Trump administration flip flops again on immigration enforcement in the agriculture sector

I wrote late last week about Trump's moratorium on immigration enforcement in the agriculture and hospitality sectors, and he has already reversed that position.  The Washington Post reports:  

Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

Here are some quotes from a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday re: what's a stake with raids on food producers and related sectors.   The headline is "Trump Struggles to Press Deportations Without Damaging the Economy," and some excerpts related to the agricultural sector follow.  The first is what Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday:  

Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans.  It took us decades to get into this mess and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out.

The journalists use the illustration of a Sackets Harbor, New York farmer whose diversified farm operation (which includes agri-tourism) was raided in March: 

Ron Robbins, who runs a family farm in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., has been short-handed since March, when he says around 45 immigration agents showed up.

ICE agents searched the 8,000-acre operation that milks 1,500 cows and grows corn, soybeans and some produce, then arrested eight people they said were in the country illegally. One of the detainees was a Guatemalan man who worked as the top assistant to the farm’s tourist business, Robbins said.

Since the raid on his property, Robbins, a 4th-generation farmer, said family members are working 18-hour days to keep the operation going, except for the strawberry patch. “We don’t have enough people to do this work,” he said. “It’s a no-win situation.”

Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that an Omaha meatpacker that was raided a few weeks ago is functioning at just 20% of capacity following the raid.  

Here's some helpful data from the WSJ on the extent to which our workforce is staffed by undocumented immigrants: 

Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally account for about 4.4% of the U.S. workforce, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis of 2023 census data. But their share of the workforce in some industries is much higher, the analysis found: 19% in landscaping services, 17% in crop production, 16% in animal slaughtering and processing and 13% in construction.

Roughly 12 million people immigrated to the U.S. from 2021 to 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office, many of them either illegally or through an emergency process set up by the Biden administration. Many now have some kind of temporary permission to stay in the country and work, though they could ultimately face removal. Others sneaked into the country or overstayed visas.

The newcomers provided the economy with an infusion of working-age people eager for jobs. Immigration boosted economic growth in recent years and helped cool a job market that was in danger of overheating by “rebalancing the tightest parts of the labor market, where wage and price pressures were most extreme,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note last year.

Trump has recently been given the nickname TACO--"Trump always chickens out"--in relation to trade negotiations.  I can't help think the same applies to his recent quick change of mind on immigration enforcement priorities.  

Postscript.  Politico Magazine published this on the topic yesterday, but I just became aware of it.  A few key excerpts follow:  

For now, Trump appears to be siding with the farmers. He responded last week with a vague Truth Social post acknowledging that his immigration policy was hurting farmers and vowed that “change was coming.” He followed with another post late Sunday, directing immigration officials to “FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

* * *

For months, farmers and ranchers across the United States operated with a cautious understanding that Trump’s deportation spree would not touch their workforce, with some lawmakers saying the White House had promised to spare the industry from aggressive enforcement — until last week.

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said the raids on agriculture producers were “just wrong” and suggested the president agrees — but it “must be somebody a little lower in the food chain that’s making those mistakes.”  

“They need to knock it off,” Thompson told reporters Thursday. “Let’s go after the criminals and give us time to put processes in place so we don’t disrupt the food supply chain.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said he was told “straight to my face” that the Trump administration was “not going after agriculture.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump has “always stood up for our farmers” and will continue to “strengthen the agricultural industry and boost exports” while also enforcing the country’s immigration laws and removing undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s statements on protecting the farm workforce came as a relief to the ag sector. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau, said in a statement he looks “forward to working with the President on solutions that ensure continuity in the food supply in the short term.” On Saturday, Michael Marsh, president of the National Council of Agriculture Employers, sent a letter expressing his willingness to collaborate with the Trump administration on a solution that “enhances national security and simultaneously recognizes that America’s ability to feed itself is integral to our national security.”

My Rural Travelogue (XLI): Exploring rural Japan amidst rising rice prices

Truck delivering rice plants in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, May 2025

I traveled to Japan for the first time in late May, which happened to be amidst a spike in rice prices.  As such, this was a topic much in the news during my time there, and I got interested in the matter and talked to many of our guides about why prices have risen so steeply of late.  I'll return to that subject below.  

Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture

Rice farms everywhere.  While on Honshu, the primary island in the Japanese archipelago, I had the opportunity to take many photos of rice fields and rice farming--and even a few rice farmers.  You don't have to get far out of the major cities--and this includes looking out the windows of bullet trains (the Japanese is "shinkansen") as you are whisked through the countryside--to see multitudes of what appear to be small family rice farms.  (All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025).

Agricultural activity
Rural Shiga Prefecture, May 2025

We learned that in exurban and rural places, many families have their own little family rice paddy. This seems especially common among elderly folks.  For example, in one village in Shiga prefecture (where I took the photo above of the rice plant delivery truck), we met a Japanese gentleman who came to greet us and take our photo at the local shrine.  He is retired from local government, and when we asked if he is a rice farmer, he said not any more, though he still raises a vegetable garden.   (The man, photo below, wore an Anaheim Angels baseball cap to signify he is a Shohei Ohtani fan, he told us, because that was Ohtani's first team; when he is out of his village, he wears a Dodgers cap to signify his fandom to the wider world).  

One elderly rice farmer we met in his field said he planted his crop on May 9, and we were there less than two weeks after that.  He was weed whacking the grass at the margins of his small paddy, which was adjacent to other small fields being tended by other elderly male farmers.  We also saw both elderly men and women tending vegetable patches.

Elderly Ohtani fan in rural Shiga 
Prefecture

(By the way, my family and I got to these Nagahama villages with Biwako Backroads Tours, an amazing little biking and walking tour company based in nearby Maibara.  The entrepreneur behind this company, Takako Matsui-Leidy, has terrific English language skills.  Her company offers many tours of  this area around the northern part of Lake Biwa, an easy train ride from Kyoto.  See photo below, near a green tea plantation in the area.  Highly recommend these outings.)

Biwako Backroads Tour, Nagahama,
Shiga May 2025

Shirakawa-go Village, May 2025

We also saw a lot of rice farming activity in the village of Shirakawa-go, in Gifu Prefecture, on the Sho River.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the historic structures, gassho-zukuri houses, with thatched roofs.  Farmers still live in the village, and we saw a great deal of rice farming activity while there, much of it involving mechanical equipment farmers seemed to be using to turn the fields or to put the plants in the ground.  We saw the same thing as we took the train from Takayama toward Nagoya a few days later.   

The spike in rice prices.  So why have rice prices doubled in Japan in the past year?  Well, it depends on who you ask.  Many folks indicated that the rice harvest was especially poor last year because of a very hot summer, and I found this New York Times story from October 2024 suggesting that scientists are working to genetically alter Japan's favorite rice to make it more heat resistant in the face of climate change.  Others mentioned that folks no longer want to be rice farmers and that those elderly folks we saw farming their own rice paddies, were a dying breed--literally.  

Vegetable gardens along irrigation canal
Rural Shiga Prefecture 

This New York Times coverage dug a little deeper: 

The shortage has been blamed on decades-old policies, meant to protect small-time farmers, that have blocked newcomers from buying or using agricultural land, leaving thousands of acres uncultivated. Efforts to change the system have been blocked by the national farming cooperative and other rural interests, which are stolid supporters of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

That has put Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba between a rock and a hard place. Urban voters have chafed at the soaring prices and shortages, which at times have forced rationing by supermarkets.

Here is some late March 2025 New York Times coverage of a farmer protest--partly on tractors(!)--in Tokyo.  

Over the past year, Japan has grappled with a more than 200,000-ton shortage of its staple grain. Rice prices have skyrocketed, and supermarkets have been forced to restrict amounts that shoppers can buy. The situation became so dire that the government had to tap its emergency rice reserves.

Farmer in rice field, Shirakawa-go Village,
 a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The twist is that even as Japan deals with shortages, the government is paying farmers to limit how much they grow. The policy, in place for more than half a century, consumes billions of dollars a year in public spending.

Farmers exasperated with the government regulations protested on Sunday. Under cherry blossoms in a park in central Tokyo, more than 4,000 farmers, wearing straw hats and sun caps, gathered with signs declaring “Rice is life” and “We make rice but can’t make a living.” Thirty of them drove tractors through the skyscraper-lined streets of the capital city.

