Mr. Monsanto Goes to Washington: The Casey Means Confirmation Hearing

The recent Senate Health Committee hearing for Surgeon General nominee Casey Means went as anyone who follows these charades would have predicted: the vast majority of the production was devoted to the esteemed People’s representatives from both sides of the aisle, but especially Democrats, interrogating Means about her commitment to vaccines.

The Committee chair, anti-MAHA hack Sen. Bill Cassidy, whom we have covered here before, spent his time pimping the hepatitis B shot for infants — his absolute favorite thing in the world — and prodding Means to endorse it too, as he always does at these things.

From the left side of the aisle, in addition to the usual vaccine talking points, also came strong concern as to whether Means, in her role as Surgeon General, would uphold the Public Health™ ethos of Maximum Abortion, abortion being a sacred rite for Democrats and the medical industry that sponsors them.

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Susan Collins, who I am nearly convinced at this point is a literal demon from the pit of hell, expressed deep concern that Means once wrote in a book that she used therapeutic psilocybin when her mother was dying and somehow tried to liken that to the drug abuse epidemic resulting from fentanyl pouring over the border from Mexico.

It was all very stupid.

The public learned nothing of value.

The public learned nothing of value because the purpose of the exercise wasn’t to shed light on anything.

The vaccine industry’s prostitutes put on their best performances.

All par for the course.

You know the thing.

Anyway, the highlight of the afternoon, in my opinion, was a handy-dandy little fear porn graphic, in the service of promoting glyphosate, featuring a stalk of diseased corn devoured by earworm, which Sen. Jon Husted’s handlers in the glyphosate lobby had him debut on the Senate floor.

(Husted, who received ten times more campaign cash from Epstein benefactor Les Wexner than any other Senator in history, replaced J.D. Vance in his Ohio Senate seat after Vance was pegged for VP.)

From Senator Husted (emphasis added):

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Means, thanks for being here today. I’m going to try to get through pesticides and mental health for our children, if I could. I want to thank you for what you’re trying to do to raise awareness about healthy eating healthy foods. And since your nomination and though I’ve had a lot of questions from farmers in the agriculture community in Ohio about your comments on pesticides. And you will not regulate pesticides in your role, but your views will impact American consumers and what they believe about what’s healthy and good for them.
What is a pesticide? I would just put a little poster up here. And why do we use them? Because this is the kind of thing we try to prevent. This is an earworm, this is the kind of thing that destroys our crops all across the country. Corn, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables. If we fail to use proper pesticides, it will drive down yields of 20 to 50%, even more for fruits and vegetables, the very things we want people to eat more of, which will restrict the supply chain, make food less accessible and more expensive if we can’t have proper crop yields and use more land, more resources, etc. And so given all those facts and given what the concerns are, please just share your views on pesticides for what they mean to the average consumer of food in our grocery stores?”

The backdrop of this performance by the Senator From Monsanto is an executive order the president pushed out last month, which has upset the MAHA faction of the MAGA base, of which Casey Means and her brother, former lobbyist Calley Means, have been central figures.

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Via The White House, February 18, 2026:

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. 4501 et seq.) (the “Act”), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Policy and Findings. Elemental phosphorus is pervasive in defense supply chains and is therefore crucial to military readiness and national defense. It is a key input in smoke, illumination, and incendiary devices and is a critical component for manufacturing the semiconductors that are central to numerous defense technologies, such as radar, solar cells, sensors, and optoelectronics. It is also increasingly important in modern lithium-ion battery chemistries used in a multitude of weapon-system supply chains. For these and other reasons, on November 7, 2025, the Department of the Interior, acting pursuant to the Energy Act of 2020, designated phosphate as a critical mineral.

Elemental phosphorus is also a critical precursor element for the production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which play a critical role in maintaining America’s agricultural advantage by enabling farmers to efficiently and cost-effectively produce food and livestock feed. As the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture, glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy, allowing United States farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low production costs while ensuring that healthy, affordable food options remain within reach for all American families.”

Critically, the executive order, which will likely be challenged in court, extends liability protection to glyphosate producers under Section 707 of the Defense Production Act (50 U.S.C. § 4557).

(Dozens of studies have linked glyphosate use to cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as a slew of other health conditions.)

RFK Jr., a former trial lawyer who famously successfully sued Monsanto over the damage wrought by glyphosate, did his best fence-sitting routine on the glyphosate executive order in a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, explaining that, although he opposes glyphosate use in principle, he agrees that ramping up production and providing immunity to the manufacturers is a national security issue:

“I’ve spent 40 years fighting pesticides. It was… I was part of the trial team on the Monsanto case, which was the team that, you know, we won three cases in a row. And then got an $11 billion settlement with Monsanto, which is now Bayer. By the end of our trial, Bayer owned Monsanto.

But, you know, pesticides are poison. They’re designed to kill all life. It’s not a good thing to have them in your food. So, but I also… it’s not something that I was particularly happy with, let me put it that way, mildly. But I also understand the president’s point of view. The president didn’t create this system. He’s dealing with a problem that was created long before over the past sixty years. When, um, we… through federal policies and subsidies and management of farming in this country, the agricultural management, we have addicted our farmers to these pesticides, and particularly glyphosate…

98% of soy is produced with glyphosate. If you banned glyphosate overnight, or if you got rid of it, or someone else cut off our supply, it would destroy the American food system…

But we all know we’ve got to transition off of glyphosate. We all know that. And the farmers hate it…

Most European countries don’t allow the export of our crops to their countries.”