President Donald Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday aiming to boost the production of glyphosate in the U.S., sparking major backlash among some health advocates.
The executive order invokes the Defense Production Act to safeguard the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, according to a White House fact sheet. Trump wrote in the order that “ensuring an adequate supply of” both is “crucial to the national security and defense” of the U.S., “including food-supply security, which is essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans.”
Glyphosate is a commonly used herbicide that can be used to kill certain weeds and grasses, and it has been registered as a pesticide in the U.S. since 1974, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An Environmental Health study published in June 2025 found that low doses of glyphosate can cause multiple types of cancer in rats, per George Mason University.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously publicly criticized glyphosate, writing in a June 2024 X post that the herbicide “is one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic.”
“Shockingly, much of our exposure comes from its use as a desiccant on wheat, not as an herbicide,” he added in the post. “From there it goes straight into our bodies. My USDA will ban that practice.”
“Donald Trump’s Executive Order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” Kennedy said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday. “We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security.”
“By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families,” he continued.
White House Spokesman Kush Desai told the DCNF in a statement on Thursday that “building modern weapons systems or growing enough food is impossible without elemental phosphorous.”
“America has just one domestic producer of phosphorous, and President Trump’s executive order safeguards our national security and food supply by addressing our precarious foreign reliance for this key input,” Desai added. “At the same time, HHS and [the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)] are pursuing more research into sustainable agricultural practices, including new crop protection tools. President Trump pledged to protect our country and Make America Healthy Again, and this Administration will never compromise on either priority.”
Desai told the DCNF in a subsequent statement sent roughly one hour after his first that Trump’s “executive order is not an endorsement of any product or practice.”
“This action strengthens our national security and ends America’s decades-long reliance on foreign imports and supply chains. This is America First in action,” the White House spokesman added in the second statement.
In August 2018, Kennedy notably won a nearly $290 million case against Roundup producer Monsanto, which has since been purchased by Bayer, for a man who alleged his cancer was likely caused from using the weedkiller, CNBC reported on Wednesday.
German chemical giant Bayer has proposed a $7.25 billion plan to settle thousands of lawsuits alleging its Roundup weedkiller caused cancer, Fox 13 reported on Thursday. Bayer has faced a spate of lawsuits alleging that glyphosate — an ingredient patented in 1971 by Missouri-based Monsanto — may cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Roundup’s labeling did not adequately warn users about the potential risk, according to the Missouri Independent.
Trump’s new executive order drew criticism from some health advocates and supporters of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement.
Environmental Working Group (EWG) President and Co-Founder Ken Cook wrote in a Wednesday statement that that “if anyone still wondered whether ‘Make America Healthy Again’ was a genuine commitment to protecting public health or a scam concocted by President Trump and RFK Jr. to rally health-conscious voters in 2024, today’s decision answers that question.”
“I can’t envision a bigger middle finger to every MAHA mom than this,” Cook added. “By granting immunity to the makers of the nation’s most widely used pesticide, President Trump just gave Bayer a license to poison people. Full stop.”
Meanwhile, Vani Hari, a healthy eating advocate, claimed that “MAHA voters were promised health reform, not chemical entrenchment,” The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Lori Ann Burd, environmental health program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, referred to Trump’s executive order as “a sickening love letter from Trump to the largest pesticide companies in the world,” The New Lede reported on Thursday.
The move comes as Republicans are attempting to develop a winning messaging strategy to appeal to voters in the 2026 midterms, with some polling suggesting there may be a pro-Democratic “blue wave.”
“Have we ever lost the midterms this early or is this a new record?” Alex Clark, the host of Turning Point USA’s “Culture Apothecary” podcast, wrote in an X post on Wednesday in response to the announcement.
Moreover, food and health activist Kelly Ryerson wrote in a Wednesday social media post that “Just as the large MAHA base begins to consider what to do at midterms, the President issues an EO to expand domestic glyphosate production.”
However, the House Committee on Agriculture praised the executive order in a statement posted to X on Wednesday, claiming that “FOOD SECURITY IS NATIONAL SECURITY.”
“Thank you, President Trump, for acknowledging the importance of glyphosate-based herbicides in American agriculture,” the committee added in the social media post. “This is a vital step forward in ensuring a domestic supply of this critical crop input remains available for our producers.”
While no European Union countries have enacted outright bans of glyphosate, some countries, like Austria, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, have introduced partial bans which prohibit its use in certain areas, according to the European Food Information Council.
In December 2025, Kennedy, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced a $700 million regenerative pilot program as part of an effort to help bring down farmer production costs and “advance” the administration’s MAHA agenda. Moreover, the EPA announced a goal in March 2025 to “reconsider the regulation governing the review of chemicals already in commerce by initiating a rulemaking that will ensure the agency can efficiently and effectively protect human health and the environment and follow the law.”
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