Iowa's GOP Governor Nominee to Trump: You Got Glyphosate Wrong
Zach Lahn, who beat Trump's endorsed candidate in the June primary, told Face the Nation the president's February order boosting glyphosate production was a mistake — and tied Iowa's high cancer rate to nitrates and pesticides.
Iowa's Republican nominee for governor, Zach Lahn, said on CBS's Face the Nation today that President Trump was wrong to sign a February executive order boosting domestic production of glyphosate, the weedkiller in Roundup. Lahn, who beat Trump's endorsed candidate in the June primary, told Margaret Brennan he was one of the first to oppose the order.
Lahn tied Iowa's high cancer rate to nitrates and pesticides, including glyphosate, and said the president would have decided differently with better advice.
The White House treated the chemical as a national-security supply issue, not a health ban. The February 18 order says there is no one-for-one substitute, a shortage would hit farm yields and the food system, and the U.S. has only one domestic producer. Trump signed it after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told him he opposed it — Kennedy has called glyphosate poisonous, then backed the supply argument days later.
EPA still decides whether it stays on the market. A joint HHS-EPA review announced in September does not restrict use, and that decision has slipped into 2027.