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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.

Glyphosate-Contaminated Foods Are ‘Healthy’?

The narrative pushed by those defending Trump’s Executive Order is that it aligns with the goal of weaning the US agricultural system off dependency on glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup.

According to The Highwire, the EO does not “stamp SAFE on glyphosate”. In fact, it literally does.

The order states,

As the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture, glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy, allowing United States farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low production costs while ensuring that healthy, affordable food options remain within reach for all American families.

. . . Ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is thus crucial to the national security and defense, including food-supply security, which is essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans. [Emphasis added.]

There is nothing in the EO acknowledging the health concerns about glyphosate. On the contrary, it explicitly describes glyphosate-contaminated foods as “healthy”. It explicitly states that securing the supply of glyphosate is essential for Americans’ “health”.

Consequently, there is also nothing in the EO about needing to transition the agricultural system away from dependency on toxic pesticides and herbicides.

While that transition may be a goal of Kennedy’s, no explanation has been provided by the EO’s defenders about how, exactly, it is aimed at transitioning—as opposed to being obviously intended to ensure the continued use of glyphosate.

Trump’s Liability Shield

It is true that the EO does not provide “blanket immunity” against tort claims like those that have been filed against Bayer.

The EO states that it “confers all immunity provided in section 707 of the [Defense Production] Act (50 U.S.C. 4557).” That section of the US Code shields persons from liability “for damages or penalties for any act or failure to act resulting directly or indirectly from compliance with a rule, regulation, or order” issued pursuant the Defense Production Act.

Thus, the EO does shield companies from liability if harms result from their compliance with government directives pursuant to the goal of increasing domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides.

So, while it’s not “blanket immunity” against tort claims, it is still aimed at shielding producers from liability.

Basically, the legal defense of companies acting under the directive of Trump’s EO would be: We are not liable for any cancers caused by exposure to glyphosate because we were just following directives from the federal government.

In essence, it’s the Nuremberg defense employed by Nazis after World War II that soldiers obeying superior officers should not be considered guilty of war crimes since they were “just following orders”.

This legal shielding must also be considered within the wider context of Trump’s policies toward glyphosate.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration has continued to maintain that it is safe.

Bayer has therefore essentially employed the Nuremberg defense in the lawsuits it has faced over Roundup, in which plaintiffs have alleged that the product caused their cancer and that Bayer is liable for its failure to warn about the health risks on its product labeling.

Bayer’s defense, which it intends to take to the Supreme Court, is that it cannot be held liable because the EPA under the Trump administration has continued to insist that Bayer is not required to warn Roundup users about this risk.

Additionally, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is siding with Bayer in that case, arguing that glyphosate is probably safe and doesn’t cause cancer, and that any “failure-to-warn” lawsuits at the state level are preempted by the federal government’s determination.

As attorney Tom Renz has concluded,

The glyphosate order is all about immunity. They could push a phase-out or allow people sick or dying from this poison to seek justice and get medical bills paid. Instead, the administration is building manufacturing capacity to ensure farmers remain reliant on this poison forever.

In August, Bayer warned that it could be forced to stop US production of Roundup unless the government acted to shield it from liability lawsuits.

One day before Trump’s EO, Bayer reached an agreement to pay up to $7.25 billion to resolve tens of thousands of such lawsuits.

As reported by Reuters, the decision by the Supreme Court to hear Bayer’s appeal also came “after the Trump administration supported Bayer’s view that federal glyphosate regulation, which is mainly in Bayer’s favour, should take precedence over state laws invoked by the plaintiffs.”

The defenders of Trump’s Executive Order are therefore correct that there is a threat to the supply of glyphosate. But that threat has arisen precisely because of Bayer’s liability exposure, and the Trump administration’s response to that threat has been to shield Bayer from liability.

The liability concern, however, is not the only threat to the glyphosate supply. A second major factor also helps to explain the supposed necessity of Trump’s Executive Order.

