The Deadly Campaign to Shield All Pesticides from Legal Liability

Unmasking Bayer and Monsanto's Cruel and Destructive Legacy and How Toxic Sludge is Destroying Our Farmlands

Story at a Glance:

•For over a century, Monsanto has produced incredibly toxic (but “safe”) products that have injured millions and rendered many areas uninhabitable. However, due to cutthroat legal strategies, they have long been shielded from culpability. Recently, this changed due to RFK Jr. successfully suing them for cancers caused by their flagship product, Roundup (glyphosate).

•In 2018, Bayer (one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies) acquired Monsanto. This backfired, as due to the billions in Roundup judgments (likely to far exceed 16 billion), Bayer rapidly lost two-thirds of its value.

•To save the company Bayer (which, like Monsanto, has a long history of unscrupulous conduct) is conducting a variety of measures to end those lawsuits within the Courts, States, Congress, and EPA. Many of these involve creating liability shields which make it impossible to ever sue a pesticide manufacturer for being seriously injured by their product, even if the manufacturer deliberately concealed this known toxicity.

•These actions eerily parallel the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a “well-intended” act which rather than lead to safer vaccines, unleashed the modern era of chronic disease upon America.

•Presently a bill is working its way through Congress containing a covert provision designed to shield Bayer (and many other manufacturers) from these lawsuits.

•Due to how repugnant this position is (along with a related one to ensure toxic sludge can be dumped on our farmland and render it permanently unusable), it can only pass if the public is unaware of it. As such, I believe it is vital to expose exactly what is going on and the dark history behind all of it.

For all of its flaws, the United States has one of the best governments that has ever been developed. This is because the system is rife with checks and balances, where one part of the country or government can constrain another part from acting out of line, and the public has a voice that can frequently be mobilized if things become too egregious and bring everything back to balance.

This framework naturally leads to bad actors taking a multi-pronged approach where they attempt to co-opt every single thing that constrains their misdeeds. While challenging, this can eventually be done with concerted effort. For example, during COVID-19, virtually every institution that should have prevented the unconstitutional lockdowns, the top-down suppression of unpatented COVID-19 treatments, and the COVID-19 vaccine mandates (let alone their approvals) failed as every institution worked in concert to advance the COVID cartel—resulting in arguably the worst “public health” crime in history.

Yet, even here, due to the independent media, liberty-minded politicians, and the egregiousness of the COVID policies, a check was eventually able to neutralize the COVID cartel. Furthermore, beyond the COVID vaccine program failing to accomplish its primary goal (an annual mandated vaccine and mainstreaming mRNA technology) the trust they’ve long used to market medical products has been shattered and longterm, COVID is now arguably costing the medical industry far more than was made from the pandemic—all of which illustrates our political system has a robust series of checks once things get too out of line.

Exempting Liability

Since so many institutions within our society have been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry, it has both become vital to find alternative options (e.g., creating a robust independent media) and to protect the viable options that remain.

One of those has always been the courts, as frequently, if a bad actor steps too far out of line, a legal framework exists to constrain their actions. For this reason, a holy grail of the industries which profit from poisoning us has long been to take away the ability of the courts to check them by passing laws (or securing court rulings) that shield them from liability and hence terminate the lawsuits that can stop their egregious conduct.

For example, the whole-cell DPT vaccine was long recognized to be a particularly dangerous vaccine which frequently caused brain damage and death, yet for decades the medical community and government covered it up, and industry refused to bring a safer (but more expensive) acellular DPT vaccine to market.

As a grassroots awareness of the dangers of the vaccine spread across the country (aided by a 1982 NBC program) more and more lawsuits were filed against vaccine manufacturers, the majority of which were for DPT injuries.

Information provided by the three commercial manufacturers of diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis (DPT) vaccine indicates a striking increase in the number of lawsuits filed against them alleging damage caused by the vaccine. Only one such case was filed in 1978, whereas 73 were filed in 1984. During the seven-year period from 1978 to 1984, the average amount claimed per suit has risen from $10 million to $46.5 million. If the current trend continues, suits will pose an increasing threat to the availability of DTP vaccines in the United States.

Because of this, DPT manufacturers rapidly left the market (e.g., due to rising liability insurance costs) and by 1984, only one remained. As such, something needed to be done to protect the vaccine supply, and a deal was brokered between advocates for vaccine injured children (along with their supporters within Congress) and the pharmaceutical industry. After some work, a framework was put together which was intended to help the vaccine-injured (as lawsuits for vaccine injuries were a grueling and not always successful process), create safer vaccines, and transfer liability from the vaccine manufacturers to the US government so the manufacturers could remain in business.

On one hand, this act accomplished positive things (e.g., vaccine manufacturers became required to list lots as previously ambiguous lot numbers had been used to escape liability for injuries, a safer DPT vaccine was finally brought to market, and VAERS was created). Conversely however, since many provisions of the act designed to protect the vaccine injured were at the H.H.S. Secretary’s discretion and the government ultimately paid for injury compensation. It created a massive incentive to deny that injuries could occur, and as a result, most of the acts' intended provisions failed to manifest or were systematically undermined.

As such, there’s still very little reliable data on vaccine injury (e.g., VAERS was systematically undermined as the government did not want a publicly available injury database), the science linking vaccines to specific injuries that was supposed to be done never got done, and most importantly it’s nearly impossible for vaccine injuries “not supported by science” to be compensated in the vaccine court. Worst still, a 2011 Supreme Court ruling further gutted the act, making it impossible for vaccine manufacturers to be directly sued, even in cases of grossly defective vaccines that the 1986 law had specifically intended to allow.
Note: this is somewhat similar to how the highly contentious 2015 California law, which took away religious exemptions to vaccination (effectively mandating them), was signed by the governor under the understanding that medical exemptions would always be honored, shortly after which a new law was passed which banned medical exemptions to vaccination in California.

Conversely, this birthed a massive industry, as removing the primary check against the industry (lawsuits for injuries they caused) incentivized producing a glut of new vaccines to enter the market and removed any incentive to ensure their safety. As such, an apparatus gradually developed to ensure investors could expect a successful return on upcoming vaccines by ensuring they would always be approved and mandated upon our children, eventually culminating in the COVID catastrophe.

Fortunately, as our system has a robust series of checks and balances, even though a primary one failed (injury lawsuits), eventually the unrestrained proliferation of injurious vaccines went so far a new check emerged—public loss of trust in the vaccine apparatus, MAHA’s political ascendency and RFK becoming a H.H.S. Secretary who amongst other things has begun to implement the key safety provisions of the 1986 Act every Secretary before him refused to do.

