President Donald Trump's simmering split with the MAHA movement burst into the open in a tense Oval Office meeting last week, according to a new Axios scoop, as a top farm lobbyist confronted the president over an executive order on pesticides.
Axios reported that Trump met Thursday with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall and White House aides to discuss an order promoting alternatives to conventional pesticides.
Duvall, whose group represents more than 5 million members, urged Trump not to sign it, saying it could cost him support among farming interests. One attendee, South Dakota farmer and former USDA official Jonathan Lundgren, described Duvall's decision to push back on Trump as "shocking."
Lundgren, who backed the order, told Axios he wanted the president to understand the toll on growers. "One of the take-home messages I really wanted [Trump] to understand is that the farmers were sick right now," he said. "We're literally killing our farmers with these food systems."
The meeting came the same day the Supreme Court handed the pesticide industry a major win, ruling 7-2 in Monsanto v. Durnell that federal law shields Roundup maker Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, from state failure-to-warn suits over glyphosate. Kennedy, who once sued Monsanto as an environmental lawyer, told Trump the ruling was a setback for MAHA and argued the order would help offset it.
Axios reported the sharpest exchange pitted Duvall against Kennedy deputy Calley Means.
"It was intense in there," Lundgren said. "They were arguing. It was back and forth." Trump, who had been expected to sign, asked aides what he should do. After Rollins urged him on, he signed. Duvall then said he would support it.
