Medicaid Recipients to Replace Immigrant Farm Workers
Don't let crazy become normal.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on March 26 in a screen shot of her YouTube video where she went after the threats of DEIA seeds and made sure USDA won’t be inclusive of all farmers. Keep reading to see her double down on crazy yesterday.
At 170 days of the Trump Administration, I knew I’d become numb to things MAGA and Republicans are doing. However, there always seems to be a new level of batshit crazy to jolt me into the realization that we all need to continue to be shocked and outraged. We must keep showing up. We must not look away from the horror show playing out that is dismantling our nation piece by piece.
For me, yesterday was one of those days.
First Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins made a comment on the steps of USDA with Republican members of congress and governors in attendance. You can watch the entire press event here on C-SPAN. The bats start shitting at minute 45.
You can also read the summary at The Hill which also has a short video clip embedded. The headline does a great job of capturing the jaw dropping proclamation from the Secretary of Agriculture, “Rollins suggests Medicaid recipients can replace deported farmworkers.”
If your jaw didn’t drop, read it again. Yes, the Secretary of Agriculture said that the solution to farm labor challenges that will result in deporting all of the undocumented farm workers will be to replace them with people on Medicaid who need to fulfill their work requirements.
You don’t have to have worked on or operated your own farm for 50 years to understand the dipshittery of this statement. That it rolled off her tongue with confidence and righteousness should scare the shit out of every farmer and rancher in the country.
This is one of the most unqualified cabinets in our nation’s history. When you see one of the members say something completely unhinged directly related to the area they lead, it makes you realize just how terrible this cohort of appointed leaders confirmed by the Senate really is. Since I know a lot about agriculture, I was shocked out of my numbness. And I was reminded that all these appointees are serving Trump only. The hell with the rest of us.
Here’s the quote as reported in The Hill.
“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said during a news conference with Republican governors. “Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure, and then also, when you think about there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program, there are plenty of workers in America.”
Secretary Rollins, you clearly know almost nothing about American agriculture. Let me explain a couple of things for you. If someone is on Medicaid and must find a job, they should not try working on a farm unless they are going to be operating a tractor with auto-steer or working in the office. Because farmwork, especially the work performed by immigrant laborers, is really physically demanding.
Also if someone is farming and needs to hire farmworkers, I would not recommend they hire people who qualify for Medicaid. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be some exceptions to that approach. But as a hiring strategy, I wouldn’t try and replace immigrant farm workers with people using Medicaid because farmwork, especially the work performed by immigrant laborers, is really physically demanding.
Why did she mention Medicaid and work requirements? Because she’s arguing that President Trump is working towards a 100% all American workforce, including in agriculture.
The second example that our Secretary of Agriculture doesn’t know anything about agriculture is that basically the entire agriculture community has been trying to find a way to normalize foreign born agricultural workers. There’s a lot of disagreement on how this should be done, but that it should be done has been a shared goal among nearly all major agriculture organizations in the United States. When Secretary of Agriculture Rollins suggests that all of the roughly 2 million foreign born agricultural workers need to be replaced by American born workers she really shows her hand that she doesn’t understand the industry she is supposed to lead.
Farm Aid has a great fact sheet about immigration and the food system here. Rollins thinks this labor pool can simply be replaced. Farmers, ranchers, and the agriculture industry know that it can’t be done without decimating American agriculture. Her comments are damning proof that we have a Secretary of Agriculture that doesn’t know even the very basics of the industry she claims to lead.
And what does radically increased automation and deportation mean for farm and ranch country, you know, rural America? Decline, depopulation, contraction. As a nearly lifelong rural Iowan, I’m back on my feet, ready to fight.
I’m not even going to mention how bad this idea is for the rest of the country who would still like to eat three meals a day.
Another bit of turbulence that got my attention yesterday regarding the state of our nation was the debate about the role the National Weather Service did or did not play in the tragedy of the floods in Texas. Last night the number of dead and missing totaled 270 souls.