Note: one of the remarkable results of RFK’s tenure and the H.H.S. at last no longer green-lighting (unproven) vaccines for all of America’s children is that the vaccine industry can no longer obtain investor funding for new vaccines (which their trade group has noted is creating an existential threat to the industry).

I mention all of this to provide some context as to when many are quite concerned by the recent push to exempt pesticides from lawsuits.

Monsanto’s Legacy

Monsanto (founded in 1901 where it first produced the controversial artificial sweetener saccharin) has long been one of my least favorite corporations, as it routinely conducts business practices which are both extremely damaging and cruel. For example:

1. Monsanto was heavily invested in dioxins (and related organochlorines like DDT), which they knew were extremely toxic but claimed were “safe.” The most notorious of these was Agent Orange, a potent defoliating (vegetation destroying) agent that was mass-sprayed on Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (e.g., 12% of South Vietnam) to starve the local population and eliminate hiding places for the Vietcong (for which Monsanto and Dow Chemical were the primary producers). Unfortunately, while the military claimed Agent Orange was safe, it was highly toxic and has since persisted for decades in the environment.

Because of this, Agent Orange caused at least 400,000 deaths and 500,000, often severe, birth defects in Vietnam (with non-Western estimates showing roughly ten times as much harm), and with most of the victims (and their descendants) left with no recourse and a lifetime of death and disability. Likewise, it also severely harmed many Vietnam veterans (e.g., it frequently caused cancer—and in this manner killed a few friends of mine). This in turn, eventually resulted in a 180 million dollar class action settlement (of which Monsanto had to pay approximately 81 million).

Ultimately, while the two components of Agent Orange had some toxicity, the primary issue with Agent Orange was TCDD, a highly toxic dioxin produced during manufacturing, which contaminated the final product, allowing Monsanto to argue Agent Orange was “safe” since TCDD was not part of it. This is a critical point, as Dow had warned Monsanto of the need to reduce TCDD contamination, but Monsanto’s contained much higher levels due to them using a high temperature manufacturing process (which Monsanto’s internal memos described as “dirty”) to accelerate production. As such, depending on the manufacturer and batch, there was a roughly 1000-fold variation in Agent Orange TCDD content.

In 2004, Monsanto spokesman Jill Montgomery said Monsanto should not be liable at all for injuries or deaths caused by Agent Orange, saying: "We are sympathetic with people who believe they have been injured and understand their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence indicates that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.

Note: I recently learned from an excellent vaccine safety book (that I’m currently reviewing for an upcoming article) that the same US agencies and scientists (e.g., the CDC and the IOM) who covered up vaccine injuries also spent decades claiming there was “no evidence” for much of Agent Orange’s toxicity.

Additionally, there were many other issues with Agent Orange being leaked into the environment. For example, at their production site in West Virginia, Monsanto routinely disposed of TCDD contaminated wastes in landfills and waterways, polluting the area, and eventually decades later, in 2012, paid $84 million for a class action lawsuit over this (as the residents had experienced a variety of health problems). Likewise, in the 1970s, Monsanto offloaded TCDD containing waste (an impurity in Agent Orange which was its most toxic dioxin) to a company in Missouri without warning them of its toxicity, after which it was disposed of throughout the soil of a popular Missouri riverside resort town (another friend lived next to)—rendering it permanently uninhabitable (for which Monsanto ultimately payed 33 million).

Note: a classic symptom of dioxin poisoning (often seen in these contaminated areas) is chloracne.

2. Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) are extremely resistant to degradation, and hence have many industrial uses (e.g., for insulating, cooling, lubricating or hydraulic fluids or as additives to many common products). Unfortunately, they also persist for decades if not centuries in the environment and are highly toxic (e.g., they often cause cancer, immune suppression, reproductive and developmental issues, endocrine disruption, neurological impairments, liver damage, skin and eye conditions, and cardiovascular and metabolic disorders).
Note: the most extraordinary PCB story I know of is that Kenya had a longstanding problem with thieves dismantling power transformers to extract the durable PCB oil and use it to fry street foods.

Monsanto began producing PCBs in 1929, and before long produced over 99% of America’s. Despite knowing their toxicity as early as the 1930s (and definitely by the 1960s), Monsanto continually claimed they were safe, and only stopped selling them in 1977 shortly before a 1979 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban due to their toxicity and environmental persistence.

As Monsanto excels in cutthroat legal tactics, they were able to hold PCB lawsuits back for decades (e.g., initially, the only “successful” ones were a few settlements with PCB workers in the 1990s), but eventually in 2003, the dam broke. Many judgments were awarded against Monsanto (primarily for environmental pollution). These included 600 million in 2003 [of which Monsanto directly paid 390 million], 52 million, and then 92 million in 2020, 25 million, 80 million, 537.5 million, then 698 million in 2022, 80 million, then 67 million in 2023, and 35 million, then 160 million in 2024.

Note: Superfund sites designate places too contaminated by hazardous wastes (e.g., toxic chemicals) for general human habitation. In 1995, of America’s 1,238 Superfund sites, 190 had PCB contamination and 80 had dioxin contamination. Sadly, these are not Monsanto’s only Superfund contributions (e.g., they’ve contaminated numerous areas with heavy metals, arsenic, radium and benzenes^1,2,3,4).

3. Monsanto has also produced other problematic persistent chemicals. These include Acetochlor and Propachlor, carcinogenic herbicides which persist in the environment (one of which was taken off the market), and Lasso, another problematic herbicide that was phased out.

4. In 1993, Monsanto released a rBGH, a synthetic growth hormone designed to increase cow milk production that ended up in their milk. Health concerns (e.g., preliminary data suggested a cancer,^1,2,3 allergy and obesity risk—all of which was subsequently never studied) and animal welfare concerns (e.g., overstraining their milk production lead to an 18% increase in infertility, a 25% increase in mastitis, a 50% increase in lameness and an overall 20-25% increase risk in the animal needing to be culled) it quickly created public concerns about rBGH milk.

To protect their market, Monsanto began an infamous public relations campaign. For example, in 1997 after investigative journalists revealed dairy farms were continuing to use rBGH despite grocery stores promising not to sell that milk (and showed the human and animal health risks from rBGH), Monsanto legally intimated the station into pulling the story and revising it to echo Monsanto’s (unsubstantiated) “safe and effective” claims, after which the journalists were fired for refusing to. Likewise, once milk producers responded to public demands and began specifying on their labels the milk was “rGBH free” Monsanto launched an aggressive legal and legislative campaign to outlaw those labels (which ultimately backfired and made the public much more cynical about the product eventually killing its market).

