President Donald Trump signed an executive order on February 18, 2026, invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides, the same class of chemical that a World Health Organization agency has classified as probably carcinogenic to humans. The order arrived roughly a year after Trump publicly championed his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, which included a commission tasked with investigating the root causes of childhood chronic disease, including chemical exposures. The collision between these two policy tracks raises a direct question: how does an administration simultaneously pledge to shield children from toxic chemicals while using wartime production authorities to expand the supply of one of the most contested herbicides on the planet?
Defense Production Act Meets Weed Control
The executive order, titled “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides,” frames the herbicide as a matter of national defense and national security. By tying glyphosate to the Defense Production Act, the White House elevated a common agricultural input to the same legal footing as critical minerals and military supplies. The order directs federal agencies to take action ensuring that domestic producers can maintain and expand output, and it states that producers of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides are required to comply with Defense Production Act priorities and allocations under Section 4557 of the statute.
The national-security framing is significant because it could insulate glyphosate from state-level restrictions and regulatory challenges that have been building for years. When a chemical is designated as essential to defense, federal preemption arguments gain force, and agencies face pressure to streamline permitting rather than tighten oversight. For farmers who depend on glyphosate as the backbone of no-till agriculture, the order promises supply stability at a time of volatile input costs and geopolitical disruptions. For public-health advocates who have spent a decade pressing for tighter controls, it signals the opposite: a federal government actively working to entrench the herbicide’s market position and potentially weaken the leverage of states and courts that have treated glyphosate as a public-health risk.
The MAHA Promise on Chemical Exposures
Just over a year before the glyphosate order, Trump established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission by executive order in February 2025. That directive, which created the MAHA body within the executive branch, gave the commission 100 days to deliver a “Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment” and 180 days to produce a broader strategy, with a mandate that explicitly encompassed environmental exposures, chemicals, and the integrity of federal science. The language suggested that the administration intended to scrutinize the very substances now being fast-tracked for production under the Defense Production Act.
The commission followed through on its timeline. The resulting assessment, released by the Department of Health and Human Services, identified root causes of what it called a childhood chronic disease crisis and emphasized rising burdens of cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, and autoimmune conditions. Among its findings, HHS reported that childhood cancer incidence had increased by nearly 40% since 1975, a trend the report linked to a mixture of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors, including chemical contaminants. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided attributable statements tying the assessment to the administration’s health agenda, and the White House amplified the message in a video in which Trump vowed action to confront the childhood health crisis. None of those public statements, however, addressed how the administration’s agricultural and industrial policies would interact with its health commitments.
Regulators Disagree on Cancer Risk
The scientific debate over glyphosate is not settled, and the gap between regulatory conclusions is wide enough to drive policy in either direction. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans (Group 2A) in its Monographs Volume 112, based on evidence from animal studies and limited evidence in humans, particularly for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That classification triggered a wave of litigation, consumer concern, and billions of dollars in legal settlements by the herbicide’s manufacturers, and it has been cited by local governments and school districts that have restricted or phased out glyphosate use on playgrounds, parks, and athletic fields.
On the other side of the ledger, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency previously found glyphosate “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” according to its own interim registration review, which examined toxicology, epidemiology, and exposure data. Following a June 17, 2022, ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that faulted aspects of the agency’s analysis, the EPA later withdrew remaining portions of its 2020 interim decision, leaving the herbicide’s formal regulatory status in a state of legal limbo while the agency conducts further analysis and public consultation. In Europe, the European Chemicals Agency’s Committee for Risk Assessment concluded that available evidence did not meet EU criteria to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic, though it maintained classifications for serious eye damage and aquatic toxicity. The result is a patchwork: one international body says “probably carcinogenic,” while two major regulatory agencies say the evidence falls short of that threshold, creating ample room for policymakers to emphasize whichever conclusion best aligns with their priorities.
Where Health Rhetoric Meets Agricultural Reality
Most coverage of the glyphosate order has treated it as a straightforward agricultural policy story, but that framing misses the structural contradiction at the center of the administration’s domestic agenda. The MAHA Commission was built to investigate chemical exposures linked to childhood disease, and its own report flagged a dramatic rise in childhood cancers alongside concerns about endocrine-disrupting compounds and cumulative low-dose exposures. Yet the executive branch, using some of the most powerful procurement authorities available to a president, chose to accelerate production of a herbicide sitting at the heart of one of the world’s most visible carcinogenicity debates. The juxtaposition raises questions about whether the administration views MAHA primarily as a messaging exercise or as a framework that should meaningfully constrain other policy domains.
Supporters of the order argue that the Defense Production Act is being used to secure food supplies and stabilize input costs in the face of geopolitical shocks, supply-chain disruptions, and the risk of fertilizer shortages, not to endorse any particular toxicological conclusion. They note that the EPA, not the White House, is responsible for pesticide risk assessments and that the agency’s prior findings, however contested, still carry weight. Critics counter that invoking national defense to shield glyphosate from market and regulatory pressures effectively prejudges the outcome of ongoing scientific and legal processes. At a minimum, they say, the administration’s own rhetoric about children’s health and environmental exposures suggests that a more precautionary approach, such as conditioning Defense Production Act support on tighter use restrictions, expanded monitoring, or accelerated development of alternatives, would better align agricultural policy with the MAHA commitments.
The Missing Bridge Between Health and Industry Policy
The glyphosate decision also exposes a broader governance problem: the lack of an institutional bridge between health-focused initiatives and industrial or agricultural policymaking. The MAHA Commission was housed within the health and human services apparatus, while the Defense Production Act order emerged from the national security and economic policy teams, with little visible coordination between the two. Without formal mechanisms to reconcile their recommendations, it is easy for one track to tout ambitious goals on childhood disease while another quietly locks in long-lived infrastructure and supply contracts for chemicals that may contribute to those same burdens. The absence of a cross-cutting review process means that tensions surface only after the fact, when executive orders are already signed and implementation is underway.
Some advocates have urged the administration to create such a bridge by expanding the remit of existing oversight tools. One proposal would require that major Defense Production Act actions undergo a health-impact screening analogous to environmental impact assessments, with input from agencies like HHS and EPA before orders are finalized. Others suggest leveraging emerging policy platforms, such as the administration’s digital benefits hub at TrumpCard or its prescription-drug transparency portal at TrumpRx, to communicate not only economic benefits but also the health trade-offs of industrial decisions in plain language. Whether or not those specific ideas advance, the glyphosate episode underscores that siloed policymaking can erode public trust: families hearing promises to “make our children healthy again” are likely to notice when other parts of government prioritize chemical output over precaution, especially when the science remains contested and the stakes involve long-term risks to children’s bodies.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
