Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna lambasted Senate Majority Leader John Thune Monday after he opposed removing a provision impacting pesticide companies that Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters backed.
Thune said during a Thursday interview with KOTA-TV that he disagreed with Luna’s amendment which removed a provision that acted as a liability shield for pesticide companies in the House-version of the Farm Bill, also known as the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026. In response to Thune, Luna fired back at the Senate majority leader in comments to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Of course this guy would say that. He is everything that is wrong with politics,” Luna said.
The House removed liability protections for pesticide companies from the bill, a sweeping legislative package passed out of committee by the House Agriculture Committee in March to set federal agricultural and food policy. Thune argued that the pesticide language was “carefully calibrated and negotiated provision” when the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the bill.
“I think that was a carefully calibrated and negotiated provision in the bill as it emerged from the House Agriculture Committee. So, in my view, no, but I mean, that’s a debate that you have to have. And there were enough Republicans that teamed up with Democrats in the House to get it stripped out,” Thune said.
Thune added that it is unclear whether the legislation will pass in the Senate. He argued that the removal creates rising input costs and could lead to more lawsuits.
A source familiar with Thune told the DCNF that Thune represents constituents from an agricultural state and supports polices that he believes benefit South Dakota.
After the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the bill, Luna introduced an amendment that struck the pesticide liability provisions from the bill. The amendment passed on April 30 in a 280-142 vote, which was then incorporated into the final bill passed by the House. Luna vowed she would not vote for a bill that protects corporations that were allegedly responsible “for giving children and adults cancer.”
“I have a little boy, and the amount of articles I have seen on pesticides and herbicides popping up in children’s products (to include organic) is very bad,” Luna, a MAHA-aligned Republican, wrote in an X post on April 28. “On behalf of all the moms and dads that aren’t in office, I am not going to be bullied into supporting a bill that is providing protections and immunity to corporations that are responsible for giving children and adults cancer.”
Luna also said there was a good chance the Senate would reinstate pesticide liability protections in its own version of the bill.
“To the Senate: don’t,” Luna said in a May 4 statement. “If this comes back with those protections included, we have the votes to kill it. A number of Republicans are already regretting their vote against the amendment and are feeling the pressure from MAHA moms back home for their reelections.”
The vote was a win for MAHA-aligned Republicans and Democrats who argued that the provision would protect pesticide makers who have faced lawsuits from plaintiffs who alleged they were not informed of the health risks connected to the pesticides.
Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree led a bipartisan effort to remove the pesticide language. Massie argued that farmers would not be able to sue companies for contracting a form of cancer if the language remained in the bill. He also told LindellTV that “this administration has sided with a German company trying to get immunity from the harm that their products may cause.”
House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson, a Republican, called on colleagues to reject Luna’s efforts, arguing that the language was “really important for food affordability.”
“It would prevent frivolous lawsuits if it’s in compliance with the science that the [Environmental Protection Agency] has put forward,” Thompson said. “I think this is a tool that’s really important for food affordability, because these are tools that are important for yield, to be able to feed the nation, feed the world.”
A spokesperson for Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett’s office told the DCNF that Burchett voted for Luna’s amendment because it “allowed pesticide manufacturers to be sued.”
Seventy-three Republicans voted with Luna to remove the pesticide language, while 172 rejected it. Six Democrats, including Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, voted to keep it.
While having criticized the use of pesticides for years, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. backed President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at boosting glyphosate’s production. Kennedy said in a February statement that while it is “toxic by design,” the order is necessary for agricultural stability and national security.
HHS did not immediately respond to a question about Kennedy’s position on the pesticide amendment.
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