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The Pesticide Industry’s Fingerprints Are All Over the MAHA Commission’s Strategy Report
Instead of delivering real change, the strategy appears to be just another example of the Trump administration putting the financial interests of polluting industries above people’s health.
Sep 10, 2025
When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission's newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. Ignoring growing public calls for action, the strategy lays out a milquetoast approach that would protect industry profits at the expense of children’s health.
Back in May, a first report from the MAHA Commission correctly identified exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals as one driver of the childhood chronic disease epidemic. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children.
The Commission’s strategy to address pesticide exposure has thus been eagerly awaited by health-conscious moms, environmental advocates, rural Americans like me, and many others. But instead of delivering real change, the strategy appears to be just another example of the Trump administration putting the financial interests of polluting industries above people’s health.
One of the most outrageous elements is a goal to “ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s [the Environmental Protection Agency] robust pesticide review procedures.” This is like committing to convince the public that the sky is green—but more dangerous. It’s committing public dollars to a corporate cover-up campaign.
If the EPA’s review process was “robust,” the use of cancer-linked pesticides wouldn’t be increasing in the US; we wouldn’t still be using 85 toxic pesticides that are banned in other countries; and pesticides wouldn’t be green-lit based on “safety” data provided by the very companies seeking approval for their chemicals. In reality, the EPA’s pesticide approval process is notoriously industry-friendly, in large part due to the revolving door between the agency and the industries it’s supposed to regulate. The Trump administration, for example, just appointed a former pro-pesticide lobbyist from the American Soybean Association, Kyle Kunkler, to one of the top positions regulating pesticides at the EPA.
Industry influence has led the EPA to prioritize the approval of new pesticide products at the expense of human health for decades. As one EPA toxicologist explained, “It is the unwritten rule that to get promotions, all pesticides need to pass.” The EPA also regularly uses dangerous loopholes—called conditional registration and emergency exemptions—to allow pesticide products on the market without ever putting them through a full safety review process.
Rather than trying to sell the public industry-friendly myths about the EPA, the MAHA Commission should aim to fix the EPA’s flawed pesticide approval process.
The result is that the US lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to protecting people from pesticides. One of the pesticides most widely used in the US, atrazine, is banned in all 27 countries of the European Union. The chemical is infamous for disrupting hormonal functioning and decreasing fertility. Because the US uses over 70 million pounds a year, atrazine contaminates the drinking water of an estimated 40 million Americans.
Rather than trying to sell the public industry-friendly myths about the EPA, the MAHA Commission should aim to fix the EPA’s flawed pesticide approval process. It should propose sensible, much-needed reforms like prioritizing independent science over industry-backed studies, closing the conditional registration and emergency exemption loopholes, and outlining a plan to close the revolving door once and for all.
Another disappointment in the strategy? It barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes—a key issue for the MAHA movement—are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs otherwise allowed in livestock production. Research also shows that organic food can be higher in some nutrients.
Expanding organic farming in the US would be a clear home run for making America healthier. But aside from one lackluster recommendation about “streamlining” the organic certification process, the Commission’s strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly “precision agriculture”—the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs—which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer. To make America’s children healthy, we need better than precision agriculture. We need increased organic research, technical and financial assistance for farmers to transition to organic, the development of new markets and processing infrastructure for organic products, and more.
In short, the strategy is deeply disappointing for the Americans across the political spectrum—including members of the MAHA movement, and including many rural Americans like myself—who have been clamoring for real change. It serves Trump’s pro-industry agenda instead of America’s children. Those of use who care about pesticides are left wondering if the MAHA Commission will ever walk the walk and put our health ahead of the profits of the chemical industry.
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Trump’s ‘Shock-and-Awe’ Approach to Governing Is as Deluded as W’s Iraq War
When this nightmare ends we will be left with a mess of rubble and a monumental task of rebuilding.
Sep 09, 2025
Nothing good will come of the chaos that has already been created by the Trump administration. In just a few months, it’s taken a wrecking ball to institutions, agencies, and programs.