The False Pretext of ‘National Security’

Trump’s defenders accept the pretext that his EO is necessary to protect the glyphosate supply on grounds of “national security”, citing threats from “hostile foreign actors”.

This is an obvious reference to China because that’s the source of almost all glyphosate-based herbicides imported into the US.

The implication is that China is threatening to weaponize trade against the American people by withholding the supply of glyphosate and cause increased costs for food production and hence food prices at the store.

But that is fiction. The real problem is that Trump’s tariffs have increased operational costs to importing US businesses, resulting in increasing prices for glyphosate.

In 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, the US tariff on Chinese glyphosate was 3.7%. When Trump threatened to impose an additional 25% tariff on Chinese imports, domestic pesticide producers sought an exemption, warning that smaller companies would be put out of business.

That, they warned, would leave Bayer with a monopoly, and the increased costs for glyphosate-based herbicides would also be borne ultimately by US farmers and consumers.

Since then, as best as I have been able to piece together, Trump acted to ensure that those warnings would come true.

In September 2019, the Trump administration imposed a 15% tariff on imported Chinese goods, which was reduced in February 2020 to 7.5%. Indicating their request was never granted, in 2022, domestic pesticide producers were continuing to seek exemption for glyphosate imports from China.

In 2024, 99% of glyphosate was sourced from China, with minimal domestic production—a market situation no doubt related to liability concerns and increasing operational costs.

In a price outlook report for 2025, the Farmer’s Business Network (FBN) predicted that “Tariffs will increase prices across a broad range of ag chem. This is especially applicable to key herbicides, including glyphosate . . . because of the United States’ reliance on imported active ingredients (AIs).”

A market analysis by 360iResearch for February 2026 reported that, starting one year prior, a 10% tariff was applied to all Chinese imports. That was then increased to 20% “for select agri-inputs”. Given the high volume of glyphosate being sourced from China, the conclusion was that tariffs “pose considerable cost pressures for downstream distributors and end users.”

Market participants were “grappling with early signs of inflationary impact”, and the example was given of California, where “growers report glyphosate prices surging from approximately $17 per gallon to peaks near $80 in certain markets, driven by constrained availability of generic formulations and elevated landed costs.”

Bayer, the report noted, produces about 40% of the global supply of glyphosate from within the US. In other words, while Trump touted threats to the supply from hostile foreign adversaries, the US also exports glyphosate; and Bayer assured that Trump’s Executive Order would not threaten other countries’ supply of glyphosate. In other words, the US would not be hoarding its domestic production.

The situation, therefore, is not that the US is faced with an insufficient supply of glyphosate because hostile foreign states are threatening America’s food supply.

Instead, the situation is that the US is dependent on a single large producer that has been threatening to cease its domestic production unless the government shields it from liability; and prices for imported alternatives have been rising because of Trump’s tariffs.

There is simply no evidence to support the pretext that Trump’s glyphosate EO is necessary for “national security”. And while it may be partly intended to protect farmers from cost increases, the most obvious beneficiary is Bayer.

It’s not that Trump is “protecting” American farmers and consumers from China but that he’s protecting Bayer from injury lawsuits and consoling farmers for the economic harm caused by his own tariffs.

The Market—Not Trump—Will Save Us

Those within the MAHA movement who are defending Trump’s Executive Order claim it aligns with the goal of transitioning agriculture away from dependency on toxic chemicals.

In truth, the EO is an impediment to that goal.

No less erroneous is the premise that we need the government to achieve that goal for us. The best solution would be for the government to just get out of the way. The market would accomplish the goal if left unfettered by political interferences like taxpayer subsidies, liability shields, and trade barriers.

The movement away from glyphosate dependency will not be caused by government; it is already being driven by liability concerns and consumer demand for a non-toxic food supply.

As 360iResearch reports, “consumer demand for transparent, environmentally responsible food production is driving a parallel surge in biological pesticide adoption.”