5. After realizing genetically modified seeds were a highly lucrative market, Monsanto repurposed many of their tactics to monopolize this sector. These included:

•Creating a division to sue small farmers who replanted Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) seeds (with over 23 million being awarded to Monsanto).

•Developing seeds which could not reproduce (so farmers would be forced to buy them perpetually), which was eventually withdrawn due to public backlash.

•Having a revolving door at the FDA to shield them from regulatory scrutiny (e.g., this Monsanto Vice President is a well-known example).

•Locking farmers in poorer nations into a cycle of poverty as the seeds were so much more expensive, most notably resulting in mass suicides of Indian farmers who became trapped by debt from Monsanto’s costly BT corn.

•As shown by court documents, manipulating the entire scientific system to create the impression their GMOs were safe (e.g., paying off academics to write or put their names on favorable studies and successfully targeting academic critics along with getting their papers retracted so others would not be willing to risk publishing critical data).^1,2,3

•Since significantly more growing cycles exist in topical areas (3-4 rather than 1 in areas with winters), Hawaii became a popular area for cultivating and producing GMO seed crops, rapidly coming to comprise the majority of Hawaii’s agricultural revenue (with 92% coming from GMO corn). As this process required heavy use of restricted-use herbicides and pesticides, due to both environmental concerns and health effects (e.g., cancers and birth defects observed), community resistance gradually mounted against their cultivation.

Note: Monsanto also later received a $10 million fine for using a banned pesticide on Maui and Molokai and a $12 million fine for improperly using a restricted pesticide.

These practices eventually (in 2013-2014) resulted in Kauai (the primary growing site) banning spraying restricted use agrochemicals within 500 feet of schools, hospitals or parks (and requiring announcements of exactly what was being sprayed), a Maui citizen initiative pausing GMO cultivation there until safety studies had been conducted, and the island of Hawai'i banning GMO cultivation. When reading through the reports about what was happening (I was involved in the GMO field at the time due to serious concerns about their safety), I noted how contentious these laws were and was astonished Monsanto had upset Hawaii so much, the citizen initiative was able to pass despite being outspent over 87-1 by the GMO industry (which as far as I know has never otherwise happened). Sadly however, Monsanto was eventually able to overturn all of the laws with the courts by arguing only the state government (which was dependent on the GMO revenue) had the authority to restrict GMO cultivation.
Note: once Monsanto no longer benefited from using Hawaii’s land (e.g., due to fines and community pushback) they shifted their operations to their other USA-based (and subsidized) option, Puerto Rico, where they have continued poisoning the community, but due to the political climate have received minimal pushback. As the land Monsanto used in Hawaii was leased native land,^1,2,3 they were able to escape any liability for poisoning the environment, and again offloaded the costs of their predatory practices onto the community.

In short, many people really detest Monsanto (and in my case, presenting all of this is quite cathartic for me—particularly due to my friends’ experiences with Agent Orange). In my eyes, the most important point to take from this is that it is not a good idea to give Monsanto additional legal leverage, as they have shown their legal team will use any means necessary to ensure they can continuing poisoning the world without accountability—and as they have already been successful in fairly outrageous cases, giving them additional tools will make it quite difficult to have any remaining check against their egregious behavior.

Bayer, Monsanto and Glyphosate

Bayer rose to ascendency as one of the early pharmaceutical giants after developing one of the first blockbuster drugs, aspirin (which arguably contributed to the 1918 influenza catastrophe as doctors regularly gave toxic doses of it to influenza patients), along with selling heroin (a “non-addictive substitute for morphine”) as a cold remedy, phenobarbital and then chemical weapons during World War I. Following this:

In 1925, Bayer merged with five other German companies to form IG Farben, creating the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company [where Bayer’s scientists developed the world’s first antibiotic]…Following World War II, the Allied Control Council seized IG Farben's assets because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, including using slave labour from concentration camps and humans for dangerous medical testing, and production of Zyklon B, a chemical used in gas chambers. In 1951, IG Farben was split into its constituent companies, and Bayer was reincorporated as Farbenfabriken Bayer AG. After the war, Bayer re-hired several former Nazis to high-level positions, including convicted Nazi war criminals found guilty at the IG Farben Trial like Fritz ter Meer. Bayer played a key role in the Wirtschaftswunder in post-war West Germany, quickly regaining its position as one of the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations.

Note: Bayer has engaged in other controversial actions such as producing a critical blood clotting factor for hemophiliacs from people with HIV and Hepatitis (infecting many of them) and aggressively promoting Yaz, a best-selling synthetic birth control which caused clots, heart attacks and strokes (resulting in over ten thousand injury lawsuits against Bayer).

Beyond being a pharmaceutical giant, the majority of Bayer’s sales come from the agricultural sector (e.g., pesticides) where it has likewise conducted a variety of controversial actions such as introducing a new class of pesticides (neonicotinoids) embedded into seeds, which while effective were also linked to destroying critical wildlife species (e.g., honey bees^1,2,3,4,5) and as a result, many are now banned in Europe.

As our economic system often awards this type of behavior, Bayer experienced record profits, and in 2018, it decided to acquire Monsanto for $66 billion.

Note: at the time of this merger, I was a bit surprised, as I had a mutual acquaintance with a top executive of a chemical company that was notorious for poisoning Americans. Through him, I learned that the chemical company had previously been in talks to acquire (or merge) with Monsanto, but had backed out due to the company not seeing eye to eye with Monsanto’s business practices. At the time, I heard this, my thought was “Monsanto being too unethical for Bayer is really a testament to how awful their conduct was,” so when I learned about Bayer’s acquisition my first thought was “it seems only a Nazi corporation would be willing to touch Monsanto.” However, after Monsanto destroyed Bayer’s stock, I realized the American company’s choice may have simply been a pragmatic decision to avoid massive lawsuits likely to result from Monsanto’s behavior.

Of the agrochemicals, herbicides (to destroy weeds) are arguably the most toxic, so in many ways, when glyphosate was discovered, it was revolutionary as it was significantly less toxic than the competing options. After being introduced in 1974, it initially occupied a small portion of the herbicide market, but once Monsanto introduced crops genetically modified to resist Roundup (the first, Roundup Ready Soybeans,being released in 1995) it rapidly took off.

