A group of mothers and wellness influencers, including Casey Means, who is nominated to be the surgeon general, went to the White House last week and spoke about their “concerns” heading into the midterms. Many of them voiced their complaints about the health risks of weedkillers.
According to Alex Clark, a “Make America Healthy Again” influencer who was there, it turned into a two-hour meeting in a “jam-packed” room with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and the president himself.
“They just let us talk — they let us get everything off of our chest,” said Clark, who hosts “Culture Apothecary,” a MAHA-themed podcast produced by Turning Point USA.
Clark and the “MAHA moms” in the room had a lot to say. Glyphosate, a common weedkiller, was at the top of people’s minds. There were calls to cut back on its use and look into how safe it is.
On Monday, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could settle a long-running fight over whether one of the most popular weedkillers in the US is safe. This case serves as a test of how much power the Make America Healthy Again movement can really have in Washington.
People can keep suing Bayer, the company that makes Roundup (the brand name for glyphosate), for illnesses they say its product caused.
But regardless of the outcome of the case, which is expected to be decided in June, the issue of limiting pesticides has been a significant concern among MAHA members for a long time.
Hundreds of protesters are expected to gather in front of the court before the arguments begin. More than 30 speakers will encourage people to push for more pesticide protections.
In 2014, DeWayne “Lee” Johnson, a school groundskeeper in San Francisco, was told he had terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He was only 42 years old. He had been spraying the herbicide Roundup on the grounds he had taken care of for years. Once, when a sprayer he used broke, he got soaked in the liquid. After that, he started to get rashes and sores all over his body.
Johnson won a historic $289 million settlement from Monsanto, the company that makes Roundup, in 2018. The company was found to be responsible for his diagnosis.
RFK Jr., an environmental lawyer in California at the time, was the man who helped him win.
Johnson’s settlement was cut down to $20.4 million after several appeals in court. But it was the first decision in one of many lawsuits against Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer.
Bayer has said that Roundup is safe and that its alleged links to cancer are not proven, even though the company has agreed to pay billions of dollars in claims that it is responsible for health problems. For example, in February, the company proposed a $7.25 billion settlement. The company has pointed to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency looked at the product and its label, which doesn’t mention cancer.
The Supreme Court will decide if Americans can sue Bayer again. A man from Missouri who says he got cancer after using the product regularly is the leader of the plaintiffs.
“It is time for the U.S. legal system to establish that companies should not be punished under state laws for complying with federal warning label requirements,” Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said in a January statement after the court agreed to take up the case.
In a brief filed with the court, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the “EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved RoundUp labels that did not contain cancer warnings.”
Kennedy got the job as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in part because he promised to ban glyphosate and cut back on the use of pesticides.
But the Trump administration has since told Bayer to make more of the chemical in the U.S., backed away from claims that it could be harmful, and said that the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts, should decide how safe and risky agricultural chemicals are.
The different views on glyphosate have caused problems between traditional conservatives and MAHA voters, who say they gave Trump the votes he needed to win in 2024.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, as well as MAHA supporters and environmentalists, will speak at the rally on Monday.
The Oval Office meeting with MAHA moms was facilitated by Erika Kirk and MAHA allies in the administration who see the importance of keeping the movement’s support heading into the midterm election, according to people familiar with the logistics.