It is this market demand that is in turn driving government regulators in major markets to give more consideration to safer alternatives, thus “creating openings for microbial and plant-derived solutions that complement or replace conventional chemistries.”

This market trend “reflects broader environmental stewardship goals and positions biologicals as a central pillar of future crop protection strategies.”

In its recent report on glyphosate, 360iResearch further states, “The glyphosate market is defined by its entrenched role in enabling high-yield agriculture, juxtaposed with intensifying legal, health, and environmental scrutiny.”

As the report observes,

Concurrently, technological innovation and sustainability imperatives are driving transformative shifts in weed control strategies. Precision agriculture advancements, such as AI-guided spot sprayers, remote sensing, and variable rate application systems, are enabling farmers to dramatically reduce herbicide volumes while maintaining efficacy—an approach gaining traction across North America and the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, leading agrochemical companies are expanding biological herbicide portfolios, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to integrate microbial and plant-based solutions aimed at lowering environmental persistence and aligning with regenerative farming models. Together, these regulatory and technological forces are redefining the contours of the glyphosate landscape.

To meet market demand and sustain profitability, “companies must accelerate investment in biologically derived and reduced-persistence herbicide alternatives to align with evolving sustainability mandates and consumer expectations.”

Trump’s Executive Order is a step in the wrong direction. It doesn’t advance but hinders the goal of a safe and affordable food supply.

We don’t need Trump to intervene for “national security” or any other reason. We just need him to get out of the way.

As Ronald Reagan famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Explaining the MAHA™ Betrayal

This brings us to the question of why Secretary Kennedy and other thought leaders in the MAHA movement, who’ve long fought so hard to eliminate the poisons from our food supply, have also been so willing to defend Trump’s Executive Order.

Why do they characterize it as being aimed at a transition away from toxic pesticides to regenerative and organic agriculture despite it being explicitly aimed at ensuring continued use of glyphosate and despite Trump literally describing glyphosate-contaminated foods as “healthy”?

Why do they defend the liability shield for companies who might act to ramp up domestic production of glyphosate in compliance with federal directives as though the fact that it isn’t “blanket” immunity against all tort claims makes this okay?

Most importantly, why do they so uncritically accept the pretext of “national security” while turning a blind eye to the fact that the increasing costs of glyphosate are a direct consequence of Trump’s own economic policies?

The simple answer is politics.

Those who aligned themselves with and placed their faith in Trump have a psychological need to justify the choice they made to help empower him with the presidency.

In the perception of many Trump supporters, he can do no wrong, and every step he takes in apparent alignment with the Deep State’s agenda is really some elaborate ruse in a strategic game of “5D chess” intended to ultimately free society’s neck from the establishment’s boot. Within that group, reminiscent of the “Q anon” cult during his first term in office, loyalty to Trump supersedes loyalty to any other cause or principle.

There are those who’ve come around to the view that they made a mistake by voting for Trump, whether because of his complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, his illegal war of aggression against Iran, or any number of other appropriate reasons. But then there are those who either try to justify Trump’s criminality or who disregard it as a price worth paying to advance the health freedom agenda with Kennedy as HHS Secretary.

More broadly, the view is that, to change the system from within, pragmatism requires certain compromises to be made. Kennedy had to make compromises to get into that position, and MAHA voters are by and large also willing to compromise.

Sometimes, comprises are required. I’m not arguing otherwise. But the risk is that what’s being compromised are the very principles and values that define the health freedom movement.

People within the health freedom movement who voted for Trump were placing their faith in him to help achieve the goals. The consequence is that the movement has been effectively removed from the realm of political independence, and its fate is now tied to the machinations of the Republican Party in general and the Trump administration in particular.

To put it bluntly, “MAHA” represents a political hijacking of the grassroots health freedom movement. The advancement of the movement’s goals is now necessarily accompanied with advancement of Trump and his party’s other political and financial agendas. When this results in a mismatch in agendas, compromise becomes unavoidable.

