The Trump Administration Is All In for Glyphosate, MAHA Be Damned

A new Supreme Court ruling in favor of the agrochemical giant Bayer underlines just how helpful Republicans have been to pesticide producers.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the German pharmaceutical and agrochemical giant Bayer cannot be sued in state courts for failing to warn that glyphosate—a key ingredient in its subsidiary’s bestselling weedkiller, RoundUp—could cause cancer. Make American Healthy Again activists, who have been irate about the Trump administration’s embrace of glyphosate, were predictably furious.

A few hours later, the White House threw them a few scraps. Trump signed an executive order Thursday afternoon promoting pesticide “alternatives.” The order comes with no new federal funding, regulations, or enforcement powers, instead resolving to encourage “creative solutions for evaluating the exposure, diagnosis, and treatments of cumulative chemical exposures on individual health.” SCOTUS’s decision, by contrast, could be worth billions to Bayer. The ruling overturns a $1.25 million state court verdict against RoundUp maker Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018, in a suit brought by non-Hodgkins lymphoma patient John Durnell. More importantly, it stands to toss out thousands of similar suits still making their way through state courts. When the decision was announced, Bayer’s stock jumped.

Eager as Republicans are to keep the so-called MAHA Moms on their side, paying lip service to pesticide alternatives won’t make up for just how helpful........

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