This ended up being an excellent business model as beyond allowing Monsanto to corner the herbicide market, it also incentivized farmers to use far more Roundup (as their crops didn’t die) and allowed Monsanto to make even more money selling genetically modified Roundup Ready seeds (e.g., in 2009 about 10% of Monsanto’s revenue came from glyphosate whereas 50% came from Roundup Ready seeds)—particularly since overuse of glyphosate created resistant weeds requiring even more glyphosate to be eliminated.

Unfortunately, since Roundup became more toxic to humans at higher doses, concerns grew about the chemical (e.g., glyphosate has likely contributed to widespread magnesium deficiency by binding it in soil and crops, I think a similar process with manganese is a major cause of hypermobility and others have linked its use to the autism epidemic). At the same time, Monsanto continued to claim Roundup was completely safe.
Note: many have observed that American wheat causes health issues not seen with European wheat. This is frequently attributed to Roundup being put on grains (particularly wheat) prior to harvest in order to kill and dry them (which grain elevators love), resulting in significant Roundup residues being on the final product (or alternatively immature grains being consumed with excessive irritating lectin content). I always assumed this was true (e.g., a decade ago I remember Monsanto’s website promoting glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, and this use was extensively discussed on Wikipedia), but most of the references I’ve found said this is only done in colder damper climates and is relatively uncommon in the USA. As such, I am not certain how much of an issue this use of glyphosate is.

Eventually, in 2018, RFK Jr. helped spearhead a successful lawsuit for chronic Roundup exposure that caused a groundskeeper to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was able to obtain proof through discovery that Monsanto had doctored decades of science to conceal this known risk so they could continue selling “safe and effective” Roundup.

This resulted in a massive 289 million jury payout (later reduced to 21 million) and many more successful non-Hodgkin lymphoma lawsuits (e.g., a 2019 one for 25 million, another 2019 one for $86.7 million, a 2023 one for 1.25 million, a 2023 one for 3.5 million, a 2023 one for 28 million, a 2023 one for 175 million, a 2023 one for 611 million, a 2024 one for 400 million, a 2025 one for 78 million, and a 2025 one for 2.1 billion that is currently pending appeal to a smaller amount).

Furthermore, as of May 2025, Monsanto had reached settlement agreements in nearly 100,000 Roundup lawsuits, paying approximately $11 billion, but still had roughly 61,000 active lawsuits pending.

Because of this, Bayer was forced to take on that liability and their decision to acquire Monsanto. Its value rapidly dropped from100 billion pre-acquisition to 33 billion (making it worth half of what it paid to buy Monsanto), and this acquisition is now being viewed as one of the worst merger decisions in corporate history.

If you take a step back, it’s quite remarkable a very small subset of the people these predatory companies have poisoned (gardeners who got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from extensively spraying consumer Roundup) would finally be the thing that toppled them, but often times, our system’s checks are able to rebalance it in rather unexpected ways (e.g., consider everything we saw throughout COVID-19)

Bayer’s Counterattack

In 2023 Bayer hired a new CEO, Bill Anderson, who took an aggressive approach to managing the existential threat to Bayer which included:

•Phasing out glyphosate from consumer Roundup (as this was the source of the cancer lawsuits) and replacing it with a new formulation, activists have unfortunately noted is much more toxic than glyphosate.

Note: in many cases, regardless of how toxic something is (e.g., lead in gasoline), industry will fight to defend it until an economical alternative is found (or they are forced to develop one). In the case of Roundup, most herbicides are highly toxic (e.g., one is thought to be a primary cause of Parkinson’s disease^1,2,3), Roundup is arguably much safer than the alternatives (excluding the natural ones which are more expensive).—which likely helps to explain how it rapidly took over the global herbicide market.

•Amassing a $16 billion fund to pay out and bulk settle Roundup lawsuits (of which over $10 billion has already been spent).

•Exploring discarding Monsanto and letting that half of the company go bankrupt (although they’ve stated they will not do this).

•Aggressively lobbying every level of government to enact liability shields and funding the election of industry friendly politicians. While the extent of this will likely never be reported, there is most likely an immense effort going into it (and significant covert bribery), given the stakes involved and the costs already accrued.

•Petitioning the Supreme Court to permanently overturn these judgments. In 2022, Bayer attempted this but was unsuccessful (with the Biden administration also encouraging the Supreme Court to not be involved, whereas in Trump’s first term, his administration had repeatedly advocated for Bayer in the lower courts^1,2,3). This April, Bayer (with the support of the agrochemical industry) again asked the Supreme Court to rule to overturn a Roundup Case (which Missouri’s Supreme Court had declined to overturn). On June 30^th, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to provide the Trump administration’s views on the merits of doing so. Presently, we are waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision (which will likely come in the future), and in my eyes, this is one of the most critical tactics to stop.
Note: while the first administration supported Bayer, it is likely less support will be there now as Secretary Kennedy previously litigated against Bayer, and the MAHA Report (which was signed by six cabinet members including the EPA’s administrator and the Secretary of Agriculture) stated there was evidence suggesting glyphosate could have a wide range of possible harms, which my contacts in H.H.S. told me appeared to greatly alarm out their lobbyists (who wield an immense of power in Washington—and I suspect account for why the EPA often is unable to act against toxic pesticides).

•Passing state laws to shield pesticide and herbicide manufacturers from liability. These recently passed in Georgia and North Dakota, failed in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Mississippi, are working their way through Tennessee, Florida, Oklahoma, and have passed one chamber in Missouri, North Carolina and Iowa.
Note: many more of these laws are expected to be introduced in the next year and I have had numerous people within MAHA reach out to me because they are very concerned about them.

•Attempting to pass national liability shields.

Failure to Warn

While it is extremely difficult to sue large agrochemical companies, Roundup litigation eventually succeeded after attorneys focused on Monsanto’s failure to warn users of the potential cancer risks of their product (in violation of state law) despite having extensive internal evidence that those harms existed.

As such, Bayer’s strategy both within their appeals and within legislatures has been to remove their liability for this failure to warn. To do this, they have argued that:
•The EPA deemed the pesticide “safe and effective” and did not require that warning.
•According to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the EPA’s warning requirements trump state requirements.
•As such, if the EPA did not require a warning to be given about a risk, the company cannot be liable for claiming that risk did not exist, regardless of state laws requiring them to or individuals being injured as a result of not knowing that risk.

