"Rural" all over the news as Senate passes "Big Beautiful Bill" that will undermine rural services, especially health care

Analysis of what Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" would do to rural health care has been in the news for several weeks, and it stayed there today as the Senate passed the Bill by a vote of 50-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie.  Here I'm going to highlight just what Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias had to say about the impact of the bill on rural healthcare.  This appeared on the Ezra Klein Show today, July 1, but much of it was recorded in advance in anticipation that the bill would pass.  I'm just going to highlight the bits about rural health care, including as they relate to "red state" voters: 

Klein: [T]hey are very substantially cuts to the Republican Party’s voters. They’re cuts to Republican states. They’re cuts to Republican hospitals — rural hospitals in areas that vote for Republicans and are very dependent on the care that gets financed by Medicaid in order to stay open.

This is the Republicans’ old ideology coming into conflict with their new coalition.

Yglesias:  Absolutely. If you look at the share of people who are on Medicaid by state, there are seven states where more than a quarter of the population is on Medicaid.

One of them is New York, and one of them is California. But the other five are New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia.

And then you look at states like Mississippi and Alabama: If they would accept Medicaid expansion funding, there’s a huge, potentially eligible population share in those states.

It’s a big conflict inside the heart of Republican politics. [Details about Mitch McConnell and Kentucky] 

There’s just a conflict between the Republican Party electorate and their ideology, which has shifted in some ways but really remains focused on low taxes, on investment income, low corporate taxes and wanting to cut spending on programs for the poor.

About work requirements and how they've worked out so far, Klein and Yglesias shared this conversation:

The most conservative states don’t accept Medicaid expansion funds. They have tried to impose work requirements in Arkansas, for example.

So we ran the experiment: Does putting work requirements on Medicaid increase employment? And the answer was no. When they did it, employment didn’t go up. People did lose coverage, but employment didn’t go up.

And Republicans didn’t reverse course after that. They didn’t say to themselves: Oh, our goal here was to get more people working, but we didn’t succeed at that. They said: You know what? This cut the rolls. It cut spending. We’re happy with that.

That’s a free market view: If you want a television, you’ve got to pay for it yourself. If you want chemotherapy, you’ve got to pay for it yourself.

On work requirements, I published this three years ago in Politico.   

Here's more from Yglesias, on perverse incentives: 

There’s this threat that hospitals will go out of business. I’m in Maine right now in a very rural area, and hospitals don’t have a ton of customers here. If they lose let’s say 10 percent or 15 percent of their customer base and have higher uncompensated care burdens — some of the facilities will just close.

Senate Republicans have discussed creating a hospital bailout fund to prevent this, but it seems crazy to me to address hospitals’ business model problems by giving them direct payments to stay in business even though they’re not treating patients, rather than just letting people get the treatment they need.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ultimately voted for the bill, but only after she was offered big concessions for her state.  Read more about those here. 

Also instructive is this interview by NPR with Kaiser Health News reporter Sarah Jane Tribble, published yesterday, leading with Juana Summers questioning Tribble: 

SUMMERS: Rural America is poised to be greatly impacted by these proposed cuts. Roughly 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas where Medicaid covers 1 in 4 adults. Here to talk about what could be at stake for those communities is Sarah Jane Tribble. She's the chief rural correspondent for KFF Health News. ...

Sarah, just start if you can by telling us a bit about what you have been hearing from people in rural communities across this country about these proposed cuts.

TRIBBLE: Yeah, I'm not hearing good things. They're very concerned, because Medicaid rates are so high in rural America, that these cuts will be very detrimental, they'll cause more hospitals to close, they'll tax rural health clinics. I was sitting next to a CEO of a rural hospital from Colorado. He has a 25-bed critical access hospital, the only hospital between the Kansas border and Denver on the Colorado I-70 corridor. And he had been talking about the cuts and not happy about them. And then we heard about the rural transformation fund that the Senate has been working on to sort of help offset the cuts. And he leaned over and he just scoffed. He just said, that's just not going to be enough. So I think that there's a lot of concern out there in rural America.

iPhone factory rises in rural India; does it provide rural development lessons for the United States?

Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar report from Devanahalli, India in yesterday's New York Times on the pending opening of an iPhone factory.  The story features many descriptors suggesting the remoteness and rurality of the place and concludes with a brief comparison to rural development efforts in the United States.  The plant, which will be fully functioning and employing 40,000 people by the end of this calendar year, responds to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's “Make in India” policy, announced in 2015.  The Modi government has committed $26 billion to subsidizing strategic manufacturing goals since 2020. 

