The Great MAHA™ Glyphosate Betrayal

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Trump’s Executive Order

On February 18, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) aimed at effectively subsidizing the domestic production of glyphosate on grounds of “national security”.

Glyphosate is a chemical used in herbicides, including Bayer’s popular “Roundup” product, previously manufactured by Monsanto, which Bayer bought and absorbed in 2018.

The EO referenced Bayer as the only domestic producer of glyphosate, which has resulted in a dependency on imports from what the Trump administration described as “hostile foreign actors”.

That was a clear reference to China, which is the source of almost all imported glyphosate.

Bayer has been facing lawsuits alleging that Roundup causes cancer, and glyphosate is also known to disrupt the gut microbiome, which can lead to a multitude of health problems.

Eliminating glyphosate and other toxic chemicals from the food supply has been a key aim of the “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” movement, whose members voted for Trump to get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. into the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Yet Kennedy himself defended the EO, and others in the MAHA leadership have similarly tried to reassure Trump’s critics that it’s just an unfortunate reality that farmers are dependent on glyphosate; and while a transition to regenerative and organic agriculture is necessary, it is a matter of “national security” that we take action in the meantime. Kennedy endorsed the EO as necessary to protect the food supply from “adversarial nations” and “hostile actors”.

So, who is right? Are the critics of the EO misguided, or has the MAHA leadership made a political compromise that elevates loyalty to Trump over the objectives of the health freedom movement?

The answer, I posit, is the latter. Let’s examine the opposing arguments.

The Arguments in Defense of Trump’s Executive Order

One of the leaders of the MAHA movement is Del Bigtree, host of The Highwire and founder of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), which has done phenomenal work advocating the right of individuals to make their own health choices, including the right to informed consent for vaccinations.

Bigtree was also the communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, before Kennedy dropped out of the race to form an alliance with Trump.

As discussed in more detail below, after joining Trump’s campaign, Kennedy registered a trademark application for “MAHA” that he then transferred to Bigtree. The MAHA trademark was transferred again last summer, with current ownership remaining unclear.

In an article by Tracy Beanz and Michelle Edwards described as an “editorial” by the show’s X account, The Highwire defended Trump’s EO.

Directing readers to the article, the Highwire’s X post firmly rejected the idea that “Trump betrayed MAHA”, suggesting that the EO was instead a necessary step on the path to eventually replacing glyphosate through innovation and reformation of the agricultural system.

“There’s a bigger fight worth having than this last week’s outrage news cycle”, the post stated.

The Highwire article characterized the EO’s critics as having acted irrationally based on a misunderstanding of its contents. By the Highwire’s account, “sheer panic ensued” when people “apparently briefly skimmed” the order and saw “the words ‘glyphosate’ and ‘immunity.’”

People thus misinterpreted the EO as “a permanent stamp of approval to chemicals in our food”; they “misread” it as providing “a magic immunity shield against product liability or cancer claims related to glyphosate.”

The Highwire averred that the EO was instead “a national-security procurement memo” that invoked authority from the Defense Production Act of 1950 to direct resources toward domestic mining of elemental phosphorus, which is used to make glyphosate. Other uses of phosphorus include incendiary weapons, semiconductors, and lithium-ion batteries.

The EO did not give “blanket immunity”, as critics claimed, but instead provided “a compliance shield that prevents a company from being punished simply for prioritizing a federal order over ordinary contracts.” The immunity clause “is tied to compliance with the order, not a blanket pardon for toxic tort claims.”

The “backlash” was also misguided, the Highwire argued, because the EO did not “permanently stamp SAFE on glyphosate”; it was merely “an access and supply decision, not a health verdict.”

The editorial cited Secretary Kennedy’s own defense of the EO, paraphrasing his argument that “our nation is dependent on something it suspects is making us sick, and the question is how to transition off of that toxic path without putting farmers out of business.”

The EO strikes an appropriate balance, The Highwire argued, between “the MAHA instinct (stop poisoning people) and the national-interest instinct (don’t collapse domestic agriculture)”.

The article concluded that, yes, we certainly need to get glyphosate out of our food, but we shouldn’t “turn anti-farmer or anti-Trump” because of an Executive Order that is necessary for national security.

In sum, instead of criticizing the EO, The Highwire defended it, expressing a clear position of loyalty to Trump and characterizing critics as not merely “anti-Trump” but also “anti-farmer”.

Similarly, The MAHA™ Report, a Substack publication of MAHA Action, Inc., issued a call for “unity” in support of the EO.

“We take President Trump at his word”, the organization said in an official statement on February 20, “that this executive order is about national security and reducing dependence on China. We support that objective.”

The statement similarly characterized the EO as striking an appropriate balance between “supply chain security” and “health security”.

The central message from those defending the EO is that we are supposed to be good team players and get on board with MAHA™ and whatever its leadership decides is best, which also means being a Trump loyalist.

If Trump says his EO is for “national security”, then we ought to believe him, and we ought not become both “anti-Trump” and “anti-farmer” by opposing it.

However, these defenses offered by the MAHA leadership to excuse Trump’s EO are based on three fundamental errors.