Politicians' heads rolling:  The "rice minister" resigns.  In the midst of all this, on May 20 (our first  day in Japan), agriculture minister Taku Eto resigned after a significant gaffe:  admitting he'd never purchased rice.  Here's the full quote: 

I have never bought rice myself. Frankly, my supporters give me quite a lot of rice. I have so much rice at home that I could sell it.

Transportation to the garden plot for an elderly resident of
rural Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture 

I'm reminded of Barack Obama's 2007 campaign gaffe: 

Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?  I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.

Local rice for sale
Kinomoto Train Station, Shiga

I guess he didn't realize most people in Iowa don't eat arugula--or shop at Whole Foods.  But at least there was a hint of him doing this own grocery shopping.     

The Times further explains Prime Minister Ishiba's response in pushing Eto out, with a July election looming:

Underscoring the political importance of containing the furor, Mr. Ishiba said on Wednesday that he had asked one of the Liberal Democrats’ rising stars, Shinjiro Koizumi, the photogenic son of a former prime minister, to replace Mr. Eto.

Here is May 24 and May 26 coverage of the crisis by Nikkei Asia, in which Koizumi announces sales of government rice stockpiles.  His stated aim was to bring the price down to Y2000 per 5 kilograms by early June.  Don't know if that has happened yet, but this Reuters story says prices in Japanese grocery stores have fallen for the third straight week.  

Rice plants (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

California deploys new plan to prevent wolf attacks in north state

Grey wolves returned to California more than a decade ago, and conflicts between ranchers and wolves are becoming more common, especially in far northern California, where most of the state's wolf packs are.  Jack Dolan of the Los Angeles Times reported in April on wolf attacks on livestock in far northern California here, and a recent story about Shasta County declaring a state of emergency over wolf attacks is here.  (Prior posts about wolves in California are here.)  

Now, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has announced plan to help ranchers, who have lost 58 livestock to wolves in the past year.  Here's an excerpt from Manola Secaira's story for Capital Public Radio: 

The CDFW’s plan, guided by endangered species regulations, currently only allows ranchers to ward off wolves using non-lethal tactics, like making loud noises,shining bright lights or electric fencing. But Weston Roberti and other ranchers say this isn’t working.

* * * 

The state compensates ranchers for proven losses. But Axel Hunnicut, the state’s gray wolf coordinator, says this uncertainty still carries weight for ranchers.

“You could imagine someone wondering, like, ‘Shoot, what is my future?’” Hunnicut says. “Especially when that compensation pot is not well funded.”

And it’s not the only cost. Hunnicut says wolf attacks can stress out cattle. That can lead to weight loss, and fewer calves, which also hurts ranchers’ bottom line.

* * * 

Although ranchers aren’t currently able to harm wolves when scaring them off, that could change. Earlier this year, the state’s conservation plan for gray wolves entered into its second phase. As part of that shift, the state now has the option to allow more aggressive tactics, called “injurious harassment.”

“Injurious harassment means the animal can actually be harmed,” Hunnicut says. “Not harmed to the point that it could be lethal, but harmed in that it would get a negative stimulus.”

He says that could include the use of rubber bullets and bear spray.

Amaroq Weiss, the Center for Biological Diversity’s senior wolf advocate, says she understands the need to move to more aggressive tactics – but only if ranchers have already tried the non-harmful ones.

“For me, what's most important is to first of all, not have that be your first reaction,” she says.

* * *

[California] is home to nearly 40 million people. Kaggie Orrick, a researcher with UC Berkeley’s California Wolf Project, says this makes California a unique case when dealing with wolf conflicts.

“There’s a lot more people here. There’s a different prey base. There’s a lot less open area,” Orrick says. “While we are able to draw support and understanding from other states that do have wolves … California might be a little bit different.”

Since April, four counties in Northern California have declared a state of emergency due to the increasing presence of wolves: Modoc, Sierra, Plumas and Shasta.

Paul Roenn, a supervisor with Sierra County, says some community members have reported seeing wolves walking around outside their homes.

“The interactions have escalated to the point where you can see that it's going to become a public safety issue,” Roen says. “We have to get some expanded deterrence because what we're doing isn't working.”

* * * 

On June 9, the CDFW launched a summer strike team as part of a new pilot effort to curb gray wolf attacks on livestock. The agency says the team will provide round-the-clock aid for ranchers experiencing frequent conflicts with wolves. They’ll also be providing training and help livestock producers create management plans to mitigate future conflicts.