A new iPhone factory in an out-of-the-way corner of India looks like a spaceship from another planet. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles most of the world’s iPhones for Apple, has landed amid the boulders and millet fields of Devanahalli. 

* * *

By the end of 2025, with the Devanahalli plant fully online, Foxconn is expected to be assembling between 25 and 30 percent of iPhones in India.

* * *

The effects on the region are transformative. It’s a field day for job-seekers and landowners. And the kind of crazy-quilt supply chain of smaller industries that feeds Apple’s factory towns in China is coalescing in India’s heartland. 

* * *

India’s most urgent reason for developing industry is to create jobs. Unlike the United States, it does not have enough: not in services, manufacturing or anything else. Nearly half its workers are involved in farming.

* * *

India is thick with people. A five-minute walk away, a village called Doddagollahalli looks the same as it did before Foxconn landed. Nearly all the houses clustered around a sacred grove belong to farming families growing millet, grapes and vegetables.

Some villagers are renting rooms to Foxconn workers. Many more are trying to sell their land. But Sneha, who goes by a single name, has found a job on the Foxconn factory’s day shift. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics. She can walk home for lunch every day, a corporate lanyard swinging from her neck.

It is people like Sneha, and the thousands of her new colleagues piling into her ancestral place, who make Foxconn’s ambitions for India possible. Mr. Trump wants to revive the fortunes of left-behind American factory towns, but the pipeline of qualified young graduates is not there.

Thus, while Trump wants this to happen in the United States, it probably won't, "without sustained government financial support to revive U.S. manufacturing and training to expand the pool of qualified factory workers."   

Op-ed by Alaska legislators decries likely effect of "Big Beautiful Bill, "especially in rural areas

Bryce Edgmon and Cathy Giessel of the Alaska legislature have published an op-ed in today's New York Times, "Our State Cannot Survive this Bill:"  One of the legislators is a Republican and the other an Independent, and they focus on their bipartisanship.  In some ways, this piece echoes analysis we are seeing about how many "red states" will suffer particularly under Trump's "big beautiful bill," but it also features some Alaska specifics.

Here's the lede: 

Across the country, state lawmakers like us are bracing as the federal government considers a bill that will throw state budgets into chaos and add red tape that our social service agencies do not have the capacity to administer. If the budget reconciliation bill passes Congress in anything like its current form, we will be left to deal with the fallout.

The likely impacts from the “big, beautiful bill” are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans could lose health care coverage, thousands of families will go hungry through loss of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the shift in costs from the federal government to the state will plunge our budget into a severe deficit, cripple our state economy and make it harder to provide basic services.

And in these paragraphs, the writers get around to the rural angle: 

The benefits of Medicaid and the SNAP program permeate the entire fabric of the Alaska economy, with one in three Alaskans receiving Medicaid, including more than half of the children. In remote Arctic communities, Medicaid dollars make medical travel possible for residents from the hundreds of roadless villages to the communities where they are able to receive proper medical treatments.

We fear that if this bill passes, a village in rural Alaska might lose its one and only grocery store because of a drastic decline in SNAP dollars. It might also lose its sole health care clinic or hospital because it cannot sustain its services with decreased Medicaid reimbursements. The reconciliation bill does not take into account the uniqueness of Alaskan lifestyles and geographic remoteness.

The legislators explain that the federal cuts will cause costs for many services to be shifted to the state budget, which will cause great strain.  It also takes up the fact that work requirements for public benefits are an ill fit for rural Americans.

Alaska cannot afford to lose health care funding. Our state is near the top of the list for the highest rates of suicide, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections in the nation. It is also severely lacking in adequate behavioral health services. The cuts will only make these problems worse.

Work requirements instituted in Medicaid are untenable for rural Alaska, with many communities facing limited broadband access and job opportunities.

Here's a piece in The Atlantic, by Russell Berman, suggesting that Kentucky Republicans are not afraid to stand up to Trump. 

Supreme Court decision on Planned Parenthood and Medicaid will undermine rural health

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled (quoting the Associated Press) that 

States can block the country’s biggest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid money for health services such as contraception and cancer screenings.  

 The case rose to the Supreme Court from South Carolina.  The Associated Press explains: 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, said Planned Parenthood should not get any taxpayer money. The budget bill backed by President Donald Trump in Congress would also cut Medicaid money for the group. That could force the closure of about 200 centers, most of them in states where abortion is legal, Planned Parenthood has said.

Several news outlets have mentioned the impact that this decision will have on rural healthcare.  NPR brings us this: 

Planned Parenthood's president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, in an interview with NPR, said the decision would have widespread ramifications and would allow seventeen states to strip Planned Parenthood clinics of the ability to provide non-abortion medical services to rural and low income people.  (emphasis added)

The story further quotes Johnson:  

It's a dark time [when] a health center has to close, any time a patient is not able to get the care that they need.  That is a dark time because we can provide that care for our nation's most vulnerable. 

