In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Wrongful exercise of federal pre-emption slashing our Seventh Amendment rights to jury trial in civil cases. Perhaps the French philosopher Albert Camus would have asked, "how can I love my country and still love justice." What do you reckon? From The Washington Post:
Supreme Court blocks thousands of suits claiming Roundup causes cancer
The ruling restricts one of the largest waves of product liability lawsuits in the history of the nation.
6 min
An employee adjusts Roundup products on a shelf in 2018 at a store in San Rafael, California. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court on Thursday restricted a massive wave of lawsuits claiming the chemical giant Monsanto had a duty to warn consumers of alleged cancer risks from the world’s most popular weed killer, Roundup.
The decision turned on a technical legal question, but one with enormous stakes. On the line are billions of dollars, the fate of tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by cancer victims and the future of an herbicide farmers say is crucial to the nation’s food supply but health groups warn is a danger.
In an ideologically mixed 7-2 decision, the justices ruled that federal law preempts cancer victims from bringing lawsuits against Monsanto in state courts, where most such claims are filed. The justices ruled Monsanto was not required to offer a warning because the Environmental Protection Agency holds that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is not a cancer risk.
“EPA has not required glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup to include a cancer warning on their labels,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. “Therefore, as a matter of federal law, Monsanto legally must use a label without a cancer warning unless and until EPA approves or requires a change.”
The ruling came over the objections of liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
“Ultimately, the effect of the majority’s interpretation is both remarkable and regrettable, for it unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to state tort plaintiffs like Durnell,” Jackson wrote.
John Durnell sued Monsanto in 2019 in Missouri state court, claiming his use of Roundup as part of an initiative to beautifyparks around his home in St. Louis over two decades caused hisnon-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of blood cancer. Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, denies a link between the weed killer and cancer.
A Missouri jury in 2023 ruled for Durnell, awarding him $1.25 million. An appeals court rejected Monsanto’s appeal, before Monsanto eventually asked the Supreme Court to take up the case in April 2025.
The EPA has repeatedly found that glyphosate,which was first marketed in the 1970s,does not cause cancer.
The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates glyphosate is used on about 300 million acres of farmland in the United States and is integral to feeding the nation. Otherwise, it says, farmers might have to rely on harsher, less-safe herbicides.
“To remove glyphosate from the market would pose an immediate, devastating risk to America’s food supply,” the bureau wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. “Farmers depend on this safe herbicide to support high-yield food and fiber production, season after season.”
But in 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is associated with the United Nations and World Health Organization, found glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans” after reviewing available research on the chemical. In particular, the agency found a likely link between non-Hodgkin lymphoma and glyphosate.
Some countries banned the herbicide in the wake of the report.
The finding also led to more than 100,000 people with cancer or their families filing lawsuits against Monsanto for failing to warn them of alleged health risks from Roundup. Bayer has spent about $11 billion on settlements to date, but thousands of cases remain open.
The litigation prompted Monsanto to remove glyphosate-based Roundup from the consumer market, but it is still available to farmers and commercial users.
Monsanto asked the Supreme Court to immunize it from nonfederal lawsuits. The company argues the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which regulates the sale and marketing of pesticides and herbicides, preempts state-court claims.
The law requires companies to submit studies showing an herbicide carries no “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment before the EPA will approve its sale.
The EPA must also clear a product’s label, which is barred from featuring false or misleading statements and must feature warnings for any health or environmental risks. The manufacturer must seek EPA approval for any substantive changes to the label.
The law allows states to regulate herbicides, but it blocks them from requiring any additional labeling not mandated by FIFRA. One of the goals of the law was to have a uniform standard for labeling, instead of different requirements in different states.
Paul Clement, Monsanto’s attorney, said during arguments before the high court in April that FIFRA preempted any state claims that the company had to warn cancer victims of alleged dangers posed by Roundup because the EPA has determined glyphosate is safe for use.
“A Missouri jury has told us that a cancer label that is not required to be put on the label is required to be put on the label,” Clement said.
In addition, the company argued in legal filings that the ongoing litigation could force it to remove Roundup from the market altogether with devastating effects for the nation’s farmers.
The Trump administration is supporting Monsanto — a switch from the Biden administration, which backed Durnell.
