Poison back on the menu

In February, over MAHA objections, Secretary Kennedy unequivocally endorsed Trump’s executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to restore production of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup herbicide repeatedly linked to cancer.

On June 25th, in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of industry and the Trump administration, effectively shielding chemical manufacturers from liability for cancer-linked glyphosate — over MAHA leaders’ vocal opposition, and with Trump’s own Justice Department filing an amicus brief backing Bayer-owned Monsanto in court.

Last year, RFK Jr. made bold promises to MAHA moms to restrict atrazine, a pesticide linked to cancer, birth defects, and low sperm counts.

A year later, the Trump U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a ‘review’ concluding atrazine poses no extinction risk to threatened or endangered species, which “effectively paves the way for continued use,” and continued profits for Trump’s chemical industry donors.

RFK was a longtime critic of PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water — chemicals that “have been linked to cancer, immune system problems and infertility.” Kennedy’s betrayal started on day one.

In April 2025, the Trump administration quietly moved to reverse bans on PFAS forever chemicals. By May 2025, the EPA announced it would roll back Biden-era drinking water limits on PFAS. Then in November, the EPA approved two new PFAS-containing pesticides for use on vegetables and announced plans to further weaken PFAS reporting requirements — not just allowing existing forever chemicals but actively introducing new ones into the food supply.

The final blow came in May 2026, when RFK Jr. personally announced a major rollback of Biden-era restrictions on PFAS. The deregulation is a major gift to chemical industry mega-donors including DuPont, part of a $2 billion PFAS settlement last year, which gave $250,000 to Trump’s campaign after the 2024 election.

While MAHA leaders have spoken out about air and water pollutants, Trump’s EPA has now shut down plans to release a MAHA agenda and the NIH has stopped accepting submissions for its flagship journal on environmental health and yanked research grants. EPA scientists were pressured to alter safety reviews of chemicals in household cleaners and cosmetics to make risks appear less serious than the data shows — whitewashing health risks of the products MAHA’s core constituency was promised would be regulated.

At a chemicals summit, Kennedy praised an Oregon State researcher’s microplastics study from the podium — unaware, or unbothered, that an hour earlier she’d learned EPA had just terminated the grant funding that research.

Kennedy has stayed similarly silent as EPA rolls back the very mercury rules he spent decades fighting for. As an environmental attorney, he sued over mercury pollution and personally developed “word retrieval and memory problems” from mercury-tainted fish. EPA announced its rollback of mercury emissions rules the day after the MAHA Commission, which Kennedy and Zeldin both sit on, held its first meeting.

A recent report from Climate Power and Protect Our Care details how Trump has eliminated 31 pollution protections that, together, were set to deliver $275 billion in benefits per year and prevent 30,000 deaths annually.