Federal workers mostly do jobs we don’t think about because when they are doing their jobs well, we don’t really notice. But when we need them in an emergency and their service isn’t there, it can be a matter of life and death. The details about the specifics of the situation in Kerr County, Texas will be unfolding. However, the big picture about investing in the kinds of government services that Americans and our communities deserve and expect is clear. Those services were not in place during the floods on July 4.
Not to be outdone by the Secretary of Agriculture for batshit crazy, here’s a quote in yesterday’s Associated Press by Governor Abbot of Texas.
The Republican governor, who took a helicopter tour of the disaster zone, dismissed a question about who was to blame for the deaths, saying, “That’s the word choice of losers.”
“Every football team makes mistakes,” he said. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones who say, ’Don’t worry about it, man, we got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again and we’re going to win this game.’ The way winners talk is not to point fingers.”
I can’t even imagine being the parent of one of the young girls from that church camp who drowned and hearing my governor say that.
That brings us to strike three for batshit crazy on July 8. Here’s the NPR headline “Supreme Court allows Trump to resume mass federal layoffs for now.” This is the Supreme Court allowing the Trump Administration to move forward with its direction for agencies across the federal government to implement large scale reductions in force (RIFs). Lower courts had temporarily blocked implementation of those plans.
In case you’ve forgotten, the attempt to fire federal workers got restrained, but the courts allowed the deferred resignation program to move forward. That was the Fork in the Road from Elon Musk way back in January. And then there was another round a few weeks later. A second chance to get the hint to take the off ramp and get paid with benefits until September or you’re going to be fired. The firing can now begin.
At the National Weather Service, the Trump Administration was successful in cutting about 600 jobs up to yesterday. Here’s a story on National Public Radio.
That wasn’t their RIF program. That was the culmination of firings, early retirements, and voluntary separations. Now federal agencies will be able to implement their RIF plans in addition to all these other job cuts. If you didn’t get the hint and take the Fork in the Road, now the Supremes have opened the door for Trump to fire you.
Because I know USDA, here’s what that looks like. People got fired, then brought back, then offered a second round of deferred resignations and just like that USDA has 16,000 fewer employees. And now they will start their RIF processes after today’s Supreme Court ruling.
Which means while we’re still figuring out if staffing shortfalls at the National Weather Service led to the catastrophic loss of life last week, the Trump Administration got the green light to implement further reductions in force.
Let me summarize how I experienced yesterday.
The Secretary of Ag says Medicaid recipients will replace immigrant farm laborers as we deport 2 million foreign born agricultural workers. The Governor of Texas deflects questions about staffing at the National Weather Service and communication with local officials by calling the question a distraction. He offers a sports analogy where he is a winner while 270 people are dead or missing in his state. And the Supreme Court green lights MAGA World to keep cutting the entirety of the federal government, which I have to assume includes RIF’ing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where the National Weather Service is located.
I often find myself becoming numb to what this administration is doing to our country. And then I have a day like yesterday where I’m jolted back into the reality that we have to keep fighting. We can’t become numb to the batshit crazy things Republicans are doing to our great nation.
I have to believe that ordinary Americans will continue to rise up and push back as the shit gets deeper. We won’t let the crazy become normal. We’ll keep supporting each other to move out of the numbness and back into action.
Good morning day 171. We’re still here, and we’re going to continue to fight.
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I always learn new words when reading your column. "Dipshittery" is a terrific description of much of what is happening in the Trump administration. I would like to add that my jaw dropped when I heard the Sec of Ag talk about replacing farm workers with Medicaid recipients. It reminded me of the kind of things my friends and I would have talked about when we were 12 and clueless. Then again, I don't think that even at 12 we would have been heartless enough to refer to flood victims as "losers." There is no bottom to MAGA. Every time we think they’ve gone as low as they can, they keep digging. It reminds me of what a pundit said back in the first Trump administration: "The cruelty is the point."
I too was dumbfounded when I heard the remarks from the woman who is the head of USDA but knows nothing about the labor force needed on farms. This is worse than our senator who told us we’re all gonna die.
We need to continue to rise up and resist this language and show some humanness towards each other.