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April 17, 2025<\/b> \u2013 Some Republicans in Congress are worried that members of the Trump administration may consider restricting pesticide use as part of their agenda to improve American health. This week, Senator Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) led a group of 79 lawmakers to ask Cabinet members to resist efforts from \u201cactivist groups promoting misguided and sometimes malicious policies masquerading as health solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The concerns come in the form of a letter sent to<\/a> Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing a recent petition that asked the commission to prioritize \u201celiminating extraordinarily toxic pesticides from food.\u201d Rollins, Zeldin, and Kennedy are part of the Make America Healthy Again Commission<\/a> that Trump created in February.<\/p>\n Submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, the petition recommends<\/a> agencies take several actions that would transform current pesticide policy. For example, it says the EPA should eliminate current allowances for residues of pesticides including atrazine,<\/a> paraquat, and 2,4-D on food and that the USDA should only subsidize crop insurance for farmers who agree not to use a long list of pesticides, including glyphosate<\/a>, atrazine<\/a>, paraquat<\/a>, and the three most common neonicotinoid insecticides<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter that they are concerned that \u201cenvironmental activists\u201d are \u201cadvancing harmful health, economic or food security policies under the guise of human health.\u201d\u00a0 However, Kennedy himself has pointed to several<\/a> of the same chemicals<\/a> in the past as potential causes<\/a> of rising chronic disease rates, which the petition references.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n