Lawyering about pest control
🌾 Roundup on the chopping block? · Sunshine laws find shadows · Hiding illegals · Which way the river flows · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
Feeling good out there today. Hope you're off to a good start to your week.
Onward.
A pesticide bill moving through the state legislature has ignited a campaign against “Big Farma.” Tennessee’s proposed pest control legislation would prevent civil, “failure to warn” liability lawsuits from being filed against pesticide manufacturers and sellers in Tennessee as long as they have an EPA-approved label. While state legislators continue to pass the bill through committees, Stand For Health Freedom has issued a call-to-action opposing the bill.
Pressure to support the legislation is coming from a number of agricultural associations and Bayer, which is threatening to remove Roundup from the market if states fail to shield pesticide companies from certain lawsuits. Tennessee is one of 11 states that have experienced massive campaigns—including billboards, social media ads, and lobbying crusades—to pass similar legislation.
The bill seems to have materialized in reaction to the mountain of lawsuits piling up against Bayer that continue to cost the company billions. In Tennessee, farmers reliant on Roundup are worried about what will happen if it’s pulled—though products with the same active ingredient are offered by other companies.
The Tennessee Farm Bureau, the Modern Ag Alliance founded by Bayer, and the Tennessee Soybean Association have all testified in favor of the legislation in front of the General Assembly. TN Farm Bureau Public Policy Director Kevin Hensley explained how many Tennessee farmers use no-till practices that are dependent on the use of pesticides in front of the Senate Ag Committee two weeks ago. He warned that if the bill does not pass, it could crush pesticide companies and leave farmers holding the bag.
On the flip side, legislators have also heard opposition from a number of people including Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association President Danny Ellis and Tandy King, a Maury County tobacco farmer who sued Bayer over crop damage as a result of pesticide drift from a neighboring farm. Many detractors are wary of the vagueness of the legislation’s language and have requested a Tennessee Attorney General opinion.
During testimony in Senate Ag, honored citizen advocate, Bernadette Pajer, explained that EPA labels are reliant on studies conducted by the pesticide companies themselves. Ellis hammered the point home by indicating that the bill could potentially create a loophole where citizens won’t be able to hold pesticide companies accountable for the mislabeling of a product based on botched data.
Stand For Health Freedom warns that “HB 809/SB527 shields not just Bayer, but ALL pesticide manufacturers from civil liability, including failure-to-warn claims, at the cost of our federal (7th Amendment) and state (Article I, Section 6 & 17) constitutional rights,” on its website. “The bill includes all 15,441 products registered as a ‘pesticide’ in TN and any new products in the future.”
Senate bill Sponsor John Stevens defended his legislation on the behalf of Tennessee agriculture. “I represent the most diverse agriculture district in the state: cotton, soybeans, wheat, livestock, poultry, forestry—they support this legislation,” he told his colleagues. “Big farms, small farms...every year they tell me they have put the most expensive crop they've ever put in the ground that year. Adding trial lawyers is not going to reduce the price of that crop.”
The bill will be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon and the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
⧖⧗⧖ SHOW YOUR SUPPORT ⧗⧖⧗
If you want to support our work at The Pamphleteer, a recurring donation is the best way. We have a $10/month Grub Street tier and a $50/month Bard tier. Membership gets you access to our comments section and free access to upcoming events.
🌥️ Ain’t No Sunshine On The TNDAGC The Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference was flagged for failing to comply with Open Meetings Act requirements. Today, the state Comptroller released an audit that assessed the conference’s “effectiveness, efficiency, and internal controls” between January 1, 2017 and July 31, 2024.
The conference and its committees came up short when providing governing meeting minutes and public notice. Both the Committee on Finance and Audit and the Committee on Legislation did not record any meeting minutes because they did not think the Open Meetings Act applied. As for the conference and its Executive Committee, public notice was not adequate for several meetings.
“By not following the Open Meetings Act, the conference creates a lack of transparency around its decision-making process that could result in a lack of public trust,” reads the report. “Conference members and the office’s management should consult with the state’s Attorney General and Reporter, who also serves as legal counsel for the conference, to ensure they fully comply with the Open Meetings Act.”