Unfortunately, FIFRA suffers from a few major problems:
•First, the EPA’s determination of the chemical’s safety and efficacy largely relies upon industry data. As such, if what is submitted is false or misleading, there is very little recourse.
•Second, while FIFRA makes it unlawful for pesticide manufacturers to withhold or falsify data, those violations are rarely detected, and even when they are, this provision is rarely enforced in a meaningful way by the Federal Government (resulting in state courts typically being the only recourse).
•Third, the EPA’s process for determining safety and efficacy frequently results in ignoring independent pesticide data being deemed to be dangerous and never having the warning labels updated to reflect those dangers (hence making the state level checks, which do so, vital for the process).
• Fourth, if there is an issue, it often takes the EPA a long time to update it (e.g., FIFRA only requires the EPA to re-evaluate these chemicals every 15 years), with it frequently taking decades for a pesticide known to be toxic to be taken off the market.^1,2,3 Remarkably, in some cases the EPA will even reinstate toxic pesticides courts ordered to be taken off the market (e.g., the EPA recently did this for Bayer).
•Fifth, widespread (and likely correct) allegations of corruption exist and to some extent account for the poor performance seen throughout the EPS’s process.
•Finally, because of the previous, almost 100 pesticides that are banned in Europe are legal in the United States.

Put differently, this is an example of a classic industry tactic—convince the executive branch (through payments or lobbying) to sabotage a law or agency which is supposed to protect the public, as this is typically the easiest area of government to influence.
Note: this was successfully used against the first head of the FDA a century ago by having the Secretary of Agriculture prevent him from cleaning up the food supply despite him having the full support of the courts and public to make America healthy.

This, in short, provides the context behind the pending Supreme Court case:

Monsanto argues that FIRFA’s preemption clause prevents states from imposing labeling requirements different from those approved by the EPA. They contend that because the EPA has not required a cancer warning on Roundup, state law cannot impose such a requirement.

Courts disagree on whether FIFRA preempts failure-to-warn claims. In 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that FIFRA preempted Pennsylvania law in a similar claim against Monsanto, alleging strict liability for failure to warn of potential cancer risks. In contrast, the Eleventh and Ninth circuits have determined that similarly situated plaintiff’s state law-based failure-to-warn claims against Monsanto were not expressly or impliedly preempted by FIFRA. State courts are similarly split about FIFRA preemption.

Note: the most common argument the industry has adopted to justify this legal doctrine is that it’s “not fair” that pesticide manufacturers have to make different labels in different states to comply with the states that have the strictest requirements (e.g., disclosing cancer risks). I think this is a specious argument, as courts have consistently ruled that state labeling requirements are superseded by FIFRA and struck down the labeling requirements the pesticide industry and its politicians endlessly lament about (so no actual issue exists that needs to be “fixed”). As such, rather than require label changes, to avoid being superseded by FIFRA, states will use other mechanisms, such as restricting the use of the pesticide, or requiring warning signs around where it is sold..

Federal Exemptions

Since Bayer is desperate to get out of their Monsanto liability and billions are on the line, considerable effort has gone into developing viable legal strategies to accomplish this. One of these has been to sneak a last-minute provision into an unrelated bill (a “rider”) that was authored by a Congressional ally, in this case, Mike Simpson’s annual funding bill for the Department of the Interior (which the EPA is not part of).

Once it was spotted (shortly before the primary window to remove it), it immediately raised red flags with food safety activists. Industry allies, however, insisted that it “did nothing” and people were overreacting, or that it was simply fixing abusive labelling requirements. This for example, was what Simpson angrily said at a recent hearing and vote on his last-minute rider:

Apparently I'm going to have to explain this once again. I thought I was fairly clear with it before. Let me read to you what the FIFRA statute says. This is what it says. Uniformity. Such state shall not impose or continue in effect any requirement for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from those required under this sub chapter.

This is an interstate commerce thing. Now, if Maine wants to ban chemicals in its state because it thinks they're not labeled correctly, they can ban them. They can ban them today. It will this will not affect that. It just says that Maine shouldn't be able to do a labeling requirement and then all the chemical companies in the world have to apply uh have to abide by whatever Maine decides they're going to sell them in Idaho.

It's more likely that it won't be Maine because they probably don't have that many sales in Maine compared to say California. When the California EPA, their state EPA decides they want a different labeling, they think that it that this chemical causes cancer, they can put that on their label. Well, then every state is going to have to put it on eventually because a company is not going to have a different label for every single state. They will go to the most strict one that sells the most. That'll be California probably. And that would be the standard across the country. What we have tried to do over the years is say the EPA does this. It is not a floor. I don't know where that idea came. It is a floor. Eh, it may cause cancer. It may not. We're not going to say it does. That's not what the EPA does. The EPA does research to see if it's causing cancer or any other problems. And they can redo it. They can revisit it. they can re-examine it as many times as they want, there's nothing that prevents them from doing that.

All this does is deal with the interstate commerce part of labeling. So if a state wants to say, you know what, I don't want this sold in Idaho because we think in Idaho that it causes cancer, we can do that today.

All this deals with is labeling. We think we address this in the underlying on-block amendment. So, I understand the concern and I understand the confusion out there that's being spread. Frankly, uh I know the MAHA moms have been calling and all that kind of stuff. You know, I agree with them. I think we ought to make America healthy again. I'm glad they're taking an active role in this, but they're getting so much misinformation about what this does that it's hard to find the truth out.

And we're hearing a lot of it today. So, I would hope my colleagues would vote against this amendment. I'll try not to talk about it again. Uh but I hope we vote down this amendment.

In addition to many of his claims being fairly dubious, they do not match the actual text of his rider which states:

Pesticides

Sec. 453. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to issue or adopt any guidance or any policy, take any regulatory action, or approve any labeling or change to such labeling that is inconsistent with or in any respect different from the conclusion of—

(a) a human health assessment performed pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (7 U.S.C. 136 et seq.); or

(b) a carcinogenicity classification for a pesticide.

In contrast, many critical arguments have been raised over this language which I spent a while trying to correctly interpret (as I am a doctor not a lawyer). Based on that exploration, I believe the following issues exist with this rider:

•It specifically restricts carcinogenicity classifications for pesticides [defined to include herbicides], something that was likely put in to shield Bayer and strengthen their FIBRA defense (that they did not “fail to warn” because they simply followed the EPA’s advice and had no option to do anything else).

•The language throughout the first paragraph is incredibly broad (e.g., “none of the funds made available by this or any other Act”), something which is quite unusual and easily abused in the courts.

