Kennedy defends Trump glyphosate order; MAHA erupts

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Donald Trump‘s executive order spurring the domestic production of the weedkiller glyphosate, as his Make America Healthy Again movement reels from the president’s embrace of the chemical they despise.

Trump on Wednesday night signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate is the chemical in Bayer-Monsanto’s Roundup and is the most commonly used weedkiller for a slew of U.S. crops. Trump, in the order, said shortages of both phosphorus and glyphosate would pose a risk to national security.

Kennedy backed the president in a statement to CNBC Thursday morning.

“Donald Trump’s Executive Order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” he said. “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.”

But Kennedy’s MAHA coalition that supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election hates glyphosate, which has been alleged to cause cancer in myriad lawsuits. Now, the executive order threatens to unravel that coalition ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that could loosen the president’s grip on Washington.

“Just as the large MAHA base begins to consider what to do at midterms, the President issues an EO to expand domestic glyphosate production,” Kelly Ryerson, a prominent MAHA activist known as Glyphosate Girl, said in a post on X. “The very same carcinogenic pesticide that MAHA cares about most.”

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog that has pushed back against chemicals in food for years, said in a statement that he “can’t envision a bigger middle finger to every MAHA mom than this.”

“Elevating glyphosate to a national security priority is the exact opposite of what MAHA voters were promised,” Cook said. “If Secretary Kennedy remains at HHS after this, it will be impossible to argue that his past warnings about glyphosate were anything more than campaign rhetoric designed to win trust — and votes.”

Kennedy, a former environmental attorney, notably once won a nearly $290 million case against Monsanto for a man who claimed his cancer was caused by Roundup. The executive order came down one day after Bayer proposed paying $7.25 billion to settle a series of lawsuits claiming Roundup causes cancer.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., knocked Trump for signing “an EO protecting cancer causing Glyphosate in our…