The administration has taken dramatic steps to: gut the federal work force; withhold billions of dollars in research grants intended to address health and a range of other scientific concerns; eliminate foreign aid programs and the entities that deliver them; dismantle governmental health institutions; slash programs that provide healthcare and food to the poor and disabled; wreak havoc in international trade relations by imposing, then withdrawing, then reimposing tariffs based on whim or personal vendetta; and create fear and panic in cities across the country with the dramatic expansion of immigration enforcement that has included the hiring thousands of unvetted individuals, many of whom have an ideological bent and are eager to get a gun and badge to carry out their agenda. And this is only a partial list of the Trump administration’s destruction.
A case can easily be made that reform was needed in many of these areas. It must be acknowledged that waste or redundancy is somewhat inevitable in programs or agencies that have been in existence for decades or more. And there can be hesitancy to terminate programs that have either outlived their usefulness or never had their intended impact. But needed reforms are always best done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
By using the latter approach, the administration has not only done significant damage to government, but has also eroded the public’s trust. The wholesale gutting of staff, cutting of research grants, elimination of programs, and exaggerated claims made in denigrating these programs cannot easily be remedied by the next administration. Expertise has been lost, unmet needs will only multiply, and some elected officials will be hesitant to reestablish or provide funding for programs that this administration has convinced a sizable number of voters are wasteful.
Look at what has been lost. By attempting to discredit the effectiveness of vaccines and shaking the public’s confidence in their importance, we may now see the resurgence of childhood diseases that had largely been eradicated. In eliminating programs that provide food benefits to the poor, not only will they suffer, but America’s farmers who were also often direct beneficiaries of these efforts will be hurt. Tariffs will make imported goods more expensive for American consumers and contribute to an erosion of trust in the US as a reliable trading partner. The resulting loss of US standing in many regions of the world has already led to governments to increasingly look to China. Losses are evident too in setbacks in scientific research, the ability to predict weather conditions and patterns, and the damage done to efforts to meet climate change goals.
When this nightmare ends we will be left with a mess of rubble and a monumental task of rebuilding.
While US President Donald Trump’s disruptive and destructive impact has been mainly felt domestically, it calls to mind the approach President George W. Bush used in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the nightmare of the 9-11 terror attacks, the Bush administration lost control of its policymaking to a collection of neoconservative ideologues both inside and outside of the administration. Convinced that reforming or tweaking the problems that existed in the Middle East would never get to the root of the problems, they chose to apply the wrecking ball to the region. They were going to blow it up and then rebuild “the new Middle East.”
We are now almost eight months into the “constructive chaos” engineered by this administration. The damage they have done is enormous, and will take a generation or more to rebuild.
The Bush policy was based on ideology, not reality. They were going to remove Saddam Hussein, install a government that met US criteria, and, as they so poetically put it, “serve as a beacon of democracy that would light the entire Middle East.” When it became clear that none of this worked, they latched onto the term “constructive chaos” to explain the “logic” behind their Middle East foreign policy. It was an effort to convince us that the mess they had created was intentional and necessary and that the growing violence and instability that followed were merely the “birth pangs” of the “new Middle East” they were helping to usher into existence. But there was no “logic,” and nothing “constructive” about the “chaos.” The spawn of the “birth pangs” were ISIS, an emboldened Iran, and weakened Arab “Republics” that destabilized the region.
We are now almost eight months into the “constructive chaos” engineered by this administration. The damage they have done is enormous, and will take a generation or more to rebuild. At this point, the Trump crowd hasn’t felt the need to fashion a clever explanation for what they’ve done. In part that’s because the impact of the damage is just beginning to be felt and much of Trump’s base are still under his sway and continue to believe that the mess they see isn’t real or will easily be fixed in short order.
But as was the case in the Bush years, reality will ultimately rear its head; questions will be asked and fingers will be pointed. Then the process of rebuilding can begin. It will take time to reconstruct what has been destroyed and to regain the trust that has been lost. But it can be done.
