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glyphosate
Supreme Court's Monsanto Ruling Proves Trump Promise to 'Make America Healthy Again' Was a Farce
If one needed any further proof, today’s decision is all the evidence needed.
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court on Thursday sided with pesticide manufacturer Bayer in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, ruling that federal law preempts lawsuits brought by cancer patients who allege its Roundup product was to blame for their disease.
With the Trump administration siding with Bayer in the litigation, the devastating ruling by the court extends this legal shield to all pesticide corporations, leaving patients harmed by these toxic agricultural chemicals without the recourse of litigation that has cost Bayer billions of dollars.
Once again, the Supreme Court has sided with big business over people and the environment. This ruling is a disaster for public health—and it has Trump’s name written all over it. If one needed any further proof that the president’s feigned mission to "Make America Healthy Again" was a farce, today’s decision is all the evidence needed. Trump has been all too willing to endorse Bayer’s crusade to pollute with impunity, while the administration doubles down on a failed pesticide regulatory scheme.
Industrial agriculture is poisoning America. The fight against toxic pesticides does not end here. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by these toxic chemicals, and a Farm Bill that finally puts public health first. Until then, the Supreme Court has shut the courthouse doors to tens of thousands of sick and suffering Americans."
Today’s ruling comes despite a litany of evidence suggesting that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Bayer’s ubiquitous Roundup pesticide, is carcinogenic, and that the Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticide registration process is fatally flawed. The World Health Organization has defined glyphosate as a probable carcinogen since 2015. Roundup is the most widely used pesticide in the United States.
The decision completes Bayer’s years-long, well-financed quest to stifle cancer lawsuits cutting into its bottom line. Since purchasing Monsanto in 2018, Bayer has spent over $11 billion settling over 100,000 cancer lawsuits related to Roundup. Bayer has been pushing widely-opposed Cancer Gag Act bills nationwide, seeking to shield pesticide corporations from health-related lawsuits in multiple states and Congress. So far this year, the immunity legislation has failed in 11 states and was stripped from the House Farm Bill and left out of the Senate version.
There is a better way, including the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act, introduced by Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), which would restore the right to sue over pesticide harms. It's a right all Americans deserve.
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'Trump's Name Written All Over It': Supreme Court Sides With Monsanto Over Roundup Cancer Victims
"People who were exposed, workers who were never warned, consumers who trusted a label—they now have fewer tools to use to fight back. And the corporations responsible for that harm have more protection than ever."
Jun 25, 2026
Public health advocates, legal experts, and members of Congress were among those outraged on Thursday by the US Supreme Court's ruling in favor of Monsanto—and, effectively, against thousands of people who argue that its weedkiller Roundup caused their cancer.
Jay Feldman, executive director of the organization Beyond Pesticides, blasted the 7-2 decision as "a tragic setback for public and environmental health, allowing companies that produce toxic pesticides to evade the most basic of responsibilities, warning consumers that their products may cause cancer and other deadly diseases."
"In an age of deregulation, the ability of farmers, farmworkers, and consumers to hold chemical manufacturers accountable for hazard warnings is the keystone to minimum protection of public health, as demand in the market for the safest possible products grows daily," Feldman said in a statement.
The closely watched case stems from a state-level lawsuit and a resulting verdict in favor of John Durnell, a Missouri man who argued that Monsanto's glyphosate-based Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, which is in remission after multiple rounds of chemotherapy. A jury agreed the herbicide's label should have had a cancer warning.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans over a decade ago, but the US Environmental Protection Agency and Bayer still insist it is safe. In a majority opinion penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the country's high court agreed with the company's argument that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts Durnell's failure-to-warn claim under state law.
In a dissent joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that "the majority reads into FIFRA a labeling requirement that does not exist, and it reads out of FIFRA the statute's ongoing prohibition on misbranding. This interpretation cannot be squared with the text of FIFRA or our precedents. Ultimately, the effect of the majority's interpretation is both remarkable and regrettable, for it unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to state tort plaintiffs like Durnell."
