EPA officials improperly influenced dicamba decision

(AP) – An internal Environmental Protection Agency report says agency officials during the Trump administration in 2018 improperly influenced a decision to re-approve use of dicamba, a herbicide blamed for crop damage in hundreds of lawsuits. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General report was released Monday. Dicamba is found in several products and used on tens of millions of acres of soybeans and cotton nationwide. It has been the subject of multiple lawsuits, mostly by farmers whose crops are not dicamba-resistant, but whose land sits next to farms using the weedkiller. The lawsuits claim that wind blows dicamba onto their land, damaging and often killing their crops.