As Election Day Nears, Trump’s EPA Chief Gives Georgia Cotton Farmers the Gift of a Nasty Pesticide

Photo caption: Young cotton plants get a dose of pesticide. Balefire9 / iStock / Getty Images Plus. Article by Tom Philpott.

The Georgia electorate has swung to Republican candidates in every presidential election since 1996; but this year, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has edged ahead  of President Donald Trump in polls there. Sen. David Perdue (R.-GA)—first cousin of USDA chief Sonny Perdue—also faces a fierce Democratic challenge for his seat. On Oct. 27, a week before the final day of voting, Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, alighted upon this unexpectedly contested electoral territory to deliver the agency’s much-awaited verdict of a controversial herbicide widely used by the nation’s cotton and soybean farmers, including Georgia’s. […]

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