Dutch message to President Trump

[Firestarter]

While I doubt that they cause "cancer", I have no doubt that pesticides are bad for both human health and the environment.
The German big pharma and agrochemical company Bayer bought agrochemical maker Monsanto in 2018, which produced the Roundup herbicides with glyphosate, that is the subject of widespread US litigation because they allegedly cause cancer.
On 18 February 2026, President Trump signed an executive order protecting domestic production of phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, for use in agriculture and the military (isn't it odd that chemicals to produce herbicides are in an executive order for chemical weapons?!?).

Bayer is facing tens of thousands of lawsuits over glyphosate herbicides causing cancer and that it failed to warn users of the risks. On 17 February 2026, Bayer announced a $7.25 billion settlement with cancer patients over glyphosate.

Trump's secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has always criticised glyphosate for its health harms, but is now supporting Trump's bill.
When he was an environmental attorney, RFK was part of a legal team that won a nearly $290 million case against Monsanto for a man who claimed his cancer was caused by Roundup: https://archive.is/OezUJ

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I already knew that there were connection between Wiles, Bondi and Florida governor DeSantis, there are a lot more interesting links to Ballard…
There are so many potential Ballard Partners scandals that I can’t really figure out which one is the worst.

No less than 16 Trump administration officials have ties to Bayer’s lobbying or legal network.

In 2025, Ballard Partners became the highest-earning lobbying firm in Washington history. In December 2024, Ballard Partners registered to lobby for Bayer. Ballard also lobbies for the American Chemistry Council, which includes Bayer among its corporate members.
Brian Ballard and his boyfriend, Daniel McFaul, who was on Trump’s 2016-2017 presidential transition team, are registered to lobby for both Bayer and the American Chemistry Council that together paid Ballard Partners half a million dollars since Trump was selected for the second time.

Ballard employed Trump's US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who has also been a lobbyist for Mercury.
Paul Manafort's Mercury Public Affairs also registered as lobbyists for Bayer in August 2025.
Registered lobbyists for Bayer at Mercury Public Affairs include Bryan Lanza, who was deputy communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign and for Trump’s first presidential transition team. Since Lanza joined Mercury in 2017, he has appeared on cable news shows as a surrogate and advisor for Trump.

Former Trump campaign and transition aide Bryan Lanza is (or was?) a lobbyist at Mercury Public Affairs, where he represented Putin crony Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ Group.

...

In November 2019, Bryan Lanza met top aide to Ukrainian president Zelensky, Andrey Yermak, in Kyiv.

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Trent Morse was a senior associate at Ballard Partners in 2020-22, before joining Mercury Public Affairs as a senior vice president. As deputy assistant to the President and deputy director of presidential personnel, Morse was part of the team that recruited, vetted and recommended candidates for political appointments. Leaving the White House in August 2025 for a lobbying job.
In 2016-2021,Trump’s deputy assistant to the President for economic policy, Ryan Baasch, was an associate at law firm Latham & Watkins (together with Epstein's friend Kathryn Ruemmler...) that represented Bayer on Roundup settlement issues, Monsanto in a dicamba case (?!?), and Monsanto and CropLife America in a glyphosate warning case.

Bayer allies have also inflitrated the US agency responsible for protecting health and the environment, in charge of regulating chemicals and pesticides – EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP). EPA officials loosened ethics to allow chemical industry lobbyists to now occupy the top 4 spots at the OCSPP: https://usrtk.org/pesticides/tracing-ba ... ashington/
(https://archive.is/Rczqd)


RFK Jr. also spearheaded new federal guidelines for food, which prioritise protein, meat and milk. While the glyphosate executive order has been widely criticised, some have praised the new food guidelines.
The panel of experts that advised on these food guidelines include several members with ties to the meat and dairy industries. Three of the 9 members have been paid by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

According to Marion Nestle, RFK and his allies were right to criticise previous food guidelines getting influenced by industry, but: “They’ve just done the same thing. If he views the members of previous committees as being sold out to industries, it’s very difficult to understand why the same designation doesn’t apply to these people, except that these people are associated with the meat and dairy industries, and they like that”.