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., splintered out his political “MAHA” campaign from the broader grassroots health freedom movement, there was a simple requirement for entry. All one had to do to “Join the MAHA Movement”, Kennedy’s new campaign website declared, was to vote for Trump. For a time, a banner at the top of the site declared “A VOTE FOR TRUMP IS A VOTE FOR KENNEDY”.

That left out in the cold anyone in the health freedom movement who could not in good conscience vote for Trump—including because it was obvious that if elected president, Trump would continue the Biden administration’s policy of supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The moral compromise of anyone who could foresee this yet who still voted for Trump was effectively that dead Palestinian children were a price worth paying to get Kennedy into HHS.

Almost overnight, once the alliance with Kennedy was formed, the new “MAHA” subsect of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement became euphemistically used as though synonymous with the grassroots health freedom movement. The political hijacking was virtually instantaneous as the movement’s strength of political independence was surrendered.

Kennedy’s alignment of the movement with the Republican Party and Donald Trump posed an awkward political conundrum. Before ending his campaign to join forces with Trump, Kennedy had promised his supporters that “under no circumstances” would he do so. Kennedy had appropriately observed how, during Trump’s first term as president, he had “promised to drain the swamp and then filled his administration with swamp creatures.”

And Trump clearly aimed to continue doing so during his second term, as noted by the Substack publication The Kennedy Beacon, launched to support Kennedy’s campaign. The Chief of Staff for the proud executor of “Operation Warp Speed”, the Beacon reported, was Susie Wiles, who used to work for Mercury Public Affairs, a PR consulting firm whose clients have included pharmaceutical companies.

But after Kennedy joined forces with Trump, that now-inconvenient criticism of Kennedy’s soon-to-be boss was scrubbedfrom the Beacon. The goal was no longer to properly inform the public about the corruption in Washington and how Trump was filling his administration with swamp creatures. That former goal now conflicted with the new aim of getting Trump elected.

Another individual who used to work for Mercury Public Affairs is Calley Means, who has been credited with orchestrating the alliance between Kennedy and Trump. Calley’s sister is Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general.

As it just so happens, another of Mercury Public Affairs’ clients is Bayer. Moreover, both Wiles and Trump’s Attorney General at the DOJ, Pam Bondi, have worked as lobbyists for the firm Ballard Partners, which has similarly represented Bayer.

An investigation by the organization US Right to Know found sixteen key administration officials with ties to Bayer, pointing out that in the past year, the Trump administration “has delivered a string of victories to Bayer”.

Reporting this on X, attorney Ton Renz remarked, “I understand Bobby’s hands are tied but no more excuses. We fought for MAGA and MAHA, and I’m tired of people selling out, it’s time we start demanding delivery on the promises made.”

The Kennedy Beacon, which scrubbed its report on Wiles once the mission had changed, is now The MAHA™ Report, a Substack publication of MAHA™ Action, which was co-founded by Del Bigtree and is headed by Tony Lyons, the founder of Skyhorse Publishing.

(Skyhorse published my book The War on Informed Consent, which features a Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

Until very recently, the MAHA™ Action website described it as a “non-partisan” non-profit organization, but just since I started writing this article, the site has changed from a .com to a .org domain, and that description has been dropped from its homepage. The organization is also now mobilizing support for candidates endorsed by Trump in the November midterm elections.

A FAQ page on the new MAHA™ Action site says the organization is “committed to supporting president Donald Trump’s MAHA Agenda and supporting the efforts of the current administration.” (Emphasis added.)

So, what happens when the commitment to supporting Trump conflicts with the aims of the grassroots health freedom movement? We have already witnessed the answer.

In addition to MAHA™ Action, Tony Lyons also heads the MAHA Institute, a Washington-based think tank, and MAHA PAC, a political action committee.

