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By Stacy Malkan
The pesticide industry has spent decades building a highly effective influence operation in Washington, D.C., shaping how pesticides are regulated and how American agriculture operates. Its political influence did not begin with the Trump administration and has extended across both Republican and Democratic administrations.
But over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has delivered a string of victories to the pesticide industry that could reshape pesticide use and public health protections for years to come.
This tracker documents the Trump administration’s favors to the pesticide industry since January 2025.
Personnel is policy: The Trump administration has filled many key posts with pesticide industry allies.
U.S. Right to Know identified 26 administration officials with ties to the pesticide industry’s lobbying or legal network, including 11 political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where former chemical industry lobbyists now occupy the four highest-ranking positions overseeing federal pesticide regulations.
More PFAS pesticide approvals: In July, EPA approved three new pesticide active ingredients that many scientists classify as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bringing the total number of PFAS pesticides approved since November 2025 to five.
PFAS “forever chemicals” are highly persistent and linked to serious health problems including cancer, birth defects, hormone disruption, liver and thyroid disease.
Many scientists and regulators classify PFAS as substances containing at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom, but EPA uses a narrower definition adopted in 2023 that excludes compounds containing only one fluorinated carbon.
Weakened endangered species protections: In July 2026, the Trump administration completed changes to Endangered Species Act regulations — including rescinding the longstanding regulatory definition of “harm” — that could make it easier for the EPA to approve pesticides with fewer safeguards for threatened and endangered species.
Legal triumph for Bayer: In June, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and Bayer in a 7-2 decision likely to block thousands of state-level lawsuits alleging that Bayer failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer.
The ruling gives greater legal weight to EPA’s approval of pesticide labels, making it harder for injured people to argue under state law that a manufacturer should have provided stronger warnings than EPA required.
For decades, state failure-to-warn claims served as an independent check on EPA pesticide approvals, allowing juries to hold manufacturers accountable even when EPA had approved a pesticide label. The court’s ruling narrows the pathway through which injured Americans can sue corporations that cause harm.
Reshaping chemical safety assessments via NAMs: In June, the Trump administration announced it will expand the use of New Approach Methods (NAMs) — such as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered computer models and cell-based tests — to evaluate industrial chemicals.
The agency is also developing NAMs approaches for pesticides and endocrine disruptors.
Many scientists support NAMs as a way to reduce animal testing and improve toxicity screening, but emphasize the new methods should complement, not replace, well-established evidence from animal and human studies.
Critics argue that EPA is moving ahead without sufficiently validated scientific standards for NAMs, raising concerns that pesticide and other chemical risks could be underestimated.
Backtracked on atrazine protections: In May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that atrazine is unlikely to jeopardize threatened or endangered species, reversing an earlier federal finding that atrazine is likely to harm more than 1,000 protected species.
The decision removed a regulatory obstacle for the widely used herbicide that is banned in the European Union and many other countries due to concerns about its impacts on human health and the environment.
Boosted Bayer again at the Supreme Court: In March, the Trump Department of Justice submitted a second brief to the Supreme Court supporting Bayer’s position in Monsanto v. Durnell, arguing that federal pesticide law preempts state failure-to-warn claims that would require warning labels not approved by EPA. The brief was signed by three top DOJ officials who had previously worked for law firms representing Bayer.
Withdrew from international cancer research agency: In March, the National Institutes of Health ended its collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency.
As a result, U.S. government scientists can no longer participate in IARC’s work, and the world’s leading independent cancer research agency may lose funding and research capacity.
IARC has long been a target of the pesticide industry. After IARC classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, internal Monsanto documents revealed plans to “orchestrate outrage” against the agency and undermine its credibility.
Glyphosate elevated as national security priority: In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus — a raw material used in glyphosate production and military weaponry — critical to national defense and directing the federal government to prioritize their domestic production.
Bayer is the sole U.S. producer of both glyphosate and elemental phosphorus.
Dicamba reapproved: In February, EPA restored over-the-top use of dicamba herbicides on dicamba-tolerant GMO soybean and cotton crops after two federal courts vacated previous approvals. The decision revives profitable pesticide industry product lines despite years of litigation over widespread crop damage caused by dicamba drift.
Internal Monsanto documents disclosed in litigation indicate company scientists anticipated drift-related damage before the products reached the market. See our dicamba fact sheet and link to the Dicamba Papers, key documents and analysis of lawsuits involving dicamba.
Relented on paraquat: In January, EPA announced it would “freshly reassess” paraquat, describing the move as “More MAHA Progress!” But the agency did not initiate a new review of paraquat’s links to Parkinson’s disease or impose new restrictions on the herbicide.
Instead, EPA continued a registration review already underway and requested additional data from manufacturers. Paraquat is banned for agricultural use in many countries due to health and environmental concerns.
EPA maintains that existing evidence does not establish a definitive link between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease or cancer.
Backed Bayer’s bid to block state cancer lawsuits: One of the Trump administration’s most powerful actions for the pesticide industry came in December 2025, when the DOJ urged the Supreme Court to hear Monsanto v. Durnell, and argued that federal pesticide law preempts many state-law failure-to-warn claims.
The filing reversed the legal position taken by the Biden administration. Bayer’s stock price jumped at the news.
That same week, a toxicology journal retracted a highly influential glyphosate safety review after concluding Monsanto employees had ghostwritten portions of the paper. Two other influential papers that helped shape the scientific and regulatory debate over glyphosate have since come under investigation for allegations of ghostwriting.
Decimated EPA’s research arm and gutted scientific capacity: In July 2025, the Trump administration began dismantling EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), the agency’s principal scientific research arm.
ORD provides much of the independent scientific analyses and technical expertise EPA relies on to evaluate whether pesticides and industrial chemicals may cause cancer, harm children’s development, disrupt hormones or threaten ecosystems.
Current and former EPA scientists warned the changes will weaken the scientific foundation for chemical and pesticide regulations, making it harder for EPA to conduct rigorous, independent safety assessments and increasing industry influence over regulatory decisions.
Eliminated pesticide-use recordkeeping requirements: In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rescinded regulations that had required farmers to keep basic records documenting when, where and how they applied restricted-use pesticides, including products containing paraquat, atrazine, dicamba, chlorpyrifos and other hazardous pesticides.
The recordkeeping requirements — which helped regulators verify compliance with pesticide laws, investigate health and environmental issues and document enforcement of public health laws — had been in place since the 1990s.
Originally published by U.S. Right to Know.
Stacy Malkan is co-founder and managing editor at U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit newsroom and public health research group.