Office management and the conference concurred with the findings and included the following reply: “NDAGC [the conference] has all Executive Committee and conference committee meetings posted on the website with additional required information. All committees now take minutes at each meeting.”
🙈 Hiding Illegals Two bills establishing new penalties for harboring illegals continue to move through the state legislature. One creates misdemeanors, felony charges, and fines for organizations and individuals that hide, harbor, transport, encourage, or shield illegals. The other zeroes in on charitable organizations, opening them up to lawsuits if they’ve assisted an illegal alien who goes on to commit a crime.
Nonprofits, charities, and churches have pushed back against the legislation. “I’m deeply concerned about how broad these bills are, and my fear is that any church that is seeking to help any immigrant could be penalized in some way,” Eric Mayle, lead pastor of Edgehill United Methodist Church in Nashville, told the Lookout in February. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees are set to weigh in on the bills this week.
🏆 Honoring DJ Daniel In TN During President Trump’s Address to Congress, the president honored 13-year-old DJ Daniel who was given five months to live after being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018. Trump asked Director Sean Curran to officially make him an agent of the United States Secret Service.
Since DJ’s diagnosis, he’s been sworn into multiple law enforcement agencies in Tennessee and more than 900 agencies across the country. In 2022, Metro Nashville Police Department’s Chief Drake administered the honorary oath of office to the young cancer survivor.
DEVELOPMENT
- Vanderbilt University to demolish science building, plans new structure (NBJ)
- Chicago restaurant group plans Mediterranean, sushi restaurants (Post)
- Hotel development company buys Pie Town property (Post)
✹ WHAT IS DOWNSTREAM FROM WHAT, NOW?
From Davis Hunt
On the margin, there’s a constant ongoing discussion about the orientation of culture and politics. Which is downstream from which? Andrew Breitbart famously postulated that “politics is downstream from culture” and I think that single phrase has done more to break people’s brains than just about anything else.
What did he even mean by culture? Breitbart is an overtly political publication. Is culture just media commentary, entertainment news, and movie reviews? I have never understood what Breitbart meant by this. “Owning the culture.” What does that mean? Making the movies, cooking the food, and painting the murals?
In any event, DJ Tucker over at the Tennessee Freedom Initiative offered a strong corrective in a short piece titled “Politics Isn't Downstream of Culture,” suggesting instead that the two are intertwined. “Far from being downstream of culture, law and politics are a piece of the greater whole, an integral part of the cultural struggle,” he writes.
Clarifying the interplay between culture and politics is something of an alchemical struggle—a bit like trying to emulsify oil in water. What I’ve found clarifying here is the simple observation, made by someone who isn’t me, that Culture is downstream from Law. The bounds of acceptable behavior give definition to the culture. The most obvious cultural byproduct of law we have here in the US is the second amendment and the attitudes, cultural mores, and rituals engendered by it.
Meanwhile, Rep. Afytn Behn took to her weekly newsletter to repeat Breitbart’s point. “For decades, [Republicans] invested in culture wars like picking on trans kids and our immigrant neighbors instead of funding our communities,” she writes, lauding Republicans for their success and criticizing Democrats for failing to lean into populism. ”Dominate culture, and the politics will follow,” she intones.
I honestly don’t know what cultural issue Democrats actually have the edge on, but they do still have the imposing phallanx of media, academia, and for the time being, the government to blast the message irrespective of its popularity to at least give the impression of popularity. But far from being the result of a genuine populist revolution, the boundaries of Democrat or left-wing culture are defined by the laws they selectively endorse or condemn: abortion, “gender affirming care,” affirmative action, borderless countries, etc.
Republicans can capitalize on the genuine populist fervor building in the country, codifying it into law, and ensuring its endurance beyond a short-lived “culture war” victory.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🪕 Brownyn Keith-Hynes @ Dee's Lounge, 6p, $10, Info
🪕 Liam Purcell Bluegrass Mondays @ Dee's Lounge, 8:30p, $10, Info
🎸 Timbo & Lonesome Country @ Jane's Hideaway, 8p, Info
+ modern take on classic country, bluegrass & hillbilly Jazz
🪕 Val Storey, Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle & New Monday @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
💀 Grateful Monday @ Acme Feed & Seed, 7p, Free, Info
🕺 Motown Monday @ The 5 Spot, 9p, $5, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer