Inside the Republican network behind big soda’s bid to pit Maga against Maha

A Guardian investigation finds the US soda and snack-food industries, threatened by RFK Jr's movement to change Americans' eating habits, have turned to a group of well-connected strategists, shadowy pollsters and anti-woke' influencers

Major US soft-drink and snack-food corporations are waging a coordinated campaign that aims to pit Donald Trump's Maga faithful against Robert F Kennedy Jr's Make America Healthy Again movement, a Guardian investigation in partnership with environmental watchdog Fieldnotes has found. Their goal is to stymie the Maha-led effort to curb Americans' consumption of soda and ultra-processed foods.

To carry out the plan, the companies have turned to a partially formalized network of for-hire pollsters, strategists and political financiers with deep ties to the national Republican party - several of whom have taken steps that obscure their connection to the effort and to one another. In the process, the industry has also been aided less directly by a loose coalition of free-market ideologues who have previously worked to advance Trump's deregulatory agenda.