•This greatly restricts the EPA’s (already incredibly slow) ability to update existing toxicity assessments for these chemicals (as those new FIBRA assessments would differ from an already existing assessment). Put differently, within this framework, if concerning toxicity data emerges, it will take years for anything to be done about it.

•If another agency or process (e.g., from the Clean Water Act) determines a pesticide is hazardous, FIFRA having previously concluded the pesticide was “safe” could be used to block the new findings from being implemented.

•By including “any guidance or policy” this arguably broadens FIBRA’s coverage to the other warnings (signs where pesticides are sold) states can give about pesticides and restricts their ability to limit pesticide usage.

•In many cases, both states and the Federal government rely upon Federal funding to address pesticide issues (e.g., educating farmers in their risks and safe use). As worded, that can no longer occur.

In short, it’s hard to see this rider as anything besides a gift for the pesticide industry that usurps our ability to keep them from abusing the country.

Note: the implications of this provision are further discussed by a lawyer here.

Toxic Sludge is Good For You

One solution American industry has developed for the costly disposal of toxic waste (along with the even more expensive associated legal liability) is to claim it’s actually healthy for you and then sell it to the public (e.g., this is why fluoride is in our water supply).

When sewage in cleaned, typically this is accomplished by collapsing its zeta potential (the same process through which vaccines and certain infections cause strokes) so that all the suspended organic matter (e.g., feces) in the water clumps together and sinks to the bottom, making it possible for purified water to be skimmed off the top, while the sludge can be removed from the bottom.

Since urine and feces contain the primary nutrients plants need to grow (e.g., fixed nitrogen), it has become attractive to sell the sludge to farmers rather than having to pay to dispose of it. However, many understandably had objections to this, as beyond it being “gross” there was also the real potential to contaminate the fields, both with fecal microbes and toxins in the sewage (which, amongst other things, has been linked to foodborne bacterial infections).
Note: numerous studies have shown biosolids are heavily contaminated with agents such as heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, personal care products, perfluoroalkyls and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAS), plastic additives, hormones, microplastics, and chemical pollutants (e.g., PCBs and dioxins).

To sell repurposed sewage sludge, a public relations firm was engaged, and the sludge was rebranded as “biosolids.” This then inspired a wonderful book and documentary on the PR industry (I think everyone needs to see), which features Substack author and propaganda expert Mark Crispin Miller):

To quote one part of it:

We were finishing up the book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You I got a call from a very pleasant woman by the name of Nancy Blat who said she was with the Water Environment Federation.

The Water Environment Federation is the sewage sludge industry; it's this massive Washington DC based Nationwide Lobby that represents all the municipal sewage sludge plants and Nancy Blat was calling to say that she had heard we had a book coming out in the fall of 95 with this title Toxic Sludges Good For You and that she was quite concerned by the title because in fact “uh they don't really consider it toxic anymore and they don't like to call it sludge” “uh it's now called biosolids a natural organic fertilizer,” and she was very worried that if we maintain the title of our book it might interfere with their educational campaign funded by the Environmental Protection Agency that was going to convince Farmers across the United States to take sewage sludge and spread it on farmland.

They actually sponsored a contest to come up with this Orwellian name biosolids they invented the name and then they went about moving the name into the dictionary uh and ensuring that the dictionary definition of the name would not include the word sludge.

No matter how cynical you think you are about public relations and what it's involved with and which issues it's working on you really can't keep up with the public relations industry. There really is a campaign telling us that toxic sludge is good for you.

In turn, like many of the examples detailed throughout this article, sewage sludge ended up not being an “environmental win” or “safe and effective,” and everyday people were stuck bearing the costs of these predatory business practices.

This is particularly problematic due to biosolid PFAS contamination, which in many cases has caused the soil to go hundreds of times over the legal limits, and worse still also contaminate neighboring farms and waterways. As a result, many farmers have been forced to close the farms they have dedicated their lives to. There are many cases of livestock or fish dying off, and there are reports of farmers also getting quite sick.

Note: PFAS (fluoroalkyl substances) are used for a wide number of materials, the most well-known of which is the (toxic) non-stick coating Teflon. As they are designed to be effective lubricants that resist degradation, they persist for hundreds to thousands of years in the environment (hence why the contaminated farms have to be remediated). Lawsuits (e.g., a 671 million dollar one in 2017 against Dupont) have shown companies willfully discharge these toxins into communities and that a wide variety of illnesses follow.

If you take a step back, beyond the immediate suffering this has caused, this is a huge problem for the country as we have a finite amount of farmland, so making all of it (particularly the smaller ones) become permanently unusable is an existential threat to the country and hence must be addressed as quickly as possible.

As such, in the late 1990s, the EPA was requested to examine the risks of perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane acid (both PFAS).In 2023, they at last, convened a series of three workshops to discuss a rise in concern over PFAS in wastewater treatment plants and biosolids, andin January 2025 they published that assessment which included:

Risks exceed acceptable thresholds for cancer and non-cancer effects (e.g., hepatic, immunological, cardiovascular, and developmental effects) in scenarios involving:

•Drinking milk from pasture-raised cows on contaminated land.

•Consuming water from contaminated groundwater or surface water near impacted sites.

•Eating fish from lakes affected by runoff from sludge-applied fields.

•Consuming beef or eggs from animals raised on contaminated pastures.

•Eating certain fruits and vegetables grown in sludge-amended soils.

Key Factors Influencing Risk:

•Concentration of PFOA/PFOS in sludge (risks scale linearly with concentration).

•Number and volume of sludge applications.

Note: given how much the EPA tends to protect polluters (e.g., consider the 30 year delay in getting this done), it was quite surprising and monumental this critical report emerged (and likewise quite problematic for the biosolids industry)—which I believe was a testament to how problematic PFAS biosolids are becoming for the country.

I mention all of this because in early June, a waste industry trade groupmet with Environmental Protection Agency leadership to “discuss” the EPA’s assessment. A few weeks later, in addition to the pesticide liability exemption clause, another rider appearedinto Simpson’s appropriations bill that had likely been crafted with the EPA’s input to eliminate this existential threat to the industry:

Sec. 507. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce the draft risk assessment titled “Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS)” published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register on January 15, 2025 (90 Fed. Reg. 3859).

In turn, while some type of argument could be made to justify the previous pesticide rider, I’m really stuck on how you can argue this in anything besides a corrupt carveout to protect the municipal sewage industry. Additionally, this rider is also likely illegal as it preempts the Clean Water Act.