The pilot also allows CDFW staff to use more aggressive tools when handling wolves, like the rubber bullets and bear spray, although these options are still currently unavailable to ranchers.

Here is the Sacramento Bee's coverage of the new CDFW plan.  Read here about how Colorado is dealing with inevitable conflicts between ranchers and wolves.  

Trump pulls back from immigration enforcement in agricultural sector

This quote is from the New York Times story quoting "an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations."  

Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.  

The story continues:  

The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the guidance.

I wrote yesterday about recent immigration raids in the agriculture sector.  

Postscript:  Here is fuller analysis from the New York Times on June 14 of Trump's about face on raids in the agricultural sector.   The story's lede follows: 

On Wednesday morning [June 11], President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.

Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown.

* * *

Farmers rely on immigrants to work long hours, Ms. Rollins said. She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry.

She wasn’t the first person to try to get this message through to the president, nor was it the first time she had spoken to him about it. But the president was persuaded.

This has me thinking how interesting it would be to know which big corporate players in the agricultural sector have Rollins' ear; whose calls does she take?  Several of the stories I read about the immigration raids on agricultural interests mention the Farm Bureau as opposing the raids and raising alarms over their consequences for producers.    

Also from the NYT story is this interesting tidbit: 

Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach, targeting all immigrants without legal status to fulfill the president’s promise of the biggest deportation campaign in American history.

Trump's immigration enforcement spreads to rural America, the agricultural sector

It was inevitable, I suppose, that Trump's immigration enforcement would ultimately turn to rural America and the farm sector, and that matter is getting a lot more coverage this week.  The New York Times began covering the situation in upstate New York last week, and this week the enforcement spread to California in earnest (see coverage here).  

Here's a quote from the Los Angeles Times coverage of recent raids in central California, which provides perspective:

Until this week, California’s agricultural sector had largely escaped the large-scale raids that the Department of Homeland Security has deployed in urban areas, most recently in Los Angeles and Orange counties. California farmers — many of them ardent supporters of Donald Trump — have seemed remarkably calm as the president vowed mass deportations of undocumented workers.

Many expected that Trump would find ways to protect their workforce, noting that without sufficient workers, food would rot in the fields, sending grocery prices skyrocketing.

But this week brought a different message. Asked about enforcement actions in food production regions, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on border policy, said growers should hire a legal workforce.

“There are programs — you can get people to come in and do that job,” he said. “So work with ICE, work with [U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services], and hire a legal workforce. It’s illegal to knowingly hire an illegal alien.”

The Los Angeles Times also reported on raids earlier in the week.  That story says that half of California's 256,000  farmworkers are undocumented, according to a report from UC Merced.  

Meanwhile, this afternoon, Trump seemed to recognize the damage that the raids and detentions are doing  to farmers and to suggest he would back off immigration enforcement in that sector.  Here's the lede and some key quotes from Trump: 

President Trump acknowledged on Thursday that his immigration policies are hurting the farming and hotel industries, making a rare concession that his crackdown is having ripple effects on the American work force.

Mr. Trump, who has made mass deportation a centerpiece of his presidency, said on social media that “changes are coming.” And while there was no sign of any significant modification to his policies, Mr. Trump’s statements suggested the scale of his crackdown may be alienating industries he wants to keep in his corner.

Here is a further quote from Trump:

Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.

* * *

Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.

* * *

We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels. We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.

Read more about Trump's relationship with farmers, including during his first term, here and here.  This story is about a recent raid on a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska.  Here is an April NYT story about detention of a mother and her children from a dairy farm in upstate New York.   

In addition to these reports from the coasts, the New York Times has covered the story of a Hong Kong national who has lived and worked in rural Missouri for decades, here and here, with a focus on how the boot-heel community rallied around the mother of three who worked as a server at a local diner.  She was recently released; it is unclear if her community's efforts to gain her release influenced the outcome of the matter.  

Postscript:  One June 13, NPR spoke to the president of the United Farm Workers, Teresa Romero, about these issues. 