According to professor of nutrition Lindsey Smith Taillie, the administration “handpicked” scientists to support those foregone conclusions, “versus undertaking a neutral review of the science”: https://archive.is/3Zbwi

[Firestarter]

In 2019, Attorney General William Barr “personally spearheaded” the attempt to stop the investigation by the Department of Justice into the largest Turkish state-owned bank, Halkbank.
That came after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan contacted President Donald “in a bid to avoid charges” and a lobbying campaign for months to avoid prosecution.

The top lobbyist for Turkey was Trump crony Brian Ballard, who had extensive contact with Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow during that time.

On 15 October 2019, despite all the pressure, US attorney Geoffrey Berman indicted the Halkbank anyway for a multi-billion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Berman explained:

The bank's audacious conduct was supported and protected by high-ranking Turkish government officials, some of whom received millions of dollars in bribes to promote and protect the scheme.

In 2017, Turkish state bank HalkBank hired former Congressman Bob Wexler and Ballard Partners for $375,000 per quarter. Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Halkbank’s deputy general manager, has been charged by the US Justice Department for conspiring to evade sanctions on Iran (the Reza Zarrab gold-for-gas affair).

https://lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4565#p4565

No surprises there, while a war against Iran is making headlines, with its regime firmer in place and the previous Ayatollah having been made into a 'martyr' with his son Mojtaba Khamenei selected as the new supreme leader...

Quietly US prosecutors have dropped the criminal case against Turkey’s state-run Halkbank for its role in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade sanctions against Iran (overseen by judge Richard M. Berman).
Prosecutors said “unique and extraordinary national security and foreign policy considerations” contributed to the settlement, in particular Turkey’s help in securing the 2025 October’s "ceasefire" deal between Israel and Hamas (while Palestinians in Gaza keep dying...).

Halkbank has agreed in a third party review (what a harsh 'punishment') of its anti-money laundering compliance as part of the deal, and promised to not “conduct or facilitate” transactions with any Iranian people or entities that involve people or financial institutions from the US (as they aren't allowed with or without this settlement).

In the Trump I administration, Attorney General William P. Barr had urged federal prosecutors in New York to not indict Halkbank and instead settle for a fine, which terms the US attorney Geoffrey Berman rejected: https://archive.is/q8VAN

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Wool took Unusual Machines public at a mere $4 a share in 2024.
It was Wool who arranged that Don Trump Jr. became a paid adviser for Unusual Machines, which sent the shares soaring, which made Don Jr a paper gain of $4.4 million.

In 2025, Don Jr and Eric, along with Wool, Dominari and others, took a 20% stake in a Bitcoin company, which went public as American Bitcoin. The deal made Dominari rich, with shares worth more than $150 million, while Eric’s stake is worth a cool near $450 million

As expected, Trump’s sons will likely profit from the Trump administration's $1.1 billion military equipment purchases.
Don Jr. and Eric Trump are investors in drone company Powerus that will likely get lucrative Pentagon contracts, and plans to go public on the Nasdaq through a reverse merger with Florida golf-course holding firm Aureus Greenway Holdings (merging with a drone company...).

Don Jr. and Eric have invested through American Ventures, one of the Trumps investment vehicles. Aureus shareholders include American Ventures and Dominari Securities.
Unusual Machines is also an investor in Powerus and Powerus is one of its customers.

Just before January 2025’s inauguration, Don Jr.’s was worth around $50 million and by the end of 2025, that figure had grown sixfold.
In 2025, Eric’s net worth went from around $40 million to around $400 million: https://archive.is/FlLfm

[Firestarter]

The German big pharma and agrochemical company Bayer bought agrochemical maker Monsanto in 2018, which produced the Roundup herbicides with glyphosate, that is the subject of widespread US litigation because they allegedly cause cancer.
On 18 February 2026, President Trump signed an executive order protecting domestic production of phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, for use in agriculture and the military (isn't it odd that chemicals to produce herbicides are in an executive order for chemical weapons?!?).

More interesting Monsanto links...

