The pesticide industry has spent decades building a highly effective influence operation in Washington D.C., shaping how pesticides are regulated and how American agriculture operates. Its political influence did not begin with the Trump administration and has extended across both Republican and Democratic administrations.<\/p>\n
But over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has delivered a string of victories to the pesticide industry that could reshape pesticide use and public health protections for years to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This tracker documents the Trump administration\u2019s favors to the pesticide industry since January 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Personnel is policy: The Trump administration has filled many key posts with pesticide industry allies. U.S. Right to Know identified 26 administration officials<\/a> with ties to the pesticide industry\u2019s lobbying or legal network, including 11 political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where former chemical industry lobbyists now occupy the four highest-ranking positions overseeing federal pesticide regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n More PFAS pesticide approvals: In July 2026, EPA approved three new<\/a> pesticide active ingredients that many scientists classify as PFAS, bringing the total number of PFAS pesticides approved since November 2025 to five. PFAS \u201cforever chemicals\u201d are highly persistent and linked to serious health problems<\/a> including cancer, birth defects, hormone disruption, liver and thyroid disease. Many scientists<\/a> and regulators<\/a> classify PFAS as substances containing at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom, but EPA uses a narrower definition adopted in 2023 that excludes compounds containing only one fluorinated carbon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Weakened endangered species protections: In July 2026, the Trump administration completed changes<\/a> to Endangered Species Act regulations \u2013 including rescinding the longstanding regulatory definition of \u201charm\u201d \u2013 that could make it easier for the EPA to approve pesticides with fewer safeguards for threatened and endangered species.\u00a0<\/p>\n Legal triumph for Bayer: In June 2026, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and Bayer in a 7\u20132 decision likely to block thousands of state-level lawsuits alleging that Bayer failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer. The ruling gives greater legal weight to EPA\u2019s approval of pesticide labels, making it harder for injured people to argue under state law that a manufacturer should have provided stronger warnings than EPA required. For decades, state failure-to-warn claims served as an independent check on EPA pesticide approvals, allowing juries to hold manufacturers accountable even when EPA had approved a pesticide label. The Court\u2019s ruling narrows the pathway through which injured Americans can sue corporations that cause harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reshaping chemical safety assessments via NAMs: In June 2026, the Trump administration announced it will expand the use of<\/a> New Approach Methods (NAMs) \u2013 such as AI-powered computer models and cell-based tests \u2013 to evaluate industrial chemicals. The agency is also developing NAMs approaches for pesticides<\/a> and endocrine disruptors<\/a>. Many scientists support NAMs as a way to reduce animal testing and improve toxicity screening, but emphasize the new methods should complement not replace<\/a> well-established evidence from animal and human studies. Critics argue that EPA is moving ahead without sufficiently validated scientific standards<\/a> for NAMs, raising concerns that pesticide and other chemical risks could be underestimated.<\/p>\n Backtracked on atrazine protections: In May 2026, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded<\/a> that atrazine is unlikely to jeopardize threatened or endangered species, reversing an earlier federal finding that atrazine is likely to harm<\/a> more than 1,000 protected species. The decision removed a regulatory obstacle for the widely used herbicide that is banned in the European Union and many other countries due to concerns about its impacts on human health<\/a> and the environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Boosted Bayer again at the Supreme Court: In March 2026, the Trump Justice Department submitted a second brief<\/a> to the Supreme Court supporting Bayer\u2019s position in Monsanto v. Durnell, arguing that federal pesticide law preempts state failure-to-warn claims that would require warning labels not approved by EPA. The brief was signed by three top Justice Department officials who had previously worked for<\/a> law firms representing Bayer.