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Members of the agriculture community are raising serious concerns about the MAHA Commission’s recent report, which questions the use of safe, essential crop protection tools. 

Backed by decades of research, these safe, trusted tools underpin American agriculture—helping farmers produce more food, keep prices from rising, and advance conservation practices like no-till farming that improve soil health and reduce emissions. 

That's why MAA recently joined over 250 agricultural organizations in a letter to the administration underscoring a simple point: sound science—not fearmongering—must shape agricultural policy.

But first…

Now, the main event…

During a press conference this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson touted his party’s unity, boasting that House and Senate Republicans have worked hand in hand with the president over a successful six months, capped by the passage of Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill. And it’s true: Republican cohesion has been impressive, as party members have repeatedly fallen in line behind a president who doesn’t tolerate dissent or disloyalty. But suddenly, all of that bonhomie is being tested as the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein haunts the Capitol.

The House heads home today until September, and Republicans will have to face their constituents over an issue that has rocked Trump’s second presidency like no other. Republicans had hoped—needed, in fact—to spend the August recess talking up their tax and spending law, which is still unpopular among voters. The idea was to stay relentlessly focused on the law’s extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Instead, they’ll be greeted by angry voters, many in MAGA hats, demanding answers and action on Epstein. “We were already behind in messaging the One Big Beautiful Bill,” one Republican who works with House members told me. “Now we’re stuck with this.”

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

From soybean and corn growers in the Midwest, to cotton growers in the South, to sugarbeet producers in the West, farmers across America are deeply concerned the MAHA Commission is setting the stage to disregard decades of scientific research and recommend approaches that will ultimately jeopardize family farms, threaten the availability and affordability of healthy food, and undermine America’s national security. 

And that was before a federal judge in Florida rejected Trump’s attempt to seek the release of Epstein-related grand jury testimony, ruling it had to remain sealed; it was also before The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that “Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times,” along with “hundreds of other names,” in Epstein-related documents reviewed by Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, and that Bondi had told the president in May that his name was included. Trump is already suing the Journal over a previous Epstein story; the White House has told the paper that both stories are “fake.”

Meanwhile, numerous Republican lawmakers have told me that voter anger over Epstein is only growing. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been vocal about the lack of transparency on the Epstein case from the Trump administration, told me and other reporters that calls into her district and D.C. offices have been “extremely high” and “almost 100 percent” about Epstein. A Republican senator told me the “backlash” from their constituents has been fierce, and that Trump is on the verge of losing support over the issue. Meanwhile, Rep. Thomas Massie, the co-sponsor of a bipartisan resolution with Rep. Ro Khanna to force the release of D.O.J.’s Epstein documents, predicted that being home for five weeks with constituents will only put more pressure on Republicans.

The showdown has even consumed the often-ignored House Rules Committee, the last stop for legislation before hitting the House floor. The panel’s four Democrats ground its proceedings to a halt last week, with votes on measures that would have forced the D.O.J. to release Epstein-related documents. In an attempt to defuse the matter, the committee’s nine Republican members, over the course of about a dozen hours of meetings with Johnson and House Republican leader Steve Scalise, hammered out a resolution of their own—a weak, non-binding call for the release of “credible” Epstein-related files. They then passed it through the committee, thinking it would satisfy Trump (because it mimicked his language and effectively did nothing) and the base (because it might look like it did something). But the resolution placated neither.

Indeed, Rules Committee Republicans continue to get hammered online and at home. Johnson was forced to tell reporters he wouldn’t move the resolution that he, himself, had brought to the floor: He wanted to give the administration “space” to address the Epstein issue, given that the Justice Department had asked for grand jury transcripts, and was working to secure a prison interview with Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Though Johnson told me at a press conference that the president didn’t ask him to hold off on the vote, other Republicans tell me it’s obvious that Trump didn’t want it to happen. After all, that would have put a huge crack in the party’s much-vaunted unity, and served as a major rebuke to a president whom Johnson seems loath to cross. (A fleeting near-exception happened last week, when Johnson called for transparency on Epstein as Trump tried to move on; since then, the speaker has insisted there’s “no daylight” between his members and the White House.)

After another meeting with leadership on Monday, the Rules Committee made clear their situation was untenable. Under pressure from MAGA to support the Massie-Khanna measure, they didn’t want to go on the record (again) voting against it. Johnson effectively threw up his hands, shelving the five bills scheduled for floor action this week, and instead moved forward with noncontroversial bills that could pass with two-thirds of the House and bypass the Rules Committee. He announced plans to send members home a day early. The moment, above all, showed the remarkable depths of Republican distress.

Republicans are praying the issue will work itself out by the time they’re back in D.C. in September. Perhaps the administration will manage to get some satisfactory info released, or Maxwell will say something useful to D.O.J. lawyers, or the House Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena for her testimony on Wednesday. But it seems unlikely that either would satisfy the riled-up base. “Can we trust what [Maxwell] says?” Taylor Greene told me and other reporters. “She’s in prison. Her case is on appeal. She might want a pardon. She may be bartering for something.”

In any case, members will return with just 14 legislative days left in the fiscal year. Democrats insist they’ll continue to force Republicans to take Epstein votes. If the Rules Committee remains deadlocked over Epstein, they won’t be able to move legislation to the floor, including funding bills and stop-gap continuing resolutions, risking a government shutdown. In other words, committee Republicans will face the same dilemma they’re facing now: Vote to release the Epstein documents in defiance of Trump and Johnson, or vote against doing so, and ignite the base. Johnson could exercise the extreme option of replacing committee members with others whom he can count on to vote against an Epstein release. (Massie and Khanna’s measure will hit the floor in September, but not until after they collect 218 signatories, which they can’t start doing until the return after Labor Day. So even if the bipartisan resolution is the escape valve, the Rules Committee members are on the hook until then.)

Of course, the G.O.P.’s Epstein problems are self-induced: It was Trump who promised to declassify the so-called Epstein Files on the campaign trail, and also Trump who promoted prominent Epstein truthers to top law-enforcement positions, including F.B.I. Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Multiple sources tell me the White House has been working to keep him in the fold, as he’s threatened to quit over the matter, and that they’re worried he can do more damage with his microphone and podcast from the outside.

Meanwhile, Johnson will continue to run interference, blaming Democrats for what he’s characterizing as a political stunt, and questioning why they didn’t call for the release of files under the Biden administration. Republicans suggest that Biden would have released damaging information about Trump if it existed. Former Biden officials and Justice Department lawyers tell me they believed this was a largely right-wing preoccupation, and that it wasn’t a priority for a Democratic administration. A former Justice Department attorney said that releasing investigative material, especially against Trump, would have violated a “basic tenet” of law enforcement, that “you investigate things to charge people, not to smear people.”

But Democrats are definitely prioritizing it now, given the opportunity it presents to drive a wedge between Republicans and their base. When I wrote about Epstein last week, the overwhelming consensus among both Republicans and Democrats was that the issue wasn’t going to have much political impact. Now, however, that sentiment seems to be shifting. Anything can happen in the next year, but anecdotally, I’m hearing that anger is growing beyond hardcore, anti-establishment Trump voters and to average Republican voters. When I asked M.T.G. whether Epstein would still be an issue in the midterms, she responded with an emphatic “yes.”

Before he left town for the break, I caught up with Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican who is close with Trump, but also who, to my surprise, was among the 11 Republican co-sponsors of the Massie-Khanna resolution. Was he worried, I asked, about going home to face constituents’ questions about Epstein? “I put my name on the legislation,” he said. “So, I’m good.”

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