Signs that rural voters are sticking with Trump, despite the pain of cuts

Two recent stories suggest that Trump voters--including rural ones--are loyal to Trump, even though some early decisions made by his administration are likely to hurt them.  The first of these stories, out of far northern California, was published in The Guardian and written by Dani Anguiano.  She reports from Shasta County, which has a recent history of right-wing activism and militias (read more here, here and here), and she quotes several residents.  Some excerpts follow: 

In March, about 150 people took to the streets in Redding, the Shasta county seat, to protest aggainst proposed cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. A month later more than 1,000 people in the area gathered to demonstrate against the administration’s policies.

Amid reports about possible reductions to Medicaid, the head of the area’s largest healthcare provider warned such action could have “crippling” impacts in a county where the local Medicaid provider serves nearly a third of the population. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers, including the region’s Republican representatives, signed a letter in late April urging Congress to protect Head Start, the federally funded education program.

 * * *

Bruce Ross, a Shasta county Republican, acknowledged the difficulties of seeing layoffs, but said he had been pleased with the direction of the administration.

“Everybody who lives up in north-eastern California knows folks who work for the Forest Service, or for federal agencies, and it’s tough for them. I think on a human level, that’s real,” Ross said. But, he added, he had seen a willingness on the part of the administration to listen when local officials have pushed back against proposed cuts, and the practical changes had ultimately, so far, been less severe than they initially seemed.

“There’s been a lot of drama about it. But I think the actual results have shown that the administration is listening to people and saying, OK, this is important. We’re gonna take it back.”

Congressman Doug LaMalfa, a Republican and staunch Trump supporter who represents a large swath of northern California’s interior, has acknowledged that some of his constituents, and Republicans broadly, are concerned, but echoed Ross’s sentiments. “But they’re listening to us. I got in a room with Elon [Musk] and his right-hand man. They’re understanding us now, and they’re going to look at it more through that lens, and they’ll certainly listen to us,’ he told the Chico Enterprise-Record in March.

More high profile than The Guardian story is sociologist Arlie Hochschild's piece in the New York Times a few days ago.  Her most recent book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, is set in Pikeville, Kentucky and the state's 5th congressional district, one of the poorest in the nation.  She spent several years living there off and on, getting to know folks, and that formed the basis of the 2024 book (just as several years of living in the Lake Charles, Louisiana area formed the basis for her 2106 Strangers in Their Own Land).  Now, Hochschild has gone back to Kentucky's 5th congressional district to talk to people about how they feel about the early days of the Trump administration.  Here's Hochschild's summation of how Trump's policies are likely to impact the region:  

[E]xperts predict Mr. Trump’s tariffs will raise prices, and his budget cuts will hit some of his strongest supporters the hardest. Meals on Wheels: cuts. Heating cost assistance: cuts. Black lung screening: cuts. One nearby office handling Social Security has closed. Even the Department of Veterans Affairs may have to pull back on the services it offers.

These are services people need. More than 40 percent of people in the Fifth District rely on Medicaid for their medical care, including addiction treatment. Now, Mr. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is poised to cut benefits, which could lead to layoffs in the largest employer in eastern Kentucky, the Pikeville Medical Center. Meanwhile, many children in the district qualify for food stamps, and the administration’s chain saw is coming for those, too.

Hochschild found that some residents of the region seemed more committed to Mr. Trump than they had been before. Here are some key quotes:

Mr. Trump’s angry tone didn’t seem to bother his supporters in the district. Calling his opponents scum? “Oh, that’s how Trump talks. People know how he talks, and they voted for him. I wouldn’t talk that way and don’t like it, but I’m glad I voted for him,” said Andrew Scott, a Trump supporter and mayor of Coal Run Village, a town of around 1,600 nestled next to Pikeville.

As for the likely cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and Meals on Wheels, Mr. Scott mused, “You know how proud and stoic Appalachians are — we know how to take a little pain. People,” he explained, “may have to suffer now to help make America great later. Trump’s tariffs could raise prices but that will force companies to gradually relocate to the U.S.”

Many of the people I spoke to recognized that this bill would create some pain for them or their neighbors, but that didn’t seem to bother them. One Trump supporter told me that if you like the guy who’s making you suffer, you don’t mind so much. As Mr. Trump himself has put it, America is akin to a sick patient, and the tariffs are the surgery — “The patient lived, and is healing.”

This is consistent with something I've been saying since at least 2000:  Stubbornness is a real force to be reckoned with among many Trump voters (those we might label MAGA) and--for that matter--with some on the left, too. I think that progressives need to be willing to re-think our positions on some issues, especially in light of new information.  As one of my very progressive friends put it, we all need to be able to identify one issue on which we differ from the "progressive blob."   Of course I would say ditto for conservatives and the conservative blob.  

Also important is how progressives talk to Trump supporters, especially about things that may not go well for them.  I very much appreciated a quote Hochschild included in her NYT piece.  It's from an addiction counselor who is not a Trump supporter:

If people in Pike County or elsewhere get socked with higher prices, there might come a tipping point. But what happens then would hinge on how Democrats handle it, what better ideas they have to offer, their tone of voice. If the left starts scolding, "You Trump supporters brought this on yourselves," or "We told you so," people around here will get more pissed at the snarky left than they are at the hurtful right — and Trump will march on.

These possible reactions by the left are just what I documented in my "Rural Bashing," in which I also argued that "I told you so" is a very, very unhelpful response.   

In any event, these two stories remind me of a conversation I had with a Trump supporter in my hometown this spring.  I asked this person how the local school, which educates many children from low-income families, would get by without the Title I funding that flows from the Department of Education,  given that Trump was abolishing the Department.  She replied, "oh, he'll find a way to get us that money.  We can't survive without it."  As much as I oppose most Trump policies--certainly including abolition of the Department of Education, I hope she is right--that they will somehow get the funds they need--because I care so much about that school and that community.  

I also want to acknowledge that these stories and my anecdote run counter to the data in an early May story in Newsweek suggesting that Trump was losing support among rural voters.  Here's the key data from that story:

The 2024 election saw Trump win 63 percent of rural voters, up from 60 percent in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

But a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll, conducted between April 21 and 23 among 1,439 adults, shows that Trump's support among rural voters is declining.

According to the poll, just 46 percent of rural voters now approve of Trump's job performance, while 45 percent disapprove. In February, 59 percent approved and 37 percent disapproved.

Trump's approval rating has also declined slightly among urban, small city, and suburban voters. Among big city voters, his approval has dropped from 42 percent to 40 percent. Among small city voters, his approval has dropped from 42 percent to 36 percent.

Meanwhile, among suburban voters, his approval rating has declined by 1 point to 40 percent. The only group that Trump has seen a rise in support from is small town voters, with 53 percent now approving of his job performance, up from 46 percent in February. The poll had a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points.

Rural sociologist Tim Slack of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge provided context on the cuts, including this:  

Poverty is higher in rural America. Underemployment is higher and labor force participation is lower among rural working-age folks. There is a wide and growing rural-urban gap in death rates among working-age people—part of the rural mortality penalty. So, the struggles are pronounced. 

On the uneven use of investigators by indigent defense attorneys in rural California

CalMatters last week published this story by Anat Rubin about the relative lack of investigators to assist indigent defense attorneys in some counties, with the greatest deficits in nonmetro counties.  The story that illustrates the problem comes out of Siskiyou County, a nonmetro county on the state line. This paragraph explains why investigators matter: 

Defense investigators interview witnesses, visit crime scenes, review police reports and retrieve video surveillance footage that might prove the defendant was on the other side of town when a crime was committed, or that an assault was an act of self-defense. They do work that most lawyers are not trained to do. Without them, police and prosecutorial misconduct — among the most common causes of wrongful convictions — remain unchecked, significantly increasing the likelihood that people will go to prison for crimes they did not commit.

And here's an excerpt with details of the situation in California:

The lack of investigators affects counties throughout the state, from poor, rural areas like Siskiyou to the state’s largest and most well-funded public defense offices. Los Angeles employed just 1 investigator for every 10 public defenders — one of the state’s worst ratios, according to the most recent data from the California Department of Justice. Only seven California counties met the widely accepted minimum standard of 1 investigator for every 3 attorneys.

The situation is most alarming in the 25 California counties that don’t have dedicated public defender offices and pay private attorneys to represent indigent people in criminal court. Most of these attorneys receive a flat fee for their services, and the cost of an investigator would eat away at their profits. Some counties allow contracted attorneys to ask the court for additional funds for investigations, but court records show the attorneys rarely make those requests.