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Dumbing Down America’s Best Idea: National Parks in Free Fall
Each week of the Trump administration, there is another action stripping the National Park System of its intellectual, institutional, and moral core.
Aug 16, 2025
Often been referred to as America’s Best Idea, our National Park System has played a key role over the years in inspiring a global conservation movement.
But consider the plight of the National Park Service (NPS) today, nearly 10 years into its second century since its 1916 founding. Even as it sets new all-time visitation records, no one could claim our national parks are basking in a golden age.
Much has been made of the NPS hemorrhaging staff under Trump 2.0, with an estimated 25% overall workforce reduction just since January. At the same time, daily decisions governing national parks are made by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a former software executive and South Dakota governor with no park management experience. Despite plummeting staff levels, Burgum has issued orders directing that
- All park units remain open;
- Parks should take steps to maximize visitation and recreational opportunities; and
- Accommodate desires of gateway communities in park operations.
At the same time, Secretary Burgum has “consolidated” most all NPS administrative, human resource, and IT staff to work for all Interior agencies, a move costing NPS another 5,700 employees, approximately one-quarter of its remaining workforce. The disruptive impact of this internal move is now just starting to be felt, and its impact is magnified by new restrictions on park purchasing and contracts.
All of this is taking place without an NPS director, or even a nominee to serve as director. Even its chief deputy director is a career Army officer, with no prior national park experience. In addition, the entire chain-of-command through the secretary is almost completely devoid of any official with any background in national parks.
Meanwhile, most of the NPS regional director slots are vacant, and there are an unknown but large number of empty park superintendent positions. Compounding matters is the decision to shutter the two national park academies, which provide training to current and future NPS leaders in the laws, policies, and practices guiding park management. These shutdowns are major blows to the professionalism of this institution.
Even more profoundly, President Donald Trump’s budget plan proposes to divest as many as 350 of the 433 national park units to state or local governments. Meanwhile, the Trump mega-bill leaves NPS on even shakier fiscal status, while the few park investment proposals are highly questionable at best, and do little to help the park system, such as creating a new “Garden of Heroes,” filled with statuary depicting Americans the Trump administration deem as great.
Meanwhile, edicts issued under Trump and Burgum have gone further, such as demanding that all park interpretative displays be stripped of anything that could be interpreted as “negative” or “disparaging.” These orders have the effect of casting aside such essential notions as historical accuracy and cultural context. They also inject a corrosive politicization into park interpretive displays, lectures, and tours which had been designed to educate rather than merely placate.
The first and indispensable step for renewal will be recruiting a new generation of leaders who truly understand and appreciate the unique role of our national parks.
Compounding all of the above is the eviscerating of park planning, with National Environmental Policy Act requirements for considering long-term impacts and alternatives undergoing radical truncation. Consequently, road building and other development projects within national parks will be harder to stop or moderate regardless of damage to park resources. Moreover, since the scientific specialists within NPS are fast disappearing, there will be little capacity to even assess those impacts.
One example of this scientific retreat is the cessation of air quality monitoring at national parks. Maintaining the air quality of our most pristine places is apparently no longer of value, but it is far from the only scientific research work in our parks grinding to a halt.
In short, the combination of these developments means that our park system is being hollowed out. Each week there is another action stripping the National Park System of its intellectual, institutional, and moral core. The damage done in the past few months is both dramatic and cumulative, in many cases building on a slow degradation over the past 30 years. It will not be easily or quickly reversed.
Nor has the system touched bottom yet, as the impact of several of these moves has yet to be full felt. This descent will be long and painful with a turnaround not yet on the horizon.
The first and indispensable step for renewal will be recruiting a new generation of leaders who truly understand and appreciate the unique role of our national parks. They will have to rededicate our park system to an ethic of public enjoyment that also safeguards conservation of these resources for the balance of national parks’ second century. It cannot happen soon enough.
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