Big-money GOP donors who previously spurned the president have joined the 2020 Trump train

Some establishment Republican fundraisers who abandoned the party when it nominated Donald Trump in 2016 are back on board, set to support his 2020 reelection campaign with an extensive fundraising operation. The big-bucks bundlers say they're now focused on a common enemy: liberal Democrats. Trump's 2020 fundraising program will include deep-pocketed lobbyists, business leaders, and former political appointees who bundled millions for previous Republican presidential candidates but sat on the sidelines or even scorned Trump in the last cycle, Politico reports.

Roy Bailey, a Dallas fundraiser who was a top official for the pro-Trump political action committee America First Action, said that more than 150 people have signed on to the new effort, including individuals who previously had publicly attacked Trump. “There were still a lot of people who were trying to lick their wounds and hadn’t quite gotten over the fact that he had whipped everybody. They were slow to come on board,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of people that in 2016, they just weren’t on board with candidate Trump at all and they said, ‘Look, Roy, he has won me over. I’m all in.'"

Todd Ricketts, the national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, says that fundraisers are ready to do their part in bringing the party together for the 2020 push and an all-out war against the eventual Democratic nominee. They'll join "raisers" clubs such as the 45 Club, Trump Train, and Builders Club. “I’m really hoping to make sure we get every person that was a Rubio or Bush supporter in ’16 or Cruz and so on and make sure that they’re working for the president and even going back to a lot of the Romney people from 2012,” Ricketts said.

The fundraising operation, to be unveiled May 7, will mirror the efforts that bankrolled the George. W. Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns, such as the Pioneers Network that took Bush to the White House in 2001. The bundlers will hold a closed-door meeting in Washington with Trump campaign aides to discuss the operation and formalize its structure, including quarterly targets. Fundraisers who round up $25,000 in the campaign will be given perks, including exclusive briefings with senior campaign staff and invitations to dinners, retreats, and receptions hosted by the campaign.

Jack Oliver, a GOP fundraiser Bloomberg once dubbed "the campaign guru," has been a bundler for Republican presidential candidates since the launch of Bush's 2000 campaign. A close ally of the Bush family, Oliver sidelined his money in 2016 after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped out of the race. But this time, Oliver is going all in for Trump. “I think you’ll have a significant number of Bush and Romney veterans that were on the sidelines or didn’t get overly involved in 2016 but will be involved in the 2020 campaign,” he said. “All you have to do is look at what the other side is gearing up for and this is a pretty easy decision for a lot of people,” said Verhoff. “From a policy standpoint, there’s virtually nothing they disagree with, then layer on top of that the choice that the other side is presenting to the country and it’s a no-brainer.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/big-money-gop-donors-who-previously-spurned-the-president-have-joined-the-2020-trump-train

Trump Says He Won't Nominate Herman Cain For Fed Board

Six years after Herman Cain bowed out of the Republican primary, he has now suffered defeat for the second time this time in his quest to gain a seat on the Fed board. Moments ago, Trump tweeted that the former Godfather's Pizza executive - whose Fed board application was all but dead after 4 Republicans said they would oppose his nomination making his passage impossible - has requested to be removed from nomination even though just last Wednesday Cain told the WSJ that he won't withdraw from the Fed board consideration.

And while Trump's other Fed board nominee, Stephen Moore, is still in the running, his odds of being nominated are not much higher than Cain's. Which reminds us what we said last Wednesday, when we predicted that it was only a matter of time before Cain "accepts reality", when we predicted that "Trump will have no choice but to find one - or perhaps two - new uberdoves to replace the current duo he has nominated, and whose odds of being approved are virtually nil." As such, we once again recommend AOC, for the simple reason that if there is one person who can finally end the Fed, it would be the upstart Democratic Socialist, who will sooner or later mandate the Fed to print the roughly $100 trillion needed to fund her Green New Deal, and in doing so end the reign of the reserve currency once and for all.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-22/trump-says-he-wont-nominate-herman-cain-fed-board

New Roundup-Cancer Lawsuit Exposes Cozy Relationship Between Monsanto And EPA

A third lawsuit related to claims that Monsanto’s Roundup causes cancer has revealed new details about the cozy relationship between the biotech giant and U.S. regulators. On Monday, Monsanto Co. corporate spokesman William Reeves admitted the corporation has regularly communicated with U.S. regulatory agencies regarding reviews of the controversial Roundup herbicide. Reeves denied that Monsanto had given the agencies orders to follow. Reeves’ testimony came about during the latest lawsuit against biotech giant Monsanto, as Alva and Alberta Pilliod fight to prove that Roundup caused their cancer.

The Pilliods are both living with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after spraying the herbicide Roundup on their properties for nearly 30 years. The septuagenarian couple were diagnosed with the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, in 2011 and 2015. Now the couple is seeking damages related to their use of Roundup after recent studies have linked the world’s most popular herbicide to cancer.

Courthouse News reported on the latest developments in the case: “Attorney Brent Wisner, representing plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod, played video testimony of Monsanto corporate spokesman William Reeves in court Monday, in which he acknowledged Monsanto executives had exchanged text messages with regulators who sat on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency committee that found glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is not carcinogenic for humans.The Pilliods’ legal team hopes these email and text exchanges will be enough evidence of collusion between Monsanto and the EPA to delay a review by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a public health agency connected to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The text messages show that on June 18, 2015, Monsanto scientist Eric Sachs sent a text message to former EPA toxicologist Mary Manibusan, looking for help finding a contact in the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Sachs was looking to communicate with someone in relation to the agency’s ongoing work developing a toxicological profile of glyphosate, Roundup’s main ingredient. The ATSDR had begun working on the profile after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research concluded that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In another text, Manibusan told Dan Jenkins, Monsanto’s liaison to U.S. regulatory agencies like the EPA, that he may need help “trying to do everything we can to keep from having a domestic IARC occur with this group,” in reference to the ATSDR. By June 23, 2015, Jenkins wrote to his Monsanto colleagues alerting them that Jack Housenger, director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, would put a hold on the report. “ATSDR Director and Branch Chief have promised Jack Housenger (Director of the US Office of Pesticide Programs) to put their report ‘on hold’ until after EPA releases its preliminary risk assessment (PRA) for glyphosate,” Jenkins wrote.

When questioned about these texts by the Pilliods’ lawyers, Reeves confirmed the text messages were authentic, but stated, “I never heard anyone at the EPA say they were going to tell ATSDR what to do.” “It’s not a hard call,” Weisenburger said on the witness stand, stating that using Roundup more than two days per year doubles the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “It’s the intensity of exposure that’s more important than the length.”

The Pilliods’ trial is expected to wrap up in the coming weeks, with Monsanto’s lawyers beginning their cross examination next week. The case is the third lawsuit brought against Monsanto in the last two years. In 2018, a California jury found that Monsanto’s Roundup contributed to cancer in DeWayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper. In that case, evidence of corporate misconduct played a key role in the jury’s decision. In August 2018, Johnson was awarded $289 million after a jury found that Monsanto failed to notify him and other consumers of the dangers of Roundup. Additionally, a jury in San Francisco recently found that Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer played a significant role in contributing to 70-year old Edwin Hardeman’s cancer. Hardeman used Roundup on his 56-acre Sonoma County property for decades before he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2015. The unanimous verdict concluded a trial that may determine the future of thousands of similar lawsuits filed against biotechnology giant Monsanto.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/new-roundup-cancer-lawsuit-exposes-cozy-relationship-between-monsanto-and-epa