn’t have had to dispatch agents to follow him if he had been allowed to surrender to authorities.

“I was walking up to the room and I pressed the elevator button, and then all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” the independent journalist said Monday on the show on the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

He asked the agents who they were and said they identified themselves. Lemon asked to see a warrant and was told they didn’t have it. The agents then summoned an FBI agent to come in from outside to show Lemon the warrant on a cell phone.

The Department of Justice and FBI didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Kimmel introduced Lemon, his first guest of the night, by saying he was “was arrested for committing journalism.”

Lemon’s attorney has said Lemon plans to plead not guilty. He told reporters “I will not be silenced” after he was released in response to a judge’s orders.

A grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon, another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, and others on charges of conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshippers during the Jan. 18 protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor.

Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023 following a bumpy run as a morning host, has said he had no affiliation to the group that disrupted the Sunday service by entering the church.

Lemon said he couldn’t say much about the case but he said he was not a protester.

“I went there to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening. I was following that one group around, and so that’s what I did. I reported on them,” Lemon said.

Lemon said he asked the arresting officers if they would let him make a phone call. He said he was told no and that he could talk to his attorney the next day. He tried to use Siri on his Apple Watch to call his husband and his attorney but neither picked up.

A diamond bracelet he was wearing kept getting caught on his handcuffs, which hurt, and the agents told Lemon they would take it off. Lemon said he asked if the agent would mind taking it up to Lemon’s husband in his hotel room and they agreed to do that.

“And that’s how my husband found out. Otherwise, no one would have known where I was,” Lemon said.

Lemon said he was kept in a holding room at the federal courthouse from midnight until 1 p.m. the following day.

Kimmel himself became a symbol of a fight against censorship last year, when ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for remarks made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air shortly before that.

ABC lifted the suspension after a public outcry, and Kimmel returned to the air with much stronger ratings than he had before. In Congress, Democratic senators raised concerns that Carr’s actions trampled on the First Amendment.

Minnesota’s 2026 election season kicks off Tuesday with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican precinct caucuses, local-level party events where participants select convention delegates and consider changes to party platforms.

Besides delegate elections and policy priority discussions, caucus-goers also vote for who they’d like the party to support for governor in a non-binding straw poll, giving an early look at who party organizers might endorse at their conventions this spring.

For the DFL, that might not reveal much — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the only major candidate running for the party’s nomination after Gov. Tim Walz dropped his bid for a third term in January.

Still, there is a competitive Senate nomination contest between Congresswoman Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who are vying for the DFL nod to run for the seat U.S. Sen. Tina Smith is vacating. And with President Donald Trump’s recent immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, DFL Chair Richard Carlbom said he expects “massive” turnout.

“We’re in the midst of an unprecedented retribution campaign being waged on us by the President of the United States,” he said. People are alarmed at his behavior and his activity in the state, and I think that they’re ultimately understanding that the only way we change course here is by putting a check on him.”

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Republican Party has a crowded field with around a dozen gubernatorial candidates. Walz’s perceived vulnerability on widespread fraud in state government programs drew a large field of GOP candidates. It could also attract wider interest in caucuses than the last gubernatorial election in 2022, said Minnesota GOP Chairman Alex Plechash.

“The amount of fraud that has been uncovered and continues to be uncovered — which affects every Minnesotan — it’s real. It’s in their pockets. That is driving people,” he said.

Republicans running for governor in 2026 include House Speaker Lisa Demuth, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, 2022 gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen, a doctor who rose to prominence for his criticism of state COVID policy; state Rep. Kristin Robbins; 2022 Republican endorsement contender Kendall Qualls, a former congressional candidate; and businessman Patrick Knight.

Plechash acknowledged that the federal immigration crackdown and resulting protests have taken some steam out of the fraud issue, but called it a temporary setback.

“I’m sure the Democrats are going to pound that drum as hard as they can for as long as they can — it is to their advantage to do that,” he said. “But that really is not talking about things that matter to Minnesotans, that come out of their pocketbooks, in their day-to-day lives.”

There are also several candidates seeking the GOP nomination in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race this year. Former Minnesota GOP chairman and Senate Minority Leader David Hann, ex-Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, former NFL sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya and former NBA player Royce White, have all announced their candidacy.

Besides the U.S. Senate and governor races, all 67 state Senate seats and 134 House seats are on the ballot, as are attorney general, secretary of state and state auditor. Primary elections are on Aug. 11. Election Day is Nov. 3.

How it works

Caucuses for both parties begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday. The minimum age to participate is 16, though you must be eligible to vote in the November general election to be elected as a delegate.

Minnesota doesn’t have party registration, but the parties ask those who attend their local caucuses to stand with the party’s values. You’re only allowed to participate in one party’s caucuses each year.

Caucuses are typically held at locations like community centers, churches or town halls.

Location details can be found on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website: caucusfinder.sos.state.mn.us. There are many individual events scheduled statewide, and more information can be found on party websites.

DFL: dfl.org/caucus/

GOP: mngop.com/

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Today is Tuesday, Feb. 3, the 34th day of 2026. There are 331 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 3, 2015, a Metro-North Railroad commuter train slammed into an SUV stuck on the tracks at a suburban rail crossing 20 miles north of New York City, killing five train passengers and the SUV driver and injuring about 30 others.

Also on this date:

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting Black American men the right to vote, was ratified.

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In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for a federal income tax, was ratified.

In 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, the same day an American cargo ship, the SS Housatonic, was sunk by a U-boat off Britain (after the crew was allowed to board lifeboats).

In 1943, during World War II, the U.S. transport ship SS Dorchester, which was carrying troops to Greenland, sank after being hit by a German torpedo in the Labrador Sea; only some 230 of the 900 aboard survived.

In 1959, which would become known as “the day the music died,” rock ‘n roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a small plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

In 1966, the Soviet probe Luna 9 became the first man-made object to make a soft landing on the moon.

In 1998, a U.S. Marine jet sliced through the cable of a ski gondola near Cavalese, Italy, causing the car to plunge hundreds of feet, killing all 20 people inside.

In 2006, an Egyptian passenger ferry sank in the Red Sea during bad weather, killing more than 1,000 people.

In 2007, a truck bomb exploded in a busy street market in Baghdad, killing more than 100 people in one of the deadliest single attacks in the Iraqi capital.

In 2023, more than three dozen freight cars of a train carrying hazardous materials derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, close to the Pennsylvania line. The derailment prompted an immediate evacuation and the intentional burning of toxic vinyl chloride three days later that sent flames and acrid smoke in the air.

Today’s birthdays:

Football Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton is 86.
Actor Blythe Danner is 83.
Football Hall of Famer Bob Griese is 81.
Singer-guitarist Dave Davies (The Kinks) is 79.
Actor Morgan Fairchild is 76.
Actor Nathan Lane is 70.
Actor Maura Tierney is 61.
Basketball Hall of Famer Vlade Divac is 58.
Golf Hall of Famer Retief Goosen is 57.
Actor Warwick Davis is 56.
Actor Isla Fisher is 50.
Reggaeton singer Daddy Yankee is 49.
Actor Aimee Lou Wood is 32.