Bayer—which bought Monsanto in 2018—similarly noted in a Thursday statement that the ruling "should help significantly contain the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles," which the company also said that it will keep trying to resolve by seeking final approval of its proposed $7.25 billion class settlement.
"This case was never just about Bayer," Environmental Working Group president and co-founder Ken Cook emphasized Thursday. "It was about whether states retain the authority to provide stronger protections for their residents when federal regulations fall short, and whether ordinary Americans can hold powerful corporations accountable when their pesticides cause harm."
Despite returning to office with a promise to "Make America Healthy Again" alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's administration "didn't sit on the sidelines—it lobbied the Supreme Court to strip Americans of their right to sue. And its tactics worked," Cook pointed out. "When a president uses the vast power of the federal government to protect a pesticide company from accountability—instead of the people he swore to serve—our system is no longer working for ordinary Americans."
"The ultimate losers are the American people," Cook concluded. "People who were exposed, workers who were never warned, consumers who trusted a label—they now have fewer tools to use to fight back. And the corporations responsible for that harm have more protection than ever."
Federal lawmakers who have fought against GOP efforts to pass a legislative "liability shield" for pesticide companies, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) joined Cook in ripping the ruling, as did Earthjustice senior attorney Patti Goldman, who said that it "allows Monsanto and other chemical companies to avoid responsibility when their labels leave people unprotected from serious harm."
As Farm Action president Angela Huffman also warned that the ruling "sets a dangerous precedent for other corporations seeking similar immunity," Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, took aim at the Supreme Court for issuing a decision that "sells out farmers, gardeners, and rural communities to multibillion-dollar pesticide corporations."
Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen, also condemned the decision, declaring that "once again, the Supreme Court has sided with big business over people and the environment."
"Today's ruling is a disaster for public health—and it has Trump's name written all over it," said Heinzen. "If one needed any further proof that the president's feigned mission to 'Make America Healthy Again' was a farce, today's decision is all the evidence needed. Trump has been all too willing to endorse Bayer's crusade to pollute with impunity, while the administration doubles down on a failed pesticide regulatory scheme."
"Industrial agriculture is poisoning America," she stressed. "The fight against toxic pesticides does not end here. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by these toxic chemicals, and a Farm Bill that finally puts public health first. Until then, the Supreme Court has shut the courthouse doors to tens of thousands of sick and suffering Americans."
Kayla Hancock, director of Protect Our Care's Public Health Project, also called out Trump for dispatching US Solicitor General D. John Sauer to argue the case on the side of Bayer and its legal team.
"First Donald Trump signed an executive order plowing the field for increased glyphosate production despite the known health risks to help grow profits for his chemical industry donors," Hancock said. "Then Trump dispatched his [US Department of Justice] lawyers to help Big Chemical secure blanket immunity from at least 100,000 glyphosate-related liability claims."
"Sadly, the Supreme Court agreed to give glyphosate makers a free pass to poison Americans without warning," she added. "Donald Trump always has and always will prioritize big money corporate interests that benefit him, even if it means marginalizing the MAHA movement and concerned moms. And whenever Trump sells out public health to the highest industry bidder, there's no bigger apologist than his phony health secretary, RFK Jr."
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From 'Clean Eating' to Clean Rules: What Progressives Can Collaborate On With MAHA
The question isn’t whether the two groups share a few habits; it’s whether they can work together to build the political muscle needed to implement regulations that make everyone safer.
May 04, 2026
Eat real food. Buy organic. Filter your water.
Scroll through Instagram and you’ll find no shortage of such advice from the “MAHA girls,”—young women drawn to the Make America Healthy Again movement. If you have been accustomed to MAHA through its most famous champion—Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helped popularize the slogan—#MAHA girls show a wider and growing allure of MAHA and their messages.
It’s tempting for progressives to either mock them or tune out, especially given their association with the current administration. But that would be a mistake. Not because MAHA has the right solutions—it often doesn’t—but because it names a real problem: Our modern lives are saturated with industrial contaminants from which individual consumer hacks can’t protect us.
As a sociologist who studies food systems, I recognize the mix of anxiety and practicality driving this trend. The MAHA movement’s concerns overlap with long-standing environmental and public health priorities championed by progressives. But the question isn’t whether these groups share a few “clean” habits; it’s whether they can work together to build the political muscle needed to implement regulations that make everyone safer.