When Monsanto bought Searle in 1985, Donald Rumsfeld reportedly received a nice $12 million bonus

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In 1996, member of the Board of Directors of Monsanto, Michael Kantor, was appointed US Secretary of Commerce.

In 2001, Anne Veneman was appointed head of the USDA, in charge of regulating genetically engineered crops. Veneman had been on the Board of Directors of Monsanto subsidiary, Calgene: https://organicconsumers.org/brief-history-monsanto/

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On 21 January 2010, the US Supreme Court voted to open the floodgates to unlimited sums of corporate money in campaigns, including one Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Just 8 days later, Foley & Lardner partner Cleta Mitchell set up the non-profit Liberty Central Inc. on behalf of Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas' wife!

President George H.W. Bush selected Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas for the US Supreme Court.

Michael Taylor worked in the US Food and Drug administration during the Nixon and Reagan administrations before becoming a lawyer for Monsanto.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush appointed Taylor as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Policy. Taylor became Monsanto’s vice president for public policy in 1998-2001.
Taylor later was FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods in the Obama administration.
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Mitt Romney's national security adviser in his 2012 campaign — Joseph Cofer Black — since 2017 sits on the board of directors of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that formerly paid Hunter Biden $50K a month.
Cofer Black left the CIA in 2006 to join the Blackwater of Erik Prince, the brother of Trump´s education secretary, Betsy DeVos

Walbridge is run by John Rakolta Jr. who is a major Republican donor and together with Brian Ballard raised money for President Donald Trump and former Presidential nominee, the mormon Mitt Romney.
Rakolta is also a Mormon, and was National Finance chair for Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. His wife, Terry Rakolta, is the sister of Mitt Romney's former sister-in-law.
In 2019, President Donald made Rakolta Jr. the ambassador to the UAE

Mitt Romney had been an architect of Monsanto’s metamorphosis from a chemical manufacturer to a genetic engineering and agrichemical firm. Romney was CEO of Bain & Company, and Monsanto was its largest consulting client.

To relax Indonesia’s environmental regulations on genetically engineered cotton crops, Monsanto bribed an Indonesian official with an "envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills”, and “was also caught concealing the bribe with fake invoices”.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged that from “1997 to 2002, Monsanto inaccurately recorded, or failed to record, in its books and records approximately $700,000 of illegal or questionable payments made to at least 140 current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members”.
Monsanto admitted violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and paid a $1 million fine: https://usrtk.org/agrichemical-companie ... l-machine/

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Gitmo Ron’s lovely wife, Jill Casey Black DeSantis, worked at TEGNA where her boss was Gina Bianchini, who is also close to Marc Andreessen. Together they created Ning, and Bianchini later joined Andreessen Horowitz.

Marc Andreessen is also close to Clinton insider Larry Summers, who in turn was a mentor to none other than Yuri Milner (Prince Harry’s sugar daddy).

Summers was also friends with… Jeffrey Epstein.

Rise of the Rest‘s clients include… Anduril Industries.
Anduril Industries’ “smart wall” on the US-Mexico border, using facial recognition, identifies and tracks legal border crossers, registering those entering and leaving the US.
Anduril investors include the Thrive Capital run by the brother of Ivanka’s hubby Jared Kushner, that is also backed by Thiel

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Anduril raised around $4 billion at a $60 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Thrive Capital.

The $4 billion investment proved quite lucrative, as literally days after it was reported, Anduril was awarded a 10-year, $20 billion contract with the Pentagon on 13 March 2026: https://www.thedailystar.net/tech-start ... ln-4130111
(https://archive.is/MxaAc)


According to his 2025 financial disclosure, Vance holds up to $250,000 in Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, whose portfolio includes 4 companies that were awarded government contracts from the Trump-Vance administration.
Including (of course) Anduril Industries, which is expected to have major roles in the planned $175 billion Golden Dome missile defence system and autonomous border surveillance towers.

Three other companies in the fund - Hermeus, Slingshot Aerospace and ATLAS Space Operations - were also awarded big new contracts by the Trump administration: https://readsludge.com/2025/07/10/vance ... contracts/
(https://archive.is/dRNxi)