When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on the campaign trail in 2024, the conspiracy theorist delivered a promise to voters: If he joined Donald Trump’s team, he would “ban the worst agricultural chemicals.”
About a year later, in November 2025, the Republican administration advanced a plan to approve agricultural pesticides containing “forever chemicals” as an active ingredient, despite concerns raised by some scientists and environmental activists. Kennedy, in his capacity as Trump’s health and human services secretary, bit his tongue.
This year, the underlying dynamic has reached a new level. The New York Times reported:
President Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday aimed at spurring the domestic production of glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller that has figured in health lawsuits.
The move immediately set off alarms among supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, and appeared to put Mr. Kennedy in an awkward position.
As the report explains, glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, which has been the target of tens of thousands of lawsuits that claim it causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Kennedy is aware of this: Years before joining Trump’s team, he was an environmental lawyer who, among other things, sued the company that makes Roundup. In fact, Kennedy helped win a $289 million jury verdict against the company.
That was in 2018. In 2026, the man who leads the Department of Health and Human Services endorsed Trump’s latest executive order.
If the circumstances sound familiar, it’s not your imagination. In September, Kennedy, who vowed to “ban the worst agricultural chemicals,” unveiled a long-awaited “Make America Healthy Again” report that largely ignored pesticides.
“To many scientists — and some of Mr. Kennedy’s own followers — the gap between the health secretary’s use of his authority over food quality and his pummeling of vaccines has created a jarring split screen,” the Times reported soon after.
This has been an ongoing issue for months. In June, MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell wrote a memorable Washington Post column along these lines, noting that Kennedy’s MAHA agenda is rooted in part in the idea that Americans’ health would greatly improve through better nutrition and exposure to fewer environmental toxins.
Kennedy, Rampell added, is nevertheless playing a leading role in an administration that’s “expanding use of environmental toxins.”
If Kennedy and Team Trump wanted to admit that the MAHA agenda was largely focused on undermining vaccines, it would be impolitic, but it would also be far closer to the truth.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