Rather than rejecting MAHA’s sentiments, progressives need to listen carefully to the experiences that drive this movement, while being mindful of the limits of individual actions.
Consider glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. There has been ongoing debate over its potential consequences. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer. And on April 27, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Monsanto v. Durnell. The MAHA movement is watching the case closely and held a protest outside the Supreme Court.
Environmental and public health advocates have warned about these chemicals for decades. On this point, MAHA advocates and progressive environmentalists are aligned: Both want glyphosate out of the food system.
Or take fermented foods. My book, Fermenting for the Future, traces the decline of fermentation practices in industrial societies and the resulting loss of gut microbial diversity. Our guts are often described as the “industrial microbiota”—but thanks to our modern food system, they are becoming a less diverse ecosystem linked to a rise in chronic conditions. That’s because industrial food systems don’t just add questionable additives; they also reshape “traditional” foods that are standardized, pasteurized, or only nominally fermented—optimized for cost and convenience.
Here, too, MAHA supporters often agree. They champion fermented foods such as kimchi and miso and emphasize gut health. These concerns have even entered mainstream policy, as seen in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which highlighted gut health and fermented foods.
Usually, MAHA’s intellectual roots are traced simply to MAGA (Make America Great Again). But its intellectual roots run deeper: health freedom movements, environmentalism, and women’s health activism—many of which have progressive roots.
But there are key differences and they matter.
First, MAHA discourse is marked by a strong current of purism: the idea that we can purify our bodies, homes, and communities if we shop correctly and avoid the “bad” stuff. Purism often draws a moral boundary between the “pure” and the “impure.” Historically, such thinking can slide from labeling chemicals as “impure” to applying the same labels to people—feeding stigma, exclusion, and conspiracy thinking.
Purism also rests on an illusion. We live in a world saturated with contaminants—from microplastics to forever chemicals—such that we are, in a sense, born “pre-polluted.” To try to shield ourselves individually by careful shopping choices is impossible and creates a sense of false security.
Second, the movement is deeply shaped by healthism—an idea that puts most of the responsibility for health on personal behavior. If you feel unwell, the MAHA approach is to take personal steps: Monitor your glucose, eliminate processed foods, buy organic. Structural factors—regulation, labor conditions, environmental exposure—fade into the background.
This is a paradox. While MAHA advocates sometimes call for tighter regulation of certain substances, their overall mindset often distrusts government and scientists, which limits their willingness for necessary systemic reforms and support for experts.
Healthism also obscures inequality. The capacity to “choose health” is unevenly distributed. A single mother juggling multiple precarious jobs likely lacks both the time to research good supplements and the income to purchase organic foods. Without structural changes in how food is produced, regulated, and distributed, those with fewer resources will continue to bear higher burdens—and then be blamed for their circumstances.
Despite these differences, the underlying overlap to progressive causes offers a window of opportunity. Many of the MAHA girls on Instagram are responding to real personal experiences that speak to larger issues: chronic symptoms without clear diagnoses, medical visits that feel rushed or dismissive. Conditions such as allergies, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, and diabetes have become prevalent, and the fear that today’s generation may fare worse than their parents cannot be waved away as mere hyperbole.
Rather than rejecting MAHA’s sentiments, progressives need to listen carefully to the experiences that drive this movement, while being mindful of the limits of individual actions. If we are serious about making Americans—and the environments we inhabit—healthier, we can’t rely on individual choices alone.
We should meet this moment with “clean rules,” not just clean eating. Tackling bad food requires sustained advocacy for better regulations that foremostly consider the existing and potential harms to the most socioeconomically marginalized, such as farm laborers, fenceline communities, and the poor. And better food governance requires more support for scientists and public agencies that help to build a solid knowledge base for regulations and for them to be fully enforced.
“Clean” also means addressing conflict of interests in appointment of officials, in scientific data gathering, and in the endorsement of “solutions” including commercial products. Those reforms would help everyone—including the people with the least time and money to manage risk on their own.
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