June 25, 2026
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) — Today, 314 Action held a virtual press conference with Protect Our Care in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision protecting pesticide manufacturers from legal liability. 314 Action President Shaughnessy Naughton was joined by U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), Iowa State Senator and cancer survivor Catelin Drey (IA-SD-01), oncologist and Montana Representative Dr. Melody Cunningham (MT-HD-97), physician and medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta, educator and candidate for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District Jake Johnson, and retired lawn care specialist Bernie Tamburro from Ohio.
Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto and the Trump administration by effectively granting Donald Trump’s big chemical industry donors blanket immunity from state-based liability claims involving the cancer-linked glyphosate chemical found in Roundup pesticides. The decision is also a major affront to cancer survivors, now denied a pathway to damages for any injuries and financial costs they may have endured following exposure to glyphosate.
Excerpts from speakers below:
Shaughnessy Naughton, President of 314 Action
“This decision throws out over 100,000 lawsuits and really puts poison and politics over patients…RFK Jr. built his reputation suing Monsanto on behalf of patients who may have cancer from their product and promised to ban glyphosate, and he didn’t do that, and he’s not doing anything to change the direction of how we use this in our food production…It really is a big win for chemical manufacturers, and a real loss for farmers and for the American people that should have their day in court.”
U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ)
“I’m going to lead an amendment to strip away this preemptive authority and return it to the people. We now need to rally around both sides of the aisle, getting the Senate to act on this farm bill to undo what the Supreme Court did. We did it in the House, we can do it in the Senate…We are seeing a crisis in our country, and it’s time that the people prevail, and not the poisoners, the polluters, or the pesticide manufacturers. This is about empowering farmers, and our farm bill must return to being about farmers.”
Jake Johnson, educator and candidate for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District
“Our farmers deserve access to the tools that they need. At the same time, the companies that are making billions of dollars selling those tools have a responsibility to make them as safe as possible. Now, if they cause harm, they should be held accountable. That’s not anti-farmer, that’s pro accountability. And today’s Supreme Court decision sends exactly the wrong message to those companies. It tells giant corporations that if they have enough lawyers, enough lobbyists, and enough political influence, that the rules are going to be different from them than they are from everyone else.”
State Senator Catelin Drey, Representative for Iowa’s 1st Senate District and cancer survivor
“Corporations of any industry should not be given blanket immunity if Iowans and Americans are injured by their products. This flies in the face of any sort of consumer protection, and it is deeply frustrating. We deserve to have our day in court, and that’s the position of the vast majority of my fellow Iowans. They also oppose giving pesticide companies immunity from lawsuits…Instead, rulings like today’s, as well as the immunity bill like the one supported by Iowa Senate Republicans last year, deny us the information that we need to hold corporations and pesticides companies responsible for their actions makes it harder for Iowans to know what’s going into our water and how that might impact cancer rates in my state.”
Representative Dr. Melody Cunningham, Representative for Montana’s 97th House District
“It was in 1950 that the first article came out that said that there was a relationship between cancer and tobacco, and it was decades before that came to the fore, that that was true—and that was in part because of the tobacco industry lobbying and trying to prevent that information from getting out. And I feel that it is the same thing here.”
Dr. Vin Gupta, medical analyst and physician
Download Dr. Vin Gupta’s pre-recorded remarks here
“If you’re part of the MAHA movement because you want cleaner food, less exposure to environmental toxins, and less corporate influence over our health policy, this decision should give you pause, regardless of where you land on the science around glyphosate…Public health isn’t about choosing between agriculture and health, it’s about earning trust through transparent information, rigorous science, and putting people ahead of politics or powerful interests. If Make America Healthy Again is going to mean anything, it has to apply personally, not just when it’s politically convenient, but also when powerful political interests and corporate interests are involved as well.”
Bernie Tamburro, Ohioan retired law care specialist
“I spent 40 years in the chemical lawn care business. I hold a commercial pesticide license for all 40 of those years in the greater Cleveland area. The sad part here is that if the product was mislabeled in the first place—no one wants to take responsibility for that anymore, and because of the ruling today, a lot of people are, to put it bluntly, getting screwed by the decision.
Chemicals and pesticides should be used according to label directions. All these things have a label on them. All these things have warnings. People should know that they need to read these things…If it carries a warning label, and there were more precautions, or a danger label that carries more precautions about how you dress, how you use the chemicals, the masks, eyewear, things like that, and you use them according to those label directions, they cause less action, they cause less problems. But that being said, they didn’t do that.”
Watch the full press conference.
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314 Action is the only national organization working to recruit, train and elect Democratic scientists across all levels of government—from the Senate down to local school boards. The organization is powered by a grassroots community of over six million people supporting scientists and health care professionals who will use science and facts to address the most urgent issues facing our generation.