Note: Public relations has also been a key part of Bayer’s campaign to save its company and create support for its proposed laws. This full page ad for example, was placedin the New York Times on March 30, 2025.

Note: Simpson’s appropriation bill also had a similar rider to protect Ethylene Oxide’s use in medical applications from a recent EPA report on its safety as a (which I think less thought was put into, as it’s language was less broad and the EPA report itself was generally favorable to Ethylene Oxide with the only concerns being incomplete safety data and noting persistent residues of its breakdown products on certain dried foods).

MAHA and Pesticide Immunity

Prior to Obama, while I saw the flaws in both parties, I generally identified as a Democrat as I felt they did a better job on the issues I cared about (e.g., resisting predatory corporate practices and opposing wars). Many things then flipped during Obama’s presidency, including the party becoming devoted to the pharmaceutical industry and defense contractors.
Note: I believe the key reason Trump won in 2016 is that he saw the issues prioritized by this voting block and captured it (e.g., both he and Bernie Sanders were the two 2016 candidates opposed to NAFTA).

One of the things that showed me things had really changed was when a series of childhood vaccine mandates swept the nation (starting with California), where in each case, a large group of parents of vaccine injured children flooded their capitols (leading to the legislators repeatedly remarking they had never seen a comparable outcry against any other proposed law).

In each case (I followed them extensively), I noticed with shock that the Democrats essentially ignored the distraught witnesses (in some cases, such as in Colorado, verbatim repeating what a lobbyist in the next room typed), while the Republicans, although often initially hesitant to resist a mandate eventually listened to their constituents—resulting in give or take every Republican always against for the mandate and every Democrat voting for it (with a very small number instead abstaining). All of this hence explains why the Democrats excoriated RFK Jr. (with none voting for him) during his Senate confirmation hearings even though RFK was previously an icon within the party for his environmental work. Most of his health positions (excluding vaccine ones) were identical to what many of the dissenting Senators had spent their careers advocating for.

Since much of the progressive base strongly identifies with natural health, the rapid shift to supporting the pharmaceutical industry hence made many of them “politically homeless” and a major part of why Trump won the 2024 election was because he agreed to advance their agenda (through empowering RFK Jr.) to get their vote. Likewise, beyond that agreement, a key reason why RFK has gotten so much support from the administration is because they recognize concrete actions to Make America Healthy Again will be vital to winning the midterms.

Given all of this, it’s hence quite noteworthy that on the pesticide issue, the allegiances have flipped, as in each vote I cited throughout this article (at both a state and Federal level) Democrats tended to vote against the pesticide industry while (most but not all) Republicans vote in favor of them being free of liability for poisoning people. Likewise, one Democrat Senator, Cory Booker, just introduced a law that significantly increased people’s ability to sue pesticide manufacturers.

Recently, MAHA attempted to stop the “glyphosate” rider by contacting their representatives and having a vote on it during a committee meeting—where, due to a Republican majority, it failed. More remarkably, the entire vote (which is at the very end of this clip) was done by an unrecorded roll call vote (where the camera did not show the legislators who voted to keep these riders), a tactic likely utilized to protect those who supported the bill from the MAHA backlash they otherwise would have received. As there were many insightful moments in this exchange, I clipped it here:

In short, it was quite surreal to see an inversion of the political positioning I’d grown used to over the last decade—Democrats passionately opposing a clear corrupt danger to our health while Republicans advocated for it.

Note: while awareness on the issues of vaccines is exponentially increasing, concerns about pesticides and foods are a much greater concern for the general population, particularly within the left and a key reason why the MAHA coalition was able to appeal to a broad segment of voters (whereas had MAHA only been about vaccines it would not have gotten enough votes to shift the election and be positioned to fix the vaccine mess). As such, my MAHA contacts are quite concerned about the political fallout these liability exemptions will create, particularly if the Democrats are able to recapture the MAHA base by standing up against corrupt agricultural practices that are making us all sick (and then once that’s done, sweeping the vaccine issue back under the rug).

Conclusion

While the immediate political and environmental implications of these industry carveouts are quite concerning, the primary cause for alarm is their broader implications such as the permanent destruction of America’s farmland (or at least it being transformed into land which can only support chemically intensive GMO agriculture and produces poisoned food).

Of these, the most concerning one is that this “glyphosate” rider, beyond protecting Bayer, also makes it much harder to rescind any other harmful pesticide. As such, Bayer’s lobbying has a real chance of undermining decades of environmental work and opens the door to allowing a deluge of toxic pesticides to enter and stay on the market—much in the same way exempting the vaccine manufacturers from liability did so in 1986.

Note: the chronic buildup of pesticides and persistent “forever chemicals” has often been cited as a cause of chronic illnesses (particularly in chronically ill “sensitive patients#,” who in many cases only get better with gentle prolonged detoxification regimens). As these chemicals are so widespread in our environment, their harm, much like that seen from vaccines, has been normalized to the point we often don’t even think about it now. In my case, I primarily focus on vaccines as the issue as beyond being highly impactful to health, it is much easier to fix (don’t get shots).

Because of this, when these riders are explained to voters (and many politicians), we’ve found they are horrified by them and immediately reject them as there is no justifiable reason to support them (e.g., no one wants more cancer).

And in February, the Idaho Conservation League released the results of a survey commissioned by advocacy groups to gauge support of pesticide bills among residents in Idaho, Iowa, and Missouri, where pesticide immunity bills were introduced in 2024. The pollsters found 90 percent of Idahoans surveyed opposed the bills. “It was overwhelming to the point that the polling firm said they had never seen numbers this high,” Oppenheimer said.

Given the fact that very few of the state bills have passed so far, he said, the sentiment may extend beyond those states. “It surprises me that Bayer pushed so hard and spent so much money this year with relatively—except for Georgia—no success,” he said. “They’ve succeeded in one state and one state alone.”

This in short, is why a team of the world’s best lawyers put a lot of thought into crafting seemingly innocuous language (few would notice) in the hope that it could quietly solve everything (and likewise why so many Congressional offices, when contacted by their constituents insisted this rider was not a “liability shield”). Fortunately, while tactics like those worked in the past, the mainstream media has much less of an ability to control narratives now, and top to bottom, we are seeing a rapid shift in policies that previously seemed insurmountable (e.g., in the past I never imagined cancer lawsuits would be able to topple Bayer or Monsanto).