In Kings County, which has one of the highest prison incarceration rates in California, contracted attorneys asked the court for permission to hire an investigator in 7% of criminal cases from 2018 to 2022. In Lake County, attorneys made those requests in just 2% of criminal cases over a three-year period; in Mono County, it was less than 1%. To earn a living from meager county contracts, research shows, private attorneys and firms must persuade defendants to accept plea deals as quickly as possible. An investigation is an expensive delay.

And here is a paragraph putting this all in the context of local funding of the indigent defense function.

As the nation caught up [on funding indigent defense], California slipped behind. The state kept its defender system entirely in the hands of its counties. Today, it is one of just two states — alongside Arizona — that don’t contribute any funding to trial-level public defense, according to the Sixth Amendment Center. The state does not monitor or evaluate the counties’ systems. There are no minimum standards, and for many defendants there are no investigations — even in the most serious cases.

I have written extensively in academic journals here and here about this latter issue and its consequences in rural counties.  

Another rural institution certain to be hurt by Trump administration cuts: public libraries

Children's Section of Rio Vista Library, Solano County California
(c)Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The likely disproportionate harm Trump administration policies and budget cuts will have on rural America has been a theme of several recent posts on the blog.  In this one, I'm going go to leverage a story by Emily Hays of Illinois Public Radio, who reported on the topic a few days ago from Greenup, population 1,365 in central Illinois.  The excerpt that follows provides insights into why rural libraries are so vulnerable and it echoes a theme from other stories about rural vulnerability: because of weak local tax bases, small towns and nonmetro counties are less able to absorb the loss of federal funds that have helped to provide all sorts of services.  

Take and Make Kits at the Newton County (AR) Library
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025 

I'm also using this post to share some photos of rural libraries that I've taken in the past few years, some from my home county, Newton County, Arkansas, and some from California towns.  What I've seen in my hometown library, where I've spent more time recently, is that these institutions provide a wide range of services, from a seed bank to lending telescopes to craft bags for kids.  They host legal aid attorneys coming to chat about elder law and other issues residents may need to know about.  Sadly, to my mind, they may also mindlessly distribute The Epoch Times and other right-wing propaganda.  

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

The following excerpt from journalist Hayes story features her in conversation with Vickie Pierce, the retired English teacher working part time as the circulation clerk in what is described as one large room: 

Telescopes on loan at
Newton County Library, AR
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

PIERCE: We're a small-town library, so really small budget. And honestly, I'm not sure how we manage to stay open.

Reading room, Coleville Library,
Mono County, CA
(c)Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

HAYES: Part of how they stay open is through grants from the independent federal agency the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Before the pandemic, the federal government covered around 5% of Greenup library's operating costs. Kate McDowell is a professor at the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences. She says the IMLS is a very small agency...

KATE MCDOWELL: That has impacts on almost every community in the whole of the United States and territories.

HAYES: Public libraries get most of their funding from county and city taxes. IMLS distributes the majority of federal library funds. McDowell says the grants vary year to year and are often small, but they help libraries try new things.

MCDOWELL: What the IMLS funds is not just the subsistence of libraries, although that's there too - it's their future.

Mammoth Lakes Library,

 HAYES: IMLS gave out $267 million last year to libraries and museums. That's 3,000th of a percent of federal spending. But the future of that funding is in doubt. In March, almost all of the IMLS staff were put on administrative leave. In an executive order, President Trump claimed the move would reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. Greenup isn't expecting any federal money this year, and Pierce says the library is financially cautious.

PIERCE: We squeeze every penny three or four or five times to get the most out of it.

HAYES: And Pierce says the idea of taking more money away from libraries sickens her. The American Library Association says that's been happening nationwide to libraries and museums receiving IMLS grants.

Seed saving chart and seed library
Newton County (AR) Library 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

* * *

[A] judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Congress has funded the department through September. For now, Greenup Library says it's still providing the same services, but that could change for it and other rural libraries.

Prior posts about rural libraries are here.  I want to specifically highlight this 2013 NPR feature on a rural Missouri library.  Here's one from 2008 about a library in a barn in New England.  This 2017 post is about Douglas County, Oregon's decision not to keep open a single library.   And a dispute about how much to pay the librarian in this Arkansas county was the basis for political ponderings in this lengthy op-ed in the New York Times in 2019.

Libraries are important sources of WiFi,
as illustrated by this sign 
at the Newton County (AR) Library
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025