(Beyond Pesticides, March 31, 2026) A statement decrying chemical company secrecy was released today by over 200 grassroots, health, farm, farmworker, environmental, and consumer groups, socially responsible corporations, over 340 citizens from 46 states, and international partners. The statement, released before the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow reaches the final deadline for submission of amicus briefs in a case in which Bayer/Monsanto argues, with support of the Trump administration, that it should not be required to disclose on its product labels the potential hazards of its pesticide products. Oral arguments in the case will be heard on April 27, with a decision anticipated in June. Decades of law have upheld the legal argument that chemical companies are liable for their failure to warn users of their pesticides about the harm that they could cause. Bayer/Monsanto is attempting to reverse years of case law and billions of dollars in jury verdicts and future cases in which the company has been held liable for causing cancer but not warning product users. See statement, Stop Chemical Company Secrecy of Pesticide Product Hazards. Chemical Industry State Campaign The chemical industry last year launched a multi-pronged campaign to establish immunity from litigation by those who have […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 30, 2026) Through today, organizations, institutions, and corporations can sign on to a public statement calling for chemical companies to continue to be held liable for harming but not warning people who use their pesticide products. The statement, joined by grassroots, health, farm, farmworker, environmental and consumer groups, and socially responsible corporations, will be released tomorrow—just as U.S. Supreme Court begins on April 1 considering Monsanto/Bayer’s claim that the company is not responsible for failing to warn those whose cancer was found by a jury trial to be caused by its weed killer glyphosate (RoundupTM). Groups can sign on to the statement by 5:00pm (Eastern) by clicking here. In the case before the U.S. Supreme Court case, Monsanto v. Durnell, Monsanto/Bayer is seeking to overturn over $10 billion in jury verdicts and settlements and stop future litigation on their failure to warn about the potential cancer effects of glyphosate/RoundupTM. If Monsanto/Bayer wins, chemical companies will be able to legally withhold information on their pesticide product hazards not required to be disclosed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Bayer/Monsanto wants to overturn decades of legal precedent, including a previous Supreme Court decision, which establishes EPA-required, minimum pesticide product label language, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 13, 2026) In a press release on March 10, 2026, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) cites independent test data on the herbicide indaziflam with detections of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the “forever chemicals” known for significant toxicity at low level exposure and high persistence. The product, Rejuvra™, is produced by Envu (a former division of Bayer) and “is being sprayed and considered for use across millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service land.” Scientific literature connects indaziflam and PFAS with adverse effects to human, soil, and biodiversity health, raising serious concerns about their wide use in agriculture and general land management of lawns, parks, playing fields, ornamentals, fence lines, rights-of-way, rangeland, open space, and Christmas trees. Background As a pre-emergent weed killer used to kill annual grasses and unwanted broadleaf plants, the fluoroalkyltriazine herbicide is broadly labeled for use in residential areas, commercial ornamental and sod production, forestry, and mostly orchard crops. While indaziflam is considered a “selective” herbicide, it actually kills and prevents germination of a wide range of broad-leaved plants and grasses and comes close to being a soil sterilant.  