aimed at spurring the domestic production of glyphosate, a widely used
weedkiller that has figured in health lawsuits.
The move immediately set off alarms among supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and appeared to put Mr. Kennedy in an awkward position.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, which has been the target of tens of thousands of lawsuits that claim it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2018, as a plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Kennedy helped win a landmark $289 million jury verdict against Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, in a case contending the company knew the weedkiller caused cancer....
Mr. Kennedy has taken an aggressive posture on pesticides in the past. “The chemicals pollute our bodies the same way that they pollute the soil,” he said in 2024. In a report issued last year, a commission he chaired to examine the causes of chronic disease singled out glyphosate and another pesticide, atrazine, as potentially harmful to children.
Surely, though, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a plain-spoken, authentic, and principled guy. The Times continues
But in a statement issued through a spokesman Wednesday night, the health secretary said he supported the president.
“Donald Trump’s executive order puts America first where it
matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” Mr. Kennedy said in
the statement. “We must safeguard America’s national security first, because
all of our priorities depend on it.”
Mr. Trump’s order invoked the Defense Production Act, a 1950s-era law typically used in national emergencies to compel companies to produce certain materials or supplies that the president deems necessary for national security. Mr. Trump declared both glyphosate and phosphorus, used to manufacture the weedkiller, “critical to the national defense.”
“Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system,” Mr. Trump argued.
He ordered the agriculture secretary, in consultation with the defense secretary, to “determine the proper nationwide priorities” and gave them authority to compel production of the materials “to ensure a continued and adequate supply” of phosphorous and glyphosate-based herbicides, if necessary...
The Defense Production Act provides a pathway for companies to be shielded from certain liability suits, and Mr. Trump’s order appeared to extend that protection to producers of glyphosate. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in weeks in a case that asks whether federal law shields pesticide manufacturers from such lawsuits.
It's simply extraordinary or, in the literal sense of the word, unbelievable that continued over-production (and over-consumption) of soybeans, corn, and wheat- already heavily subsidized by the federal government is criticial to the national defense. However, those crops are intrinsic to maintaining a high rate of disease in the USA. Robert Kennedy, the con artist behind "Make America Healthy Again," knows that but total allegiance to the King is required.
The announcement was made at a rather curious time in that
Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotech giant that
acquired Monsanto in 2018, announced on Tuesday that it had reached a tentative
agreement that would pay plaintiffs $7.25 billion to settle tens of thousands
of lawsuits that claimed Roundup caused cancer.
The company maintains that the weedkiller is safe and an essential tool
for farmers.
Last year, several pharmaceuticals each gave one million dollars to subsidize Donald Trump's inauguration. They included Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Gilead, and- you guessed it- Bayer. If in fact, the agreement with Rondup victims is tentative, it can be pulled back or renegotiated. The President has given the company a powerful bargaining chip.
Nonetheless, this may be overthinking Donald's motivation for the executive order. He may have something different in mind.
In January of 2016, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump boasted, in only a slight exaggeration, "I could stand in the middle of Fifthe Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, O.K.? Ten years and one month later, in the first Cabinet meeting of his second term, the President called the American people "bloated, fat, and disgusting." Earlier, he had labeled the country itself "evil." A President bent on total power gives "disgusting" citizens of an "evil" country cancer-causing food may make sense to such a twisted individual.
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