Durnell’s attorneys argued that Monsanto violated FIFRA’s prohibition on false and misleading labels, since they knew it might cause cancer and failed to warn people about it.
Some farm workers’ groups, cancer prevention organizations and environmentalists backed Durnell, saying Roundup poses substantial risks and should be labeled a carcinogen. They say blocking state suits will remove one of the only means people with cancer have to get recompense.
“Cancer is an epidemic, afflicting more than 1 in 3 Americans within their lifetimes,” the Center for Food Safety and other groups wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. “The Court should not afford Monsanto immunity for its products’ risks … and deny Americans their right to know the risks of an inherently dangerous product.”
CORRECTIONA previous version of this article said that the Supreme Court's decision was 8-1. The court's ruling was 7-2.
Vice President JD Vance said he admires former president Richard M. Nixon and suggested that the Watergate scandal was overblown. (Nathan Howard/Pool/Reuters/AP)
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.
The Watergate scandal, which began in 1972 with a botched attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, mushroomed into a wide-ranging investigation by reporters and lawmakers that revealed Nixon was aware of the break-in and directed secret White House payments in an effort to cover it up. He resigned as president two years after the scandal broke, with Nixon blaming The Washington Post for its central role in exposing his involvement in the break-in and other abuses.
The scandal also prompted a series of reforms intended to rein in presidential authority, including more independence for government watchdogs such as inspectors general, which Trump has steadily rolled back.
Historians said Thursday that the full scope of the Watergate scandal, ranging from the president’s efforts to apply pressure to his “enemies list” to asking for a census of Jewish Americans serving in government because he believed they were unpatriotic, revealed Nixon’s abuses of presidential power.
Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer,” said Timothy Naftali, a previous director of the Nixon library, referring to Vance’s law degree from Yale University.
Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”
“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”
Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon
The vice president said he admired Nixon and drew parallels between the past president, who resigned amid pressure in 1974, and Trump today.
Vice President JD Vance said he admires former president Richard M. Nixon and suggested that the Watergate scandal was overblown. (Nathan Howard/Pool/Reuters/AP)
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
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“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.
The Watergate scandal, which began in 1972 with a botched attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, mushroomed into a wide-ranging investigation by reporters and lawmakers that revealed Nixon was aware of the break-in and directed secret White House payments in an effort to cover it up. He resigned as president two years after the scandal broke, with Nixon blaming The Washington Post for its central role in exposing his involvement in the break-in and other abuses.
The scandal also prompted a series of reforms intended to rein in presidential authority, including more independence for government watchdogs such as inspectors general, which Trump has steadily rolled back.
Historians said Thursday that the full scope of the Watergate scandal, ranging from the president’s efforts to apply pressure to his “enemies list” to asking for a census of Jewish Americans serving in government because he believed they were unpatriotic, revealed Nixon’s abuses of presidential power.
Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer,” said Timothy Naftali, a previous director of the Nixon library, referring to Vance’s law degree from Yale University.
Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”
“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”
es to be.”
Some conservatives in recent years have reframed the scandals that ended Nixon’s presidency, arguing that government bureaucrats and the media unfairly sought to push him out.
In his remarks, Vance also repeatedly compared Nixon to Trump, pointing out the similarities in their political coalitions as well as their experiences with overseas wars.
One of the other lessons of Richard Nixon is it’s not just that he got out of Vietnam, but that he got out of Vietnam from a position of strength. Okay?” Vance said, making a comparison with Trump’s war against Iran. “It’s one thing to tuck tail and run. It’s another thing to clearly define an objective, to accomplish that objective and then to ensure that you don’t allow mission creep to transform a victory into a defeat.”
Vance also alluded to lawmakers’ efforts to investigate both presidents. Trump was twice impeached in his first term, after first pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate his rival Joe Biden, and then after lawmakers said he helped incite a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2001, as he attempted to have the results of the election overturned.
Nixon resigned as president while an impeachment process into his Watergate-related conduct was underway. Lawmakers ultimately decided to end the process given Nixon’s resignation. His former vice president, Gerald Ford, later issued a controversial pardon.
“If you look at the story of how the ‘deep state’ took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration,” Vance said to applause. “There is a parallel.”
The 41-year-old Vance also mused on his own similarities to Nixon, who served as a California senator in his late 30s and became vice president when he was 40.
“Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. … I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”