A distinctive angle on shifting rural livelihooods

Marketplace (American Public Media) reported this week on the impact of the rising price of silver on the livelihoods of indigenous silversmiths.   The story by Savannah Peters features a Navajo and Hopi silversmith, JJ Otero.  Here's a key quote that touches (at the end) on the implications  for rural livleihoods of the rise in price for raw materials: 

Otero recently raised the price of his jewelry by about 10% across the board to account for his rising material costs. He said he can do that because he’s been smithing for over a decade and has curated a loyal following on social media, where he markets his work to wealthy clients all over the country.

“The folks that have the means, they’re not bothered by the increase in price,” Otero said.

Business is moving a bit slower, but Otero said he’s still able to find a home for his pricier work. But not all Indigenous artists have the social media prowess or even internet access that would allow them to follow Otero’s business model. He said those who sell roadside or via middle-men like trading posts and galleries have less pricing flexibility.

“I’m always reminded of what my dad told me that first year when I started making jewelry,” Otero said. “He would say it in Navajo, that my tools and the things I make with my tools are gonna take care of you.”

Today, Otero’s jewelry business takes care of him and his family. It allowed him to leave his career in IT and move from Albuquerque home to Torreon, on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation, and support his parents as they grow older. But for Indigenous artists just now getting their start, he worries that parh to a rural livelihood could be slipping out of reach.

Buffalo National River watershed finally gets permanent protection from industrial agriculture

I've written a great, great deal about the Buffalo National River over the years, including when a hog CAFO was sited on the banks of one of its tributaries in 2012.  After a great deal of wrangling, that CAFO was ultimately bought out by the State of Arkansas for $6.2 million under former governor Asa Hutchinson.  

Here's an excerpt from a post about these recent events on Arkansas Outside, which explains that .  

The Arkansas Legislative Council on Friday gave final approval to a permanent moratorium on medium- and large-scale hog concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) within the Buffalo National River watershed, cementing over a decade of advocacy from conservation groups and marking a significant milestone in the state’s environmental policy.

The decision, passed without debate, follows years of temporary protections and stems from heightened concerns about the impact of industrial swine farms on water quality in the nation’s first designated national river. The new rule permanently bans CAFOs, as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency, that are medium or large in size, based on animal count and waste production.

Environmental groups, including the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, the Ozark Society, and the Arkansas chapter of the Sierra Club, hailed the decision as a crucial step to safeguard the river’s karst terrain, which is particularly vulnerable to groundwater pollution.

The move follows years of public outcry sparked by C&H Hog Farms, a large-scale swine operation permitted in 2012 under a general permit process that lacked public input. The farm, located near the town of Mount Judea, drew criticism and concern after manure from thousands of hogs was applied to fields near tributaries that feed the Buffalo.

* * * 

Agricultural interests, including the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association, opposed the permanent moratorium. In comments to the state, they argued the ban was based on public perception rather than scientific evidence, and they warned of regulatory overreach that could limit farmers’ land use rights.

* * *

The rule change came under the broader context of Senate Bill 290, legislation initially intended to overhaul the state’s rulemaking process. The bill was amended during the legislative session to preserve moratoriums on CAFOs in the Buffalo River and Lake Maumelle watersheds. Future bans will now require legislative approval, reducing the ability of state agencies to act independently.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has expressed support for protecting the Buffalo River, reportedly threatened to veto the original version of the bill until amendments preserving the moratorium were included.

Read more about this year's legislative wrangling over the Buffalo and CAFOs here.  

Black lung spreads to younger miners due to complications from silica

Kate Morgan reports from the New York Times from a trip across Appalachia to learn about black lung disease's newest manifestation, which implicates silica and is affecting younger miners.  Some key excerpts follow:

Modern miners are contracting [black lung disease] at younger ages and at rates not seen since the 1970s. For 20th-century miners, it could take decades to develop severe black lung. For men of Aundra Brock’s generation, just a few years can be enough. Nationwide, one in 10 working miners is now estimated to have black lung. In the heart of the central Appalachian coal fields, it’s one in five. Often, their disease is more severe, the progression faster. Doctors are seeing larger masses and more scarring in the lungs. Transplants, disability claims and deaths are all on the rise.

* * *  

In an old industry, the reasons are modern. Centuries of extraction have altered the landscape, making the mountains more dangerous to mine, researchers say, and the men beneath them vulnerable not just to black lung, but to another lung disease called silicosis.

