'Deep irony': Expert says Supreme Court just rug-pulled core obsession of MAHA movement

President Donald Trump brought anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into his coalition in 2024, creating the so-called "Make America Healthy Again" movement by wooing a broad swathe of health activists and medicine deniers to join his cause. But the Supreme Court he helped appoint just dealt a massive blow to that movement, Dr. Vin Gupta noted to MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire on Thursday's edition of "Morning Joe."

Specifically, they blocked lawsuits from going forward against Bayer-Monsanto, over an herbicide at the heart of years of cancer litigation. While the actual scientific evidence that glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer is limited, the legal crusade against it, and in particular against Bayer-Monsanto's Roundup weed killer, has been a fixture in health circles.

"Among a series of recent decisions there, the justices ruled that pesticide maker Monsanto cannot be held liable under state law for failing to warn consumers about the alleged cancer risk of its Roundup weed killer," said Lemire, noting that it has been a focus for MAHA figures "years and years and years."

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"Well, I think well, you know, especially for adherents of MAHA ... Monsanto has become the face of Big Agriculture in this notion, and we've seen this repeatedly," said Gupta. And this has been the case even though Trump officials "put the interests of corporate, major corporate players, powerful industries, ahead of the health of the American people, and this is yet another example of this."

The Environmental Protection Agency, Gupta noted, does not have data to support Roundup causing cancer, though environmental groups are not convinced and point to jury trials that awarded damages over the issue.

Regardless, he said, "for adherents of MAHA especially, but all of us, frankly, this is basically outlawing anybody who might have been impacted" by Roundup "from suing the company here." And there's a "deep irony," he added, because "RFK Jr., the now HHS Secretary, built his career on suing the very company that now his boss, the president, has said you can no longer sue, so that's the irony."

- YouTube www.youtube.com