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Prominent activists with the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement are raging and saying they feel betrayed after the Supreme Court sided with pesticide maker Monsanto on Thursday and said it did not need to put a warning label about a potential cancer risk associated with its Roundup weedkiller.
The backlash could test the movement’s ties with the Republican Party, especially after the Trump administration backed Monsanto in the case.
Several studies have found a link between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, and cancer, including a major study from last year. Bayer and Monsanto have denied any such connection.
But MAHA followers have long been alarmed by the idea, and many have grown impatient with a White House that has largely resisted their calls for tighter regulation of pesticides.
In April, President Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and high-level administration officials held a private meeting with MAHA activists to hear their complaints and try to smooth over any ill-will.
Later that month, a MAHA-led coalition rallied outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments, saying people should be able to hold companies accountable.
Inside, the justices heard arguments — including some by the Department of Justice — that companies should be protected.
For some MAHA supporters, Thursday’s verdict showed that despite Trump’s alliance with Kennedy, the administration would rather prioritize the interests of pesticide makers.
“A lot of MAHA voters are realizing they’ve been snookered, they’ve been had by Republicans that had no intention of protecting their health. It’s just a talking point that they added,” said David Murphy, founder of United We Eat and finance director of Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
Murphy said the decision could be a tipping point for MAHA voters, who have historically been a loose collection of groups without a set political party.
“Certain MAHA supporters are not going to turn out, and others are going to actively be voting Democrat,” Murphy said.
Before he joined the Trump administration as Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy spent years as an environmental lawyer crusading against glyphosate. In 2018, he won a landmark case against Monsanto, representing a groundskeeper who alleged that Roundup weed killer contributed to his cancer.
Kennedy has repeatedly said he thinks glyphosate causes cancer.
Kennedy more recently had fallen in line with the Trump administration and defended the president’s actions, including an executive order aimed at boosting glyphosate production and the White House’s official backing of Monsanto.
But after coming under fire from MAHA activists, Kennedy eventually changed his tone to express his disagreement with the administration’s moves.
The Monsanto case centered on a Missouri man named John Durnell, who sued the company in 2019, alleging that two decades of Roundup use had caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After a jury sided with Durnell in 2023, the Supreme Court took the case.
On Thursday, the justices ruled 7-2 that Monsanto can’t be sued in state courts over a “failure-to-warn” about cancer because federal regulations don’t require a warning label.
The court said pesticides only are required to list health impacts formally recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which in 2020 found that glyphosate is unlikely to be carcinogenic.
The verdict was quickly slammed by environmental and public health advocates.
“If Make America Healthy Again is going to mean anything, it has to apply consistently, not just when it’s politically convenient, but also when powerful political interests and corporate interests are involved as well,” Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and senior medical correspondent for MS NOW, said during a press briefing.
MAHA influencer Kelly Ryerson, who goes by the moniker of Glyphosate Girl, said that the Trump administration should get “100 percent” of the blame for the decision because the Justice Department backed Monsanto.
“Going forward, I don’t even know at this point what you could do to make up for the fact that the Supreme Court ruling happened,” Ryerson said.
Meanwhile, both Democrats and MAHA-aligned Republicans indicated they would try to find a way around the decision.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he would introduce an amendment to the Senate version of the farm bill that would strip pesticide companies of that liability protection, mirroring an effort that already happened in the House.
“I am going to lead an amendment to strip away this preemptive authority and return it to the people. … we did it in the House, we can do it in the Senate,” Booker said during a Thursday briefing.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who led the House effort to strip pesticide protection language, said she was planning a standalone bill.
“After today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of Monsanto I will officially be introducing legislation stripping pesticide companies of any liability protections for the harm their products cause the American people,” she said in a post on social platform X.
In a lengthy statement Thursday, Bayer reiterated its position that glyphosate “remains the most studied crop protection tool in the world.”
The company said the ruling “restores the regulatory clarity that the agricultural sector, the broader food supply chain, and American consumers deserve.”
The rise of MAHA has left the GOP in a bind between the new constituency and its historic support for big business. Glyphosate is just one of several environmental issues where MAHA and the administration have been at odds, with activists also criticizing its looser regulations on other types of chemicals like PFAS.
Some longtime environmental advocates said they were not surprised by the ruling and haven’t seen any evidence the Trump administration has done anything to differentiate it from any other standard Republican-led government.
MAHA proponents “have no one to blame but themselves for their sense of betrayal,” said Ken Cook, head of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
Trump “said the word pesticides a few times, but to think that that meant a change in the core conservative position on environmentalism? It’s naive,” Cook said.
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