The PAC started out supporting Kennedy’s campaign as PAC American Values. After the Kennedy-Trump alliance, it was repurposed to support Trump using the “MAHA” slogan for the new subsect of MAGA. According to Fast Company, it wasn’t that the PAC adopted the slogan for its name but that the slogan came from the new name for the PAC.

The MAHA PAC’s stated objective was “to harness the powerful, undirected energy of RFK Jr.’s movement and channel it into decisive action for the 2024 election by backing Donald Trump.”

Although not disclosed on the new site, the footer of the prior MAHA™ Action website notes that “Make America Healthy Again^® and MAHA™ are trademarks owned by MAHA TM LLC”.

As I reported in July 2025,

Kennedy applied for a trademark for “MAHA” that was then transferred to Del Bigtree, host of The Highwire, founder of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), and former communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

. . . As listed on the application, among the goods and services someone aims to profit from using the MAHA trademark are mobile apps for monitoring medical conditions, online marketplace services for HSAs, and—most alarmingly—vaccines.

Notably, Calley Means owns a company called TrueMed, which provides physicians’ letters of “medical necessity” to enable people to use funds from health savings accounts (HSAs) to purchase goods like exercise equipment, saunas, red light therapy devices, and mattresses.

Casey Means helped found a company called Levels, which sells a subscription-based app that connects to wearable glucose monitors.

When I reported about it last year, the trademark application was owned by MAHA Worldwide LLC, which was managed by the former communications director and Highwire host, Del Bigtree. The trademark is now owned by MAHA TM LLC.

It’s unclear to me whether this represents an internal restructuring or change of ownership, but, as mentioned, Del Bigtree was also a founder of MAHA™ Action, and MedPage Today has reported that the trademark assignment was transferred to MAHA TM LLC in June 2025.

The trademark application does not represent a mere campaign slogan. It indicates an intention to build a broad commercial ecosystem under the MAHA label that includes:

• Health products and pharmaceuticals
• Healthcare services
• Health technology and biometric data
• Healthcare finance and insurance
• Banking services and cryptocurrency issuance

Among the classes of goods and services included on the application is International Class 005, which covers supplements as well as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and herbicides.

This does not mean that there’s an intention to sell herbicides under the MAHA brand, but it does illustrate how broadly the trademark is written to reserve rights within the commercial ecosystem.

There’s not a problem with people wanting to profit from goods and services intended to help people. The problem arises when crony capitalists wishing to avoid free market competition seek to use the force of government to advance their financial agenda—and that is what MAHA™ is.

MAHA™ was a political and financial hijacking of the grassroots health freedom movement, and its aims are not synonymous with those of the movement.

For us to achieve the aims of the broader grassroots movement requires a refusal to compromise our fundamental values and principles.

By contrast, for MAHA™ to achieve its aims requires political compromises in which loyalty to Trump necessarily supersedes commitment to the movement’s values.

Political compromises can often require moral compromises. The MAHA™ leadership’s willingness to support and defend Trump’s counterproductive Executive Order on glyphosate usefully illustrates the slipperiness of that dangerous slope.

I don’t believe those within MAHA who’ve chosen to defend Trump’s EO are intentionally misleading people. More likely, they believe that it’s an unfortunate necessity arising from farmers’ dependency on Roundup, that it’s aimed at allowing time for building an off-ramp, and that ensuring the glyphosate supply is presently a matter of “national security”.

But anyone who chooses to believe that pretext is deluding themselves. Trump’s EO has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with protecting Bayer and obfuscating the harm to farmers caused by Trump’s own economic policies.

It is transparently not about speeding the transition to regenerative and organic agriculture but delaying it.

It is a fundamental error for members of the grassroots health freedom movement to trust the government to achieve our goals. The necessary changes will never occur from the top down, only from the bottom up.

All that has ever really been needed for us to achieve the goal of a healthy population is for the government to get the hell out of our way.