Since the chemical is subject to drift […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 11, 2026) The Monsanto Company, founded in 1901 and acquired by the multinational corporation Bayer AG in 2018, submitted its opening brief to the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) last month, seeking liability immunity from lawsuits filed by product users who have been harmed but not warned about potential product hazards. The question before SCOTUS is: “Whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, 7 U.S.C. 136 et seq., preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim concerning a pesticide registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where EPA has determined that a particular warning is not required and the warning cannot be added to a product label without EPA approval.” If successful, the Court would be overturning (reversing) its 2005 decision in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences, 544 U.S. 431, which upheld EPA and state registration of pesticides as a floor of protection, without releasing manufacturers of the responsibility to warn for potential harm that is not required by EPA. Pesticide manufacturers propose the text for their product labels and EPA ensures compliance with its minimum requirements, which does not preclude them from disclosing potential adverse effects they know of or should have known. The Missouri case before the Supreme Court, Durnell v. Monsanto, on the cancer causing effects of the weed killer glyphosate (RoundupTM) resulted in a jury verdict (in 2023) of $1.25 million and the total number of jury verdicts and settlements may amount to over $10 billion in liability if […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 6, 2026) The Farm Bill—the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, H.R. 7567—reported out of the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday strips environmental and public health protections from pesticides, reversing over 90 years of environmental laws adopted by Congress to protect farmers, consumers, and the environment that stretch back to the first Farm Bill in 1933. The Committee rejected the Protect Our Health Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), which would have ensured that the final bill maintain three core safeguards in current law: (i) Judicial review of chemical manufacturers‘ failure to warn about pesticide hazards; (ii) Democratic right of local governments in coordination with states to protect residents from pesticide use; and, (iii) Local site-specific action to ensure protection—the safety of air, water, and land from pesticides under numerous environmental statutes. All Republicans and one Democrat (Rep. Adam Gray, D-CA) on the Committee blocked the Pingree amendment. The Agriculture Committee bill adversely affects a wide range of social and conservation issues, including the protection of family farms, food security, environmental and public health, local and state authority, and judicial review, according to a cross-section of groups representing these interests. […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 5, 2026) In a deep analysis of public records, U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), a nonprofit newsroom and public health research group, discloses significant financial ties between Bayer-Monsanto, lobbying firms, and the second Trump Administration, raising concerns about basic safeguards to curb corporate influence over federal policymakers. The USRTK tracker and report, “Tracing Bayer’s ties to power in Trump’s Washington,” (see more) finds that there have been significant lobbying investments by the multinational pesticide corporation just in the past year, including:  “At least $9.19 million on federal lobbying in [2025]”;   “16 key administration officials with ties to Bayer’s lobbying or legal network. Bayer and its lobbyists have access to people in power at the White House, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and even those in high level positions closest to Trump”;  “45 people registered to lobby for Bayer under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, and at least 13 outside lobby firms – seven of which are now among the highest-paid firms in D.C”; and,  “More than 30 senior officials at lobby firms retained by Bayer have direct ties to Trump, having worked in one or both of his administrations or political campaigns.”  The report points out that the four main trade and […]