<\/p>\n Withdrew from international cancer research agency: In March 2026, the National Institutes of Health ended its collaboration<\/a> with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization\u2019s cancer research agency. As a result, U.S. government scientists can no longer participate in IARC\u2019s work, and the world\u2019s leading independent cancer research agency may lose funding and research capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n IARC has long been a target of the pesticide industry. After IARC classified glyphosate as \u201cprobably carcinogenic to humans\u201d in 2015, internal Monsanto documents revealed<\/a> plans to \u201corchestrate outrage\u201d against the agency and undermine its credibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Glyphosate elevated as national security priority: In February 2026, President Trump signed an executive order<\/a> declaring glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus \u2013 a raw material used in glyphosate production and military weaponry \u2013 critical to national defense and directing the federal government to prioritize their domestic production. Bayer is the sole U.S. producer of both glyphosate and elemental phosphorus.<\/p>\n Dicamba reapproved: In February 2026, EPA restored<\/a> over-the-top use of dicamba herbicides on dicamba-tolerant GMO soybean and cotton crops after two federal courts vacated previous approvals. The decision revives profitable pesticide industry product lines despite years of litigation over widespread<\/a> crop damage<\/a> caused by dicamba drift.\u00a0<\/p>\n Internal Monsanto documents disclosed in litigation indicate company scientists anticipated<\/a> drift-related damage before the products reached the market. See our dicamba fact sheet<\/a> and link to the Dicamba Papers<\/a>, key documents and analysis of lawsuits involving dicamba.\u00a0<\/p>\n Relented on paraquat: In January 2026, EPA announced it would \u201cfreshly reassess\u201d paraquat, describing the move<\/a> as \u201cMore MAHA Progress!\u201d But the agency did not initiate a new review of paraquat\u2019s links to Parkinson\u2019s disease or impose new restrictions on the herbicide. Instead, EPA continued a registration review already underway and requested additional data from manufacturers. Paraquat<\/a> is banned<\/a> for agricultural use in many countries due to health and environmental concerns<\/a>. EPA maintains that existing evidence does not establish a definitive link between paraquat and Parkinson\u2019s disease or cancer.<\/p>\n Backed Bayer\u2019s bid to block state cancer lawsuits: One of the Trump administration\u2019s most powerful actions for the pesticide industry came in December 2025, when the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court<\/a> to hear Monsanto v. Durnell, and argued that federal pesticide law preempts many state-law failure-to-warn claims. The filing reversed the legal position<\/a> taken by the Biden administration. Bayer\u2019s stock price jumped at the news<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n That same week, a toxicology journal retracted<\/a> a highly influential glyphosate safety review after concluding Monsanto employees had ghostwritten portions of the paper. Two other influential papers that helped shape the scientific and regulatory debate over glyphosate have since come under investigation<\/a> for allegations of ghostwriting.<\/p>\n Decimated EPA\u2019s research arm and gutted scientific capacity: In July 2025, the Trump administration began dismantling<\/a> EPA\u2019s Office of Research and Development (ORD), the agency\u2019s principal scientific research arm. ORD provides much of the independent scientific analyses and technical expertise EPA relies on to evaluate whether pesticides and industrial chemicals may cause cancer, harm children\u2019s development, disrupt hormones or threaten ecosystems. Current and former EPA scientists warned the changes<\/a> will weaken the scientific foundation for chemical and pesticide regulations, making it harder<\/a> for EPA to conduct rigorous, independent safety assessments and increasing industry influence over regulatory decisions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Eliminated pesticide-use recordkeeping requirements: In June 2025, USDA rescinded regulations<\/a> that had required farmers to keep basic records documenting when, where and how they applied restricted-use pesticides<\/a>, including products containing paraquat, atrazine, dicamba, chlorpyrifos and other hazardous pesticides. The recordkeeping requirements \u2013 which helped regulators verify compliance with pesticide laws, investigate health and environmental issues, and document enforcement of public health laws \u2013 had been in place since the 1990s.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pesticide industry has spent decades building a highly effective influence operation in Washington D.C., shaping how pesticides…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21161],"tags":[21182,47029],"class_list":["post-60671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bayer","tag-bayer","tag-primary-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}