In the last 24 hours, the Trump Administration handed Bayer/Monsanto a sweeping liability bailout, and in doing so, changed the trajectory of Iowa’s pesticide immunity fight.

Included in a newly released Defense Production Act Executive Order intended to guarantee herbicide supply chains is an troubling provision that we strongly oppose: liability protection for future RoundUp production at Bayer’s Muscatine plant. Translation, every gallon produced from here on out now carries a federal liability shield.

Almost simultaneously, Bayer unveiled a multi-billion-dollar settlement proposal designed to resolve existing cancer lawsuits over the next two decades.

If you put the pieces together, you get a corporate escape hatch covering past, present, and future. Past and current claims will be handled by the settlement. Future claims will be blocked by federal immunity.

The good news: current victims should receive compensation through the settlement pool.

The bad news: future victims may never get their day in court.

This all comes just two months before the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether failure-to-warn lawsuits against pesticide manufacturers can proceed at all.

So where does that leave Iowa’s pesticide immunity bill (SF 394)? Simply put: Bayer no longer needs it. Washington just handed them nearly everything the chemical corporation was seeking. The national settlement fund will exist regardless of what Iowa lawmakers do.

What SF 394 would do, however, is weaken the rights of Iowa victims:

• It would reduce or eliminate payouts for Iowa farmers already eligible for the national settlement.
• It would likely shut out sick farmers who haven’t yet filed claims.
• It would extend sweeping liability immunity to thousands of other pesticide products made by companies like ChemChina, including paraquat, which has been linked to Parkinson’s disease.

In other words, SF 394 is no longer a Bayer bill. It has effectively become a ChemChina bailout bill.

Some lawmakers are beginning to acknowledge the stakes. Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner has warned against stripping Iowans of their right to seek justice in court. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Mike Klimesh is still urging the House to advance the bill, while House Speaker Pat Grassley says his caucus is “digesting” the implications of the federal order.

Accountable Iowa has one message for legislators: Bayer already got their bailout, a reality we strongly oppose. Given that, why cut Iowa farmers out of the RoundUp settlement pool, and why rush to protect foreign chemical corporations like ChemChina at the expense of Iowa farmers’ constitutional right to a jury trial?

The circumstances may have changed, but the answer to SF 394 is the same. Protect Iowa farmers, not foreign pesticide corporations.