(Beyond Pesticides, March 2, 2026) In advance of deliberations on the Farm Bill tomorrow, March 3, in the Agriculture Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, opposition to the GOP-proposed legislation has been widely expressed by farm, environmental, consumer, and social justice organizations. The bill, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, H.R. 7567, is a dramatic departure from previous Farm Bills going back to the first one in 1933, which began a process of integrated policy to address family farmers’ sustainability, land conservation, energy, climate, and food security. Discarding the traditional bipartisan process used to draft the Farm Bill, the Republican leadership has instead proposed a measure that has garnered across-the-board disapproval, except from those representing the vested interests of chemical companies and agribusiness. In order to uphold fundamental protections from pesticides for farmers, consumers, and the environment, a campaign has emerged to urge U.S. Representatives to support Rep. Pingree’s Protect Our Health Amendment (removes Sections 10205-10207), move to strike Sections 10201-10204 and 102011, and support the No Immunity for Glyphosate Act provisions. Without a comprehensive overhaul, this campaign is urging a vote against the Farm Bill. Central to the GOP Farm Bill, released by the chair of the U.S. House Agriculture […]

(Beyond Pesticides, February 11, 2026) The first U.S. jury trial on the weed killer paraquat against global chemical companies Syngenta Crop Protection, Chevron U.S.A., FMC Corporation, and their predecessors was scuttled last month due to a settlement on the eve of the case being heard in court. Settlements are commonly used by pesticide manufacturers seeking to avoid public disclosure of internal documents on chemical hazards and wrongdoing that could result from a public trial. In Mertens et al. v. Syngenta, Chevron, and FMC, the six plaintiffs suing three corporations allege that exposure to paraquat-based herbicide products contributed to their Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis. While the terms of the settlement have not yet been disclosed, Lawsuit Information Center states that the paraquat class action multidistrict litigation (MDL) includes 8,257 cases as of January 16, 2026. In 2021, multiple cases were settled for more than $187 million. Background on Mertens Complaint In their complaint, the plaintiffs point to five causes of action, including “strict products liability design defect” (Count 1), “strict products liability failure to warn” (Count 2), negligence (Count 3), breach of implied warranty of merchantability (Count 4), and punitive damages (Count 5). Count 1—Strict Products Liability Design Defect: In the first […]

(Beyond Pesticides, February 6, 2026) The United States, under Donald Trump’s direction, has withdrawn from 66 international organizations, the most important for health being the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. International organizations committed to the application of the best available science and policy development via consultation and consensus serve as a vital check against rampant personal and industry nest-feathering at the expense of global health. The Trump administration has removed this check while expanding his and his associates’ self-dealing and dismissing the critical interactions of crises such as climate change and synthetic chemicals. Although Trump announced this move on inauguration day last year, the completion of the process last week puts the stamp of finality on his total abandonment of public health. This in turn threatens the collapse of WHO—and even the U.N.—altogether, which has wide implications for agriculture, particularly pesticide policies, climate action (and inaction), and infectious disease monitoring, including vaccines and pandemic prevention. [See commentary: On Public and Environmental Health and Worldwide Collaboration.] Other U.N. environmental, health, and agricultural organizations on the list are groups focused on forest degradation, freshwater and oceans, mining, minerals, metals, and sustainable development, biodiversity, and ecosystem […]

[Update on February 9, 2026: In a press release on Friday, February 6, titled “EPA Implements Strongest Protections in Agency History for Over-the-Top Dicamba Use on Cotton and Soybeans for Next Two Growing Seasons,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to ignore the wide body of science that documents harms from dicamba, as well as the viability of alternative methods, in establishing what the agency is boasting are “the strongest protections in agency history for over-the-top (OTT) dicamba application on dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean crops” as a direct response to the “strong advocacy of America’s cotton and soybean farmers.” These so-called “strong protections” are described as a way to ensure farmers can access the tools they “need” while also protecting the environment from dicamba’s harmful drift. In using “gold-standard science and radical transparency,” EPA created new label restrictions for the next two growing seasons that include “cutting the amount of dicamba that can be used annually in half, doubling required safety agents, requiring conservation practices to protect endangered species, and restricting applications during high temperatures when exposure and volatility risks increase.” Relying on unenforceable label restrictions and mitigation measures, however, fails to adequately protect health and the environment. See […]

(Beyond Pesticides, January 20, 2026) With Monday’s celebration and affirmation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy, the question of adequate protection of the people and communities at greatest risk from toxic chemical production, transportation, use, and disposal looms large. This is especially true with the current diminished federal regulatory authority and Bayer/Monsanto’s U.S. Supreme Court challenge of chemical manufacturers’ responsibility to warn users of their products of hazards like cancer. Actions Being Taken In response to the chemical industry campaign to deny people the right to sue under longstanding failure to warn law, groups are calling for public support of U.S Senator Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) bill, Pesticide Injury Accountability Act(S. 2324) seeks to uphold this right  to sue. The groups are calling on the public to “Tell your U.S. Senator to co-sponsor S. 2324, the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act.” This bill will amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (FIFRA) to create a federal right of action for anyone who is harmed by a toxic pesticide.  In an additional action in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Pesticides is calling on the public to “Tell members of Congress to ensure that with the termination of environmental justice programs at EPA, they […]

