Iowa Rep. Miller-Meeks received donations from companies tied to pollution, records show
The Republican member of Congress supported legislation and a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Clean Water Act.
An analysis of campaign finance records shows Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has received $64,000 from companies tied to PFAS contamination, cancer-linked products or water pollution in Iowa while she voted to weaken the Clean Water Act.
Miller-Meeks is an eye doctor who first joined the House of Representatives in 2021. Since then, Federal Election Commission records show, she has received nearly 30 campaign donations from companies that have faced legal action, settlements or fines over their products and pollution. The donations range from $1,000 to $5,000.
A political action committee, or PAC, for one of those companies, Bayer, has given $5,000 to Miller-Meeks’ campaign since 2022, records show. A report from the company says it has faced about 181,000 lawsuits related to the manufacture of glyphosate-based products by its subsidiary company, Monsanto. Last year, a Bayer spokesperson said the company had paid out over $10 billion in settlements without an admission of fault or guilt, AgWeb reported.
Researchers have found in a number of studies that exposure to glyphosate, an ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, raises the risk of cancer in those exposed to it by 41%. The Environmental Protection Agency has published its own findings that “there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label. EPA also found that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen.”
A spokesperson for Miller-Meeks did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Beyond Bayer, the campaign donations to Miller-Meeks came from PACs associated with 3M, DuPont, Tyson Foods, Kraft-Heinz, Green Plains and Cargill.
Iowa is facing a cancer crisis: It has the second-highest rate of new cancers in the country. A report from the Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines found that environmental carcinogenic risk factors that are present in high levels in the state include pesticides, so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS, nitrates and radon.
The most common exposure to PFAS for the public is through drinking water, the report states, adding that current monitoring might significantly underestimate the public’s exposure to PFAS. PFAS have been detected in 94% of surface waters in Iowa and 30% of groundwater sources in the state, the report says.
During her time in Congress, Miller-Meeks has supported legislation and a Supreme Court decision that limited the scope and powers of the Clean Water Act, the main federal law governing water pollution in the country, setting wastewater standards and permitting pollutant discharges.
The Supreme Court in 2023 significantly narrowed the definition of wetlands protected by the law, making it “only those ‘wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are “waters of the United States” in their own right,’ so that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters.”
“This is a major victory for private property rights, rural America, farmers, and homeowners,” Miller-Meeks said on social media after the decision. She and other House Republicans had previously pushed the high court to narrow the Clean Water Act because, they said, its scope led to confusion, unpredictability and litigation.
Environmental groups criticized the decision, saying it would put many of the country’s wetlands in danger.
“Access to clean, safe, reliable water is a fundamental human right, and it is deeply disappointing that the Court has sided with polluters and the industry to roll back the clock on clean water protections,” Ben Jealous, then the executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement after the decision. “As a result of this decision, millions of Americans will have less safe drinking water than the generation before them.”
Miller-Meeks voted in late 2025 for the PERMIT Act, which would exclude more bodies of water from protection by the Clean Water Act. In an August 2025 letter to the members of Iowa’s congressional delegation, who all voted for the bill, environmental groups warned that water pollutants threaten public health in the state and contribute to its high cancer rates. The Senate had not acted on the bill as of late July.
“If passed, the bill would gut critical clean water protections by weakening oversight and shifting the burden of pollution onto communities already saddled with the high costs of providing safe drinking water from nitrate-contaminated source waters,” the letter states. “Additionally, due to the federal nature of this bill it would allow polluters in neighboring states discharge upstream of Iowa, putting the burden of that pollution and costs on Iowans.”