* * * 

Silicosis is caused by inhaling a mineral called crystalline silica that is typically found in sand, stone and concrete. It is a building block of the Appalachians. But in the air, it is dangerous, able to create much worse scarring in the lungs than coal dust alone. Breathing the coal and silica dust together can create a kind of hybrid disease that quickly leads to progressive massive fibrosis.

Scientists and miners alike have long understood the dangers of the rock dust. “You can tell there’s silica when you see the flicker in it,” said Charles Thacker, a 69-year-old former miner from Norton, Va., who now has black lung. “It looks like bits of glass flashing in the light. It’s almost pretty. But that’s what gets in your lungs and cuts you up.”

Don't miss the rest of the story, which is chock full of human interest context.   Also, I want to mention that the ravages of silica on miners was a topic of discussion at this event at West Virginia University College of Law this spring.  (See the panel at 11:00 am).

Another rural hospital at risk, this one in northern California

Ana Ibarra reports for Cal Matters from Willows, in Glenn County. home of a small hospital, the Glenn Medical Center, which is under threat of closure.   The reason for the new threat:  a new interpretation of a provision on distance in relation to a regulation that requires facilities with the "critical access" designation to be at least 35 miles from the nearest medical center.  Here's an excerpt: 

Glenn Medical Center, a 25-bed hospital in the rural agricultural town of Willows, north of Sacramento, is about to lose its “critical access” title. Without it, administrators say the hospital couldn’t afford to stay open because it would lose its increased Medicare reimbursements and regulatory flexibilities.

Glenn Medical Center received a letter in April from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notifying the hospital that it was no longer in compliance with the distance requirement to qualify as “critical access.” That requirement states that hospitals must be more than a 35-mile drive on primary roads — or a 15-mile drive on mountainous or secondary roads — from the next nearest hospital.

The next closest hospital is Colusa Medical Center, which the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency places at 32 miles south of Glenn Medical Center. That makes Glenn County’s hospital three miles short of the qualifying distance for the critical access title. But local health officials and the Willows Fire Department say ambulances and most patients take the “more reliable” route of I-5 and Highway 20, which makes the distance between the hospitals 35.7 miles — far enough to qualify.

About 40% of Glenn County’s 30,000 residents rely on public health insurance programs — Medicaid and Medicare — and 12% live under the poverty line.

“We treat and see and care for a lot of people who are unseen in the community. A lot of behavioral health crises, a lot of justice-involved folks, a lot of elderly, a lot of people without transportation. And we are truly a lifeline for those folks,” said Lauren Still, chief administrative officer at Glenn Medical Center.

About 40% of Glenn County’s 30,000 residents rely on public health insurance programs — Medicaid and Medicare — and 12% live under the poverty line.

“We treat and see and care for a lot of people who are unseen in the community. A lot of behavioral health crises, a lot of justice-involved folks, a lot of elderly, a lot of people without transportation. And we are truly a lifeline for those folks,” said Lauren Still, chief administrative officer at Glenn Medical Center.

Closing the only hospital in this Sacramento Valley county would mean residents would have to travel farther for emergency care and ambulances would take longer responding to 911 calls.

Dr. Jared Garrison, Glenn County’s health officer, said losing the hospital would be a devastating blow to the community. Garrison worries about the elderly who may be afraid to drive at night and people who don’t have transportation to make it out of the county. Heart attacks, strokes, traumatic injuries and overdoses can become more deadly when hospital treatment is delayed.

“If Glenn Medical Center closes, it’s not just a health crisis — it’s an economic and social crisis,” Garrison said. “We’ll see longer emergency response times, job losses, declining local businesses, and worsening health outcomes for our most vulnerable neighbors.” 

* * * 

Both hospitals, Colusa and Glenn, have been at the same location since their construction decades ago. In 2001, Glenn Medical Center was first approved to participate in the federal Critical Access Hospital Program under the same distance rule. Hospital and county health officials say geographically nothing has changed.

“We tried to send some emails back and forth and say, ‘Hey, this is not the road people would take. This is not the road the ambulance takes. This is just not accurate,’” Garrison said. The “shorter” route, he explained, actually takes longer because it includes a county road that often floods and is primarily used by farm equipment.

The hospital’s appeals to the federal agency have been unsuccessful. Still said she is clinging to one last hope that U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Richvale Republican, can make the hospital’s case.

Mark Spannagel, chief of staff at LaMalfa’s office, told CalMatters that no resolution has been reached yet, but that conversations with the federal agency continue and that the hospital’s situation is under “heightened review.”

The federal Medicare and Medicaid agency is supposed to review critical access