(Beyond Pesticides, January 17, 2026) The public’s right to sue chemical manufacturers that do not warn of product hazards will be up for review by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, the justices decided Friday. Bayer/Monsanto is challenging billions of dollars in jury verdicts, which affirm longstanding jurisprudence that holds manufacturers responsible for disclosing hazards even when not required to do so by regulatory authorities. In the case being challenged, Durnell, John L. v. Monsanto, the injured party successfully argued that a chemical manufacturer has a duty to warn of potential hazards on their product label even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not require the warning. The failure-to-warn in the Durnell case resulted in a jury verdict of $1.25 million, and the total number of jury verdicts and settlements on similar cases may amount to over $10 billion in liability if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts and hundreds of thousands of other plaintiffs with the same claim. The cases involve exposure to the weed killer glyphosate (RoundupTM, which is the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. and worldwide, has been classified as posing a possible risk of cancer by the International Agency for […]

(Beyond Pesticides, December 12, 2025) A study concluding that the weed killer glyphosate did not cause cancer was retracted last week after it was revealed in lawsuit documents that the authors did not disclose their relationship with Monsanto/Bayer. The editor-and-chief, Martin van den Berg, PhD of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which published the article 25 years ago, wrote in the journal, “Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors.”  The study, titled “Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans” and coauthored by three researchers in New York, The Netherlands, and Canada, was referred to as a “Landmark glyphosate safety study” in a recent article by U.S. Right to Know.   While this retraction not only sheds light on Monsanto’s influence through ghostwriting, it adds to the wide body of evidence regarding the regulatory deficiencies currently in place. The revelation is a reminder of related incidents in which Monsanto (Bayer) and other companies have wielded excessive influence at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), undermining the integrity of the science needed to inform the regulatory decisions that safeguard health and the environment. (See Daily News Corruption Problems Persist at EPA.)  EPA Deficiencies  In addition to the initial registration process, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) requires that EPA conduct a registration review of all pesticide […]

(Beyond Pesticides, December 11, 2025) In an amicus brief published on December 1, 2025, the Office of the Solicitor General (SG) and the White House are calling on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to grant certiorari on Bayer’s petition to shield chemical companies that fail to warn people about the potential hazards of their pesticide products. The U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer (former Solicitor General of Missouri, home to Bayer-Monsanto’s U.S. headquarters), in siding with the Germany-based, multinational pesticide corporation, calls for SCOTUS to take on the case, which could lead to a prohibition on state-level failure-to-warn claims based on the arguments laid out in the amicus brief. This move sets the stage for SCOTUS to undermine the main legal argument used to hold pesticide corporations accountable for their harmful products, sending Bayer’s stock price to skyrocket 12 percentage points between December 2 and December 3 after the decision was made public. As of May 2025, Bayer has already paid at least 10 billion dollars in jury verdicts and settlements to cancer victims who have attributed their diagnoses to the use of Bayer/Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer products, according to Lawsuit Information Center. Two previous petitions […]

(Beyond Pesticides, December 10, 2025) On November 21, 2025, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), designated the endocrine-disrupting herbicide atrazine (as well as the herbicide alachlor) as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Manufactured by the multinational, China-based pesticide corporation Syngenta, atrazine has been linked to various adverse health effects and runoff into waterways across the continental United States for years. Tyrone Hayes, PhD, researcher and professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the endocrine-disrupting properties of atrazine and other chemicals, has said that atrazine induces cancer by turning on the enzyme aromatase. Dr. Hayes told conferees of Beyond Pesticides’ 31st National Pesticide Forum that: “[W]hat is concerning about aromatase expression and estrogen in mammals is breast cancer and prostate cancer. With regard to prostate cancer, there is an 8.4-fold increase in prostate cancer in men who work in atrazine factories and bag atrazine. There is at least one correlational study, which I didn’t publish, that shows women whose well water is contaminated with atrazine are more likely to develop breast cancer than women who live in the same community, but don’t drink the well water. (Kettles, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, November 6, 2025) The report, Designed to Kill: Who Profits from Paraquat, and accompanying interactive storymap, unpacks the supply chain of the infamous herbicide paraquat and underscores the true costs of pesticide products, from manufacturing to use in the fields. This report is part of a larger initiative, the Pesticide Mapping Project—“a collaborative research series that illustrates the health and climate harms of pesticides across their toxic lifecycle: including fossil fuel extraction, manufacturing, international trade, and application on vast areas of U.S. land.” Top Highlights This report highlights, among other notable points, “that every stage of the paraquat supply chain—which spans the globe—emits greenhouse gases and toxic air pollutants.” With SinoChem as the lead producer and player in the paraquat market, the Chinese government-owned pesticide company’s supply chain “includes fossil fuel extraction in Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabia, chemical manufacturing in India, Germany, and the United Kingdom, international chemical shipping, and final formulation and distribution in the United States.” Paraquat is not currently manufactured in the U.S., accounting for imports of “between 40 and 156 million pounds of paraquat each year, according to the last eight years of pesticide import records available from the private database.” Despite the […]

