Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday that the Trump administration’s alliance with the Make America Healthy Again movement remains unchanged a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to boost production of glyphosate, a widely used pesticide that activists want to limit.
“I don’t think there is any change in the alliance at all,” said Rollins in an interview with POLITICO. “That was a national security question and which remains a priority for us.”
The executive order surprised and angered MAHA activists who have called on the administration to limit and ban some pesticides and herbicides. And it came weeks after the White House had publicly said that it planned to rely on allies in the grassroots movement to help them keep their congressional majorities in November.
Some MAHA groups upset by the executive order had already said they planned to mount primary challenges against lawmakers who support farm bill provisions that would make it more difficult to sue pesticide manufacturers like Bayer, which makes the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup. The company recently proposed a $7.25 billion settlement to end thousands of lawsuits alleging that its product is linked to cancer.