As such, I believe a few steps are critical now:

•First, much more attention must be drawn to these riders and the dark history behind them. The initial attempt solicited enough interest for Simpson to comment on the “misinformation” during the meeting and for members of the opposition to speak out against it, but not enough of a public uproar to remove it. The bill is still early in its life, so we can still change that. For example, Maine Organic Farmers, due to the damage biosolids have done to their state, is working with Susan Collins to kill this rider in the Senate, and to do so she will need our voices behind her (along with us demanding the votes on it are public so we can expose the Senators who sold out to the pesticide industry). It is critical each of us contact our representatives (here) and Senators (here) about HR 4754, tell them it’s imperative sections 453 and 507 are moved from the bill and that we understand exactly what’s actually in them.

•Second, we need to shift our focus to developing less toxic alternatives to glyphosate (or farming products that do not require intensive chemical agriculture), and relentlessly use the multibillion-dollar lawsuits Bayer is facing to incentivize them into helping us create those alternatives, as I believe without this being done, this problem will never be solved. As the grotesque history I’ve shown here demonstrates, these companies (like vaccine manufacturers), to protect sales, will not voluntarily disclose the harms of their products regardless of the lawsuits they face for this fraud. Thus, in many cases, the best that can be done is pressure them to find ways to provide safer but still profitable products (much in the same way the less deadly pertussis vaccine only came to market after countless successful injury lawsuits and the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act requiring it to be developed).
Note: one parallel initiative that could potentially be very beneficial is to incentivize Americans across the country (e.g., with tax breaks, free supplies, and education) to create their own gardens and incorporate that into their own food supply. The best precedent for this is Cuba’s rooftop garden program (which was rapidly initiated to prevent a famine after they lost access to the primary trading partner when the U.S.S.R. collapsed), which has proven, even in cities, that local organic gardening can meet a significant amount of the food needs for an area (and do so in a healthy manner).

•Third, one thing many people do not appreciate about RFK’s position is that beyond it being completely unprecedented (and virtually impossible) that a strong opponent of so many multibillion-dollar industries would become the HHS Secretary (and have the full backing of the president to fulfill his agenda), so many different interests are being threatened every available tactic is being used to undermine Making America Healthy Again.

One of the most common ones is sowing every type of division possible (e.g., Laura Loomer has been using her influence to systematically target MAHA appointees for being “too liberal” and the food issue appears to be being used to split the MAHA coalition from its vaccine wing). Likewise, over the last year, I have seen a nonstop stream of accusations be seeded within our base that RFK and his allies betrayed us and is secretly working for the vaccine industry, because while he has already taken numerous extraordinary steps that have made the vaccine industry livid, he did not immediately ban all vaccines (which is not politically possible to do).

As such each time he (rapidly) creates a previously inconceivable paradigm shift on the vaccine issue (e.g., removing the COVID vaccine from the childhood schedule or revoking the 500 million worth of Federal contracts for developing mRNA vaccines—effectively killing the industry), there is very little recognition of it from his detractors (who instead frequently pivot to attacking him for not having tackled another vaccine issue or his “fruit loops” efforts to appeal to the broader MAHA coalition by cleaning up the food supply).
Note: ever since I started advocating for RFK’s MAHA work (and that of his team), I have also received a non-stop deluge of accusations of being controlled opposition and secretly working for the vaccine or pharmaceutical industry. While this is understandable given the vested interests being threatened and I was told in advance to expect it, it’s all still a bit surreal for me to observe, given how pointed (and impactful) my focus has been on damaging those industries (due to my disgust for what they’ve done to humanity).

• Fourth, it’s critical to recognize that MAHA has much less influence in the Department of Agriculture or EPA than the H.H.S. (as our H.H.S. influence is largely a product of Trump’s decision to empower RFK to make America Healthy). So, while there is support for MAHA in the rest of the administration, everywhere else, we still have to contend with the corrosive influences which has long kept anything that challenges industry from being implemented within the executive branch.
Note: the Secretary of Agriculture’s mother is a Texas representative who can be contacted here.

In short, our focus needs to shift to making people aware of this pesticide legal immunity provision (as there is still a lot of time to stop it from becoming law) and the broader campaign across legislatures to enshrine liability shields. As such, a significant amount of our political advocacy needs to be directed at the Department of Agriculture, as public support is necessary to compensate for the limited number of people working to advance our interests.

Likewise, at this moment, it’s extremely important to communicate to the Trump administration (and hence their Solicitor General) that we do not want the Supreme Court to take up a case that could erase Bayer’s fines and establish a doctrine allowing other pesticide manufacturers to be shielded from liability for covering up the dangers of their products.

When Trump ran (likely due to personal experiences with vaccine injuries and courtinga Tea Party base which was skeptical of vaccines), he was the most anti-vaccine presidential candidate I had seen in history, leading to exchanges like this during the debates I never expected to see in my lifetime:

Unfortunately, while he initially attempted to address this issue, the vaccine safety focus was rapidly undermined by his staff, and before long, Trump was pulled into birthing what was arguably the most harmful vaccine in human history. In his second presidency, it appears that he has learned from this mistake (hence why RFK has so much previously inconceivable support to reform the existing vaccine schedule).

It strikes me that there’s a very significant tension between what the president has promised relating to the overuse of pesticides in this country versus the other elements of his own administration that reflexively do what industry wants no matter what,” said Hartl. “He’s going to have to decide who he’s going to let down: whether it’s his own supporters that believe in his MAHA agenda or his industry benefactors.

My fear this is that Trump may be repeating his 2020 mistake (intending to address the vaccine issue but instead making it exponentially worse) by campaigning to make our food healthy again but instead gradually enshrining a liability shield for the pesticide industry equivalent to the 1986 Vaccine Act—a catastrophic mistake which has taken almost 40 years of work to simply begin the process of rectifying it.

To quote Meryl Nass (who provided many of the sources I used to compile this article)

Providing a liability shield incentivizes a race to the bottom for product safety. Do we really want to encourage more dangerous products to be sold? When penalties for harming the public are removed, the public is practically begging to be harmed.

As I’ve tried to show here, there is a lot of darkness behind these seemingly innocuous provisions. Fortunately, we exist in a different era where things have become much more malleable and we now have the ability overturn so many corrupt and previously unchallengeable policies—provided we make our voices heard. As such, I am profoundly grateful both for the work each of you have done throughout the last four years to make this shift possible (and your support enabling me to also do so) and more importantly, for what I know we will accomplish together over the next 4 years.

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