(Beyond Pesticides, September 10, 2025) After being criticized by the chemical industry and allied agribusiness and service industry groups on the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report in May, the strategy document, released yesterday, has tamped down efforts to reform government programs that regulate pesticides. There are no specific recommendations on improving the regulation of pesticides. Rather, the strategy appears to embrace business-as-usual and could even ramp up government efforts to tout the need for pesticides and claims that current regulatory reviews are effective and comprehensive. In a section of the strategy entitled “Increasing Public Awareness and Knowledge,” the document says: “EPA, partnering with food and agricultural stakeholders, will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s pesticide robust review procedures and how that relates to the limiting of risk for users and the general public and informs continual improvement.” This is at odds with the earlier MAHA assessment report which identified pesticides as substances of concern that, citing deficiencies in chemical reviews, “may be neglecting potential synergistic effects and cumulative burdens, thereby missing opportunities to translate cumulative risk assessment into the clinical environment in meaningful ways.” While the earlier report, Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment, […]

(Beyond Pesticides, September 9, 2025) SprayDays California, the pesticide notification and mapping tool run by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), was updated in late August after public backlash (including from farmworkers), which identified inadequate notice of pesticide use to those who work in or live in proximity to agricultural fields. According to a DPR press release from August 28, these changes include attempts to bring down barriers for users so that, in the words of DPR Director Karen Morrison, the department can “provide Californians with access to information and services.” While public health advocates view notification as a step that may allow people to leave a treatment area or take shelter to reduce exposure, groups continue to express concerns about a focus on notification to the exclusion of addressing the root causes of exposure—chemical-intensive agriculture, despite the viability of organic compatible practices and products. The groups criticize the continuous registration of pesticide active ingredients and product formulations without considering widely available practices and nonchemical and nature-based alternatives to pest management. These include regenerative organic principles and practices that draw inspiration from Indigenous land management and agroecological systems that have thrived in coexistence with nature. Recent Updates There are […]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 18, 2025)  With pesticide manufacturers pushing to stop cancer victims (and others suffering adverse effects) from suing them under longstanding ”failure to warn law,“ U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) is proposing to uphold this unequivocal right to protection. Senator Booker has introduced the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act (S. 2324) to protect the rights of farmers and consumers to hold pesticide manufacturers responsible for the harm caused by their toxic products. This effort comes in the wake of congressional and state legislative attacks on “failure-to-warn” liability claims that are taking place in response to extraordinary jury verdicts against Bayer/Monsanto for harm caused by glyphosate weed killer products like Roundup.ᵀᴹ 📣 Beyond Pesticides, with allied organizations across the U.S., is asking the public to “Tell your U.S. Senator to co-sponsor S. 2324, the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act.” This bill will amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (FIFRA) to create a federal right of action for anyone who is harmed by a toxic pesticide.  Despite growing peer-reviewed scientific evidence linking widely used pesticides to a host of health harms, including cancers, birth defects, endocrine disruption, Parkinson’s disease, and infertility, the chemical industry and its allies in elective office are pushing to deny victims access to […]

