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environmental working group
Citing Child Cancer Risk, Lawsuit Targets Trump EPA Over Glyphosate
"The EPA's silence leaves families in the dark and falls far short of its responsibility to protect public health," said the Environmental Working Group's president.
Apr 21, 2026
Just days before the US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments related to glyphosate's health risks, the Environmental Working Group on Tuesday sued the Trump administration for unlawfully delaying its response to an EWG petition seeking stronger restrictions on "the most widely used herbicide in the United States and globally."
The filing at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit calls out the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to act on evidence that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, "is exposing infants and young children to harmful levels through everyday foods."
EWG and its co-petitioners filed a formal administrative petition under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 2018, during President Donald Trump's first term, and amended it the following year. They want the EPA to revoke or modify the glyphosate policy for oats, so it's stricter, and restrict its use as a pre-harvest drying agent.
"Congress required EPA to ensure that pesticide residues in food are safe, with particular protection for children," the new filing states. "Yet, more than seven years after being presented with substantial scientific evidence that the current tolerance for glyphosate in oats may not meet that standard, EPA has failed to make any final, reviewable determination."
EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook declared in a Tuesday statement that "parents shouldn't have to second-guess whether everyday foods like cereal and snack bars are putting their children at risk of cancer."
"The EPA's silence leaves families in the dark and falls far short of its responsibility to protect public health," he continued. "It's time for the agency to stop stalling and do its job."
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic" to humanity over a decade ago, while the EPA has repeatedly claimed that it is not likely to cause cancer in humans despite mounting research, the recent retraction of a landmark study on the pesticide's supposed safety, and legal battles between patients and Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018.
Next week, the nation's top court is set to hear arguments in a case that, as EWG warned Tuesday, "could have sweeping implications for whether farmers and consumers can keep pursuing lawsuits for harms linked to glyphosate, and whether states can require warning labels on glyphosate products."
The Wall Street Journal noted Monday that while the company continues to insist on glyphosate's safety, it "wants anyone with a claim to join the settlement" negotiated with a team of lawyers representing around 40,000 claimants that "would bring Bayer's total price tag to resolve the Roundup litigation to roughly $22 billion."
Despite Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," the administration has notably sided with Bayer in the case before the Supreme Court, and the president in February even issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate.
"If anyone still wondered whether 'Make America Healthy Again' was a genuine commitment to protecting public health or a scam concocted by President Trump and RFK Jr. to rally health-conscious voters in 2024, today's decision answers that question," Cook said at the time. "It's a shocking betrayal to all of us but especially the people who live and work near farm fields where glyphosate is used."
Still, EWG is plowing ahead with its legal action, arguing that "the EPA has a clear legal duty to act on this petition, and it has simply refused to do so," as the group's general counsel and COO, Caroline Leary, put it. "This kind of delay has real consequences for families who rely on the agency to ensure children are not exposed to toxic farm chemical residues like glyphosate."
"This is exactly the kind of situation where courts are meant to step in," Leary added. "The EPA cannot avoid its responsibilities simply by doing nothing."
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Peer-Reviewed Health Study Warns of Trump's 'Silent But Deadly Assault' on Health of Americans
“This is not just a policy shift—it’s a wholesale abandonment of government commitments to the American public," said one advocate.
Mar 31, 2026
The so-called "Make America Healthy Again" movement encapsulated a key campaign promise ahead of President Donald Trump's second term in office, with Trump telling one Pennsylvania crowd in 2024, "We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our environment, and we’re going to get them out of our food supply."
But the Trump administration has gradually announced a slew of public health-related policies and proposals since the president took office—pushing to loosen emissions rules for the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide; suggesting the polio vaccine should be optional; and mandating the production of carcinogenic glyphosate—and a peer-reviewed study has now cataloged the "grave threat to America's health" that Trump's policies present.
"During the first administration of President Donald Trump, nearly 100 environmental and occupational protections, including air-quality safeguards, were rescinded," reads the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on March 25. "Although many of those rescissions were delayed by litigation or reversed by President Joe Biden, they inflicted considerable harm on Americans’ health. The second Trump administration’s actions have been even more aggressive, portending greater harm."
Weeks after the US Senate confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy in February 2025—a confirmation that he secured after making the baseless claim that Americans would prefer the for-profit insurance system over universal healthcare and refusing to reject debunked claims about vaccines—the administration appeared to make clear its true views on public health when it announced 31 climate regulation rollbacks.
"Those initiatives and other administration actions are set to reverse progress on pollution, make workplaces more dangerous, and (in Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s words) drive 'a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,'" reads the study.
The proposals swiftly introduced by the administration included:
- Loosening standards for particulate matter 2.5 pollution, which killed approximately 460,000 people in the US from 1999 to 2020;
- Ending subsidies for clean energy production under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act;
- Weakening tailpipe emissions standards, putting Americans at greater risk for cardiopulmonary mortality and climate crisis risks; and
- Delaying implementation of stronger silica rules for coal miners—putting them at risk for black lung disease—while also demanding that coal plants continue production.
