The Trump administration’s approach to pesticides could determine whether it continues to enjoy the support of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

Key MAHA leaders, including the leaders of Moms Across America and Children’s Health Defense, wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Monday urging him not to support “broad liability shields for pesticides and forever chemicals” – or face a backlash in the mid-term elections.

According to the letter, provisions in the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill for 2026 “create broad product liability protections for domestic and foreign pesticide and chemical manufacturers by refusing to fund the critical and necessary scientific safety assessments for product label updates of more than 57,000 synthetic chemicals that are required by law, as a favor to the pesticide lobby”.

The letter urges Trump to ensure “any protections for pesticides are stricken from this Appropriations bill”, warning that “creating broad liability protections for pesticides is a losing issue for your party and your coalition, and may well cost you the House majority in the midterms.”

Kennedy’s HHS doesn’t oversee the regulation of pesticides, which falls to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has been systematically removing environmental regulation over industries – from pollution controls to pesticide restrictions – since Trump assumed office.

Report delay over pesticides?

Tension over the control of pesticides may well be behind the delay of the MAHA Commission report expected Tuesday from US Health and Human Services Secretary  Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy had been expected to release part two of his MAHA Commission’s “Make Our Children Healthy Again” report, focusing on the research and strategies needed to address the causes of ill-health in America’s children.

It is the follow-up to part one, released in May, which laid out the commission’s assessment of the drivers of the ill-health of America’s children. 

One of these is children’s exposure to chemicals – including “heavy metals, PFAS [“forever chemicals”], pesticides, and phthalates”, according to the report.

It also highlighted that studies of the pesticide, glyphosate, “have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances”, while experimental animal studies have shown that exposure to another pesticide, atrazine, “can cause endocrine disruption and birth defects”.

The US uses more than one billion pounds of pesticide annually and these linger in the soil and groundwater. A 2021 study  reported that pesticides had been found in 90% of the 442 US streams sampled by federal scientists.

Glyphosate, known by its brandname Roundup, is the most widely used pesticide in the US. After Monsanto genetically modified corn, soy and cotton to tolerate glyphosate in the 1990s, its use increased exponentially as a weeds killer alongside these crops.

Atrazine is the second most common pesticide in the US. Both bind to the soil and have been found in groundwater.

In 2021, the EPA (under the Biden administration) determined that atrazine and glyphosate are each likely to harm more than 1,000 of the nation’s most endangered plants and animals.

The European Union (EU) banned atrazine two decades ago, while the use of glyphosate is restricted in the EU.

HHS said this week that while Kennedy had submitted the MAHA part two report to the White House on Tuesday, its public release will happen “shortly” as it “coordinates the schedules of the President and the various cabinet members who are a part of the Commission,” The Hill reported.

Commission members include EPA director Lee Zeldin and Russell Vought, head of the President’s Office of Management and Budget and the architect of Project2025, the rightwing blueprint for the Trump takeover.

Farmers lobby government

Alarmed by the first MAHA Commission report, farmers’ bodies have asserted that restricting or banning pesticides such as atrazine and glyphosate will push up their costs and reduce yields, Progressive Farmer reports.

Among them are the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA), a coalition of interest groups including farmers, ranchers, forest owners and agribusinesses, and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA).

The White House has held meetings with farmer groups in recent weeks to address their concerns about potential restrictions on pesticides. 

Last month, Nancy Beck, EPA deputy administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Protection, assured a meeting of the American Sugar Alliance that glyphosate would not be restricted.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation – the rightwing think-tank that produced Project2025 – hosted a meeting on the “future of farming” that appeared to be aimed at finding common ground between farmers and MAHA supporters.

Trump adviser and wellness influencer ​​Calley Means urged MAHA supporters to attack “the deep state” rather than Trump and Kennedy.

He also told the meeting that “this is a long-term fight”, which “won’t be won if the soybean farmers and the corn growers are our enemy”, reports Progressive Farmer. 

Environmental rollbacks undermine health

Kennedy built MAHA out of the overlap between anti-vaxxers and “wellness” advocates, an unlikely alliance that emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic when libertarians opposed to vaccine mandates and lockdowns found common cause with the alternative health movement’s deep suspicions about traditional medicine, particularly mRNA vaccines.

So far, he is delivering in spades to the anti-vaxxers – by firing all members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory group and replacing them with a group dominated by COVID vaccine sceptics, and cancelling $500 million investments in mRNA vaccine development.

But he is unable to deliver to the wellness groups on pesticides as he isn’t in charge of environmental health, which lies with the EPA.

However, the EPA’s actions are premised on removing restrictions on American businesses rather than keeping Americans healthy.

As previously reported by Health Policy Watch, the EPA is considering lifting restrictions on “white asbestos,” the last type of deadly carcinogen still in use in the US. Asbestos exposure causes mesothelioma, lung cancer, and other fatal diseases that kill 40,000 Americans annually.

In April, Trump issued an executive order exempting 68 coal-fired electricity generating units from complying with curbs on mercury, arsenic and lead emissions for two years.

The EPA has already eliminated requirements for most power plants and heavy industry to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, and pushed back a tax on methane emissions.

In January, the Trump administration dismantled the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), which protects the American public health from toxic pollutants, while the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent committee that analyzes industrial chemical accidents and develops safety recommendations, is to receive zero budget this year. 

The Trump administration’s cuts to food and medical support for low-income families will also negatively affect Americans’ health.

It has cut part of the food aid for low-income families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and slashed $1 trillion from the medical insurance safety net, Medicaid, over the next decade, which is predicted to cause at least 12 million Americans to lose their health insurance.

‘Policing popsicles’

In a bid to win favour with the wellness industry, Kennedy has pursued the elimination of coloured dyes in food. However, immunologist and microbiologist Dr Andrea Love says that Kennedy’s crusade against the dyes is simply because they are synthetic, not because there is evidence that they are unhealthy.

“MAHA is policing popsicles to distract from their erasure of real public health,” writes Love

“Convincing one company to swap the coloring used in their ice cream for another more expensive and less-tested one is going to have zero impact on the health of our country,” adds Love, who is also executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation. 

“You can’t ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ when you have no healthcare, no living wage, no support systems, and you’re handed a $6 box of beet-colored cereal in place of public health.”

 

Image Credits: Facebook.