(Beyond Pesticides, August 4, 2025) Comments on EPA proposal to bring back controversial use of herbicide dicamba due by Saturday, September 6, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET. With more than 90 percent of soybeans (also corn and the most common species of cotton) planted in varieties genetically engineered to be herbicide-tolerant, the agrichemical industry and industrial agribusiness are lining up to bring back agricultural spraying of the controversial weed killer dicamba—linked to crop damage associated with the chemical’s drifting off the target farms. The courts in 2020 and 2024 vacated EPA’s registration authorizing “over-the-top” (OTT) spraying of dicamba, leading to these uses being stopped in the 2025 growing season. (See Daily News.)              Genetically engineered crops, widely adopted in 1996 with Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant (Roundup Ready) soybean seeds and plants, have been plagued by weed resistance to the weed killers, movement of genetic material, chemical drift, and health and environmental hazards associated with pesticide exposure. Despite the problems and escalating herbicide use in chemical-dependent no-till (no tillage) agriculture, regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have facilitated the astronomical growth of a genetically engineered food system. The industry makes the environmental argument that less […]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 23, 2025) The pesticide manufacturer Syngenta has settled several lawsuits in federal courts in Pennsylvania and Illinois in recent months and is seeking a global settlement with over 6,000 litigants in order to avoid nationwide trials linking their weed killer paraquat to Parkinson’s Disease, according to reporting by The New Lede and The Guardian, respectively. Internal Syngenta documents released by these news outlets in a report dubbed The Paraquat Papers indicate that the company was aware of scientific evidence linking paraquat to Parkinson’s and attempted to quash research efforts to disclose the evidence.   These lawsuits were filed on behalf of former farmers and agricultural workers who went on to be diagnosed with neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s Disease, after using paraquat-based herbicide products for long periods of time. This litigation comes at a time when pesticide manufacturers across the board are facing increased scrutiny and subsequent financial repercussions. Simultaneously, their allies in Congress are revamping their efforts to shield chemical manufacturers from “failure to warn” lawsuits and establish federal preemption of local state governments’ ability to regulate pesticides more stringently than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Many of the paraquat lawsuits in federal courts, known as multidistrict […]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 21, 2025) Beyond Pesticides is asking every member of the U.S. Representatives to voice their opposition in advance of a vote as early as Tuesday, July 22 on a provision before the House Appropriations Committee—in the Interior-Environment Appropriations Bill—that shields pesticide companies from lawsuits by those harmed from pesticide product use and limits states’ authority to regulate pesticides. This is a fight to protect farmers’ and consumers’ right to sue pesticide manufacturers for misbranding products and their failure to warn product users. The language before the Committee is in Section 453 of the bill passed last week by the subcommittee on a straight party-line vote, with Republicans supporting the bill language. Beyond Pesticides is also asking Congress members to remove section 507, which prohibits EPA action on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), including fluorinated pesticides.  Update from July 21, 2025, at 4 PM: ⏰ Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1) moved forward with amendments to strike sections 453 and 507 of the FY26 Interior-Environment Appropriations Bill, which is a provision that provides immunity for pesticide manufacturers from farmer and consumer lawsuits seeking compensation from product harm. Update from July 23, 2025, at 10 AM: The FY26 Interior-Environment Appropriations Bill passed out of […]

(Beyond Pesticides, July 7, 2025) At the end of the Independence Day weekend and after the Congressional passage of reconciliation bill (H.R. 1) on July 3, ongoing legislative proposals challenge the underlying principles of the  Declaration of Independence—raising serious environmental and public health concerns and issues of democratic governance by local and state governments to ensure protections. A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that three-quarters of Americans say democracy is under serious threat. The Declaration not only presented the case of the colonists for independence from Britain, it also created a framework for defining democracy, beginning with the statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and it continues “necessary for the public good.” Above all, the Declaration’s statement of the equal rights of all citizens supports the need for environmental justice.  Among the grievances listed are the King’s restriction of the power of local (colonial) authorities to pass laws, “the most wholesome and necessary for the […]