Massie Lost His Primary. What Happens to the Interstate Raw Milk Bill?
Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), the most persistent congressional advocate for interstate raw milk legalization, lost his Republican primary on May 20, 2026. His defeat closes a twelve-year chapter of advocacy for the Interstate Milk Freedom Act and raises a straightforward question: who carries the bill next?
A Consistent Record on Small Farm and Limited-Government Issues
Massie’s commitment to independent and small-scale agriculture ran through his entire congressional career. He operated a working farm in Lewis County, Kentucky, raised his own livestock, and introduced legislation on behalf of small producers, including the PRIME Act, a pilot version of which passed the House as part of the 2026 Farm Bill pending Senate passage, and multiple versions of the Interstate Milk Freedom Act.
His broader voting record was defined by consistent opposition to federal spending and regulatory expansion. His supporters argued that posture itself protected small farms and independent producers, who historically bear disproportionate compliance costs compared to large-scale agricultural operations. That voting record also cost him his seat.
Massie’s defeat is part of a broader pattern. Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has moved systematically to remove libertarian-leaning and dissenting Republicans from the party. He helped oust Indiana state lawmakers who rejected his redistricting pressure, backed the primary challenger that defeated Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, and recruited Massie’s opponent personally in October 2025 after months of searching for a viable challenger. Massie had been stripped of his seat on the House Rules Committee in January 2025 after voting against Speaker Mike Johnson’s reelection. The libertarian wing that once found a home inside the Republican coalition under figures like Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and Massie has steadily lost ground to a party now organized around loyalty to the president rather than limited-government principles. Massie himself predicted something like this in 2017, telling the Washington Examiner that many voters he thought were casting ballots for libertarian ideas were simply voting for the most disruptive candidate in the race.
His most concrete agricultural legislative success came on industrial hemp. Massie introduced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act in 2013 and pushed hemp-related amendments through the House in 2013, 2014, and 2015. When the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law, it included hemp legalization provisions that Vote Hemp credited him as a key House leader in advancing, alongside Reps. James Comer and Jared Polis, and with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell driving the provision on the Senate side. It was his most significant farm-related bill to become law. A pilot version of the PRIME Act has since passed the House as part of the 2026 Farm Bill, though Senate passage remains pending at the time of his primary defeat.
On raw milk, the outcome across twelve years was different.
Six Introductions, No Hearing, One Lopsided Floor Vote
Massie introduced the Interstate Milk Freedom Act in 2014 and reintroduced it in 2015, 2019, 2021, 2024, and again in March 2026. He also offered it as an amendment to the 2018 Farm Bill. In every instance as a standalone bill, it was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, where it received no committee hearing, no markup, and no floor vote. Republicans controlled that committee for the majority of those sessions.
The bill’s premise did not change across any of those years. Federal law does not prohibit raw milk outright, and Congress has never voted to ban it. The FDA’s ban on interstate raw milk sales originated not from an act of Congress but from an agency regulation issued in 1987 following a federal court ruling. Massie’s legislation would have prohibited any federal department, agency, or court from restricting the interstate transport of raw milk or raw milk products between two states where such sales are already legal under state law.
The one time his raw milk legislation reached a House floor vote came on May 18, 2018, when he offered it as an amendment to the Farm Bill. The opposition was bipartisan, but the scale of the defeat reflected the breadth of Republican alignment with commodity dairy interests. Before the vote, the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association sent a joint letter to House leadership urging its defeat, calling the amendment “an unnecessary risk to consumer safety and public health.” Fifty-three dairy cooperatives, state dairy associations, and the American Association of Bovine Practitioners also organized against it. The amendment failed 331 to 79 in a House controlled by a Republican majority. The Subcommittee on Health of the Energy and Commerce Committee, under Republican chairmanship for most of Massie’s tenure, never scheduled a hearing on any standalone version of the bill.
After that vote, Massie said he had been beaten by “big milk” and the “lactose lobby.”
The Cosponsor Record
The bill attracted a small, stable coalition across most sessions, with Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) serving as co-lead sponsor from 2014 through 2026. Pingree’s involvement gives the legislation its consistent bipartisan identity. A Democrat representing coastal Maine, she has framed her support around food sovereignty and the economic viability of small-scale dairy farms. She sits on the House Appropriations Committee and has built her own record on agricultural and food systems issues going back well before this bill.
The full cosponsor history by session, sourced from Congress.gov:
2014 — H.R. 4308 (113th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Paul Broun (R-GA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Andy Harris (R-MD), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Ted Poe (R-TX), Jared Polis (D-CO), Scott Rigell (R-VA), Steve Stockman (R-TX), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Scott Perry (R-PA), Robert Wittman (R-VA), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Richard Nugent (R-FL), Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
2015 — H.R. 3564 (114th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Scott Rigell (R-VA), Richard Nugent (R-FL), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Walter Jones (R-NC), Dave Brat (R-VA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Jared Polis (D-CO), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Robert Wittman (R-VA), Ted Poe (R-TX), Jared Huffman (D-CA)
2019 — H.R. 5410 (116th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Ted Budd (R-NC), Daniel Webster (R-FL), Alex Mooney (R-WV), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Justin Amash (R-MI), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Chip Roy (R-TX), Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
2021 — H.R. 4835 (117th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Scott Perry (R-PA), Chip Roy (R-TX), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA)
2024 — H.R. 8374 (118th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Clay Higgins (R-LA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Scott Perry (R-PA), Chip Roy (R-TX), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Andrew Ogles (R-TN), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Ben Cline (R-VA)
2026 — H.R. 7880 (119th Congress) Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Clay Higgins (R-LA), Scott Perry (R-PA), Chip Roy (R-TX), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Nancy Mace (R-SC)
The 2026 roster is smaller than 2024’s despite the elevated public profile of raw milk during the MAHA moment. Several members who signed onto earlier versions, including Gosar, Greene, Griffith, Ogles, Duncan, Rosendale, and Cline, did not return as cosponsors.
What Massie’s Exit Means Procedurally
Massie serves through January 3, 2027, and H.R. 7880 remains technically active in the current Congress. A departing sponsor carries limited leverage to advance legislation. Committee chairs have little incentive to schedule hearings for a departing member’s bill, and Massie’s ability to apply meaningful pressure ended with his primary loss.
The bill would need to be reintroduced in the 120th Congress by a new sponsor. No member has publicly announced an intention to take it up. The coalition from the 2026 version, particularly Davidson, Grothman, Roy, and Smucker, provides a base from which a new lead could emerge, but none of those members has a comparable history of sustained personal investment in the raw milk issue.
Pingree is the exception. She has co-led the bill in every session since 2014, holds independent committee standing, and has a direct constituent rationale rooted in Maine’s small-scale dairy farming communities. Of all current members, she is best positioned to carry the legislation forward.
The Broader Legislative Context
Interstate raw milk legalization has not advanced in Congress despite increased public interest since 2020 and the attention generated by MAHA. The Trump administration’s 2026 pivot to whole milk illustrated that dynamic plainly. Whole milk makes money for the large conventional dairy processors that have funded Republican campaigns for decades. Raw milk legalization threatens their business model. That stall reflects, more broadly, how congressional agriculture policy actually works: commodity dairy organizations have long-standing relationships with farm-state delegations and with the committee leadership that sets the hearing calendar. Those relationships held even as Massie introduced the bill session after session, and even as public awareness of raw milk reached levels not seen during any prior Congress.
Massie introduced legislation that directly conflicted with those interests, session after session for more than a decade, and could not find a path to passage. Whether another member takes on that role in the next Congress remains an open question.