Ken Cook, co-founder of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the study described "a deliberate dismantling of safeguards that protect the air, water, and health of nearly every person in this country—all in the service of polluters."
“This is not just a policy shift—it’s a wholesale abandonment of government commitments to the American public and the MAHA movement that helped propel Trump into office,” said Cook, who did not contribute to the study.
Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and public health physician who directs the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College and is the lead author of the paper, told EWG that the “impacts of these rollbacks will fall most heavily on the most vulnerable among us—including infants—resulting in brain injury, neurodevelopmental disorders, increased preterm births, and elevated lifelong risk of chronic disease.”
Children and other vulnerable populations, including those in low-income communities situated close to petrochemical industrial areas, are likely to have increased mercury, benzene, and arsenic exposures—raising their risk of developing cancers and other diseases—due to the Trump administration's rollbacks, according to the study.
"Several proposed policies would weaken water-quality standards, reducing drinking-water safety for millions of people," reads the paper. "For example, the EPA seeks to weaken regulations governing effluent discharges from coal-fired power plants. The resulting increase in waterborne lead, mercury, and arsenic will increase the incidence of bladder cancers and adversely affect children’s cognitive function."
The study's authors emphasized that "statistics and documentation are not enough" to protect the public from the White House's harmfiul policies.
"Unless health professionals speak up, and unless we put a human face on the tragic consequences of these environmental rollbacks, the connection between these seemingly abstract policy changes and the real health harms they cause may remain invisible," reads the study. "We health professionals must call urgent attention to this silent but deadly assault on Americans’ health, work with broad coalitions to halt it, and ultimately rebuild the agencies, protections, and shared sense of trust and responsibility that have given us clean air and water and enabled us and our children to live longer, healthier lives."
Cook noted that the NEJM itself has been a target of the administration, with Kennedy calling highly respected, science-based journals "corrupt" and the Department of Justice questioning the publication's editorial integrity.
“No amount of political pressure or intimidation should silence independent science or the experts working to protect public health,” Cook said. “The NEJM and the study’s authors rightly ignore those threats and lay bare the real-world consequences of the Trump administration’s actions—and the American people deserve to hear it.”
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Trump EPA 'Hitting New Heights of Absurdity' With Plan to Reapprove Pesticide Dicamba
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," said one campaigner.
Jul 23, 2025
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's supposed goal to "Make America Healthy Again," his administration is moving to reregister dicamba, a pesticide twice banned by federal courts, for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans.
In response to legal challenges from the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, and the Pesticide Action Network, courts ruled against the herbicide's registration in 2020 and again last year.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its latest push to allow the use of dicamba on Wednesday, detailing proposed mitigation efforts—including temperature restrictions and the use of drift reduction agents—that EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told The Washington Post would "minimize impact to certain species and the environment."
The EPA's proposed registration is now open for public comment until August 22, but supporters and critics are already weighing in. While the pesticide companies welcomed the agency's attempt to allow dicamba products from BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, the advocacy groups behind the court battles sharply called out the Trump administration.
"EPA has had seven long years of massive drift damage to learn that dicamba cannot be used safely with GE dicamba-resistant crops," said Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, in a statement.
"If we allow these proposed decisions to go through, farmers and residents throughout rural America will again see their crops, trees, and home gardens decimated by dicamba drift, and natural areas like wildlife refuges will also suffer," he warned. "EPA must reverse course and withdraw its plans to reapprove this hazardous herbicide."
Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared that "Trump's EPA is hitting new heights of absurdity by planning to greenlight a pesticide that's caused the most extensive drift damage in U.S. agricultural history and twice been thrown out by federal courts."
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," he charged. "Corporate fat cats get their payday and everyone else suffers the consequences."
The centers pointed out that "the decision to seek reapproval comes less than a month after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The ASA has been a vocal cheerleader for dicamba since its initial approval for use on soybeans in 2016, despite the fact that soybeans have been the most widely damaged crop."
The Post asked the EPA whether Kunkler's recent appointment influenced the dicamba decision. In response, Vaseliou said that the "EPA follows the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act when registering pesticides" and any insinuation otherwise was "further 'journalism' malpractice by The Washington Post."
After Kunkler's new job was made public last month, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) also flagged his "years of advocating against restrictions on farm chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine," and stressed that "these are the very pesticides singled out in Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' report for their potential links to chronic illness in children."
"The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: Industry influence is back in charge at the EPA," said EWG president Ken Cook at the time. "It's a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they'd stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides."
"To those who genuinely believed the MAHA movement would lead to meaningful change on toxic exposures: We understand the hope," he said. "But hope doesn't regulate pesticides. People with power do. And this pick all but guarantees the status quo will remain untouched."
Cook—whose group has also sounded the alarm about dicamba—concluded that Kunkler's EPA post "is but the latest example of the Trump administration's sweeping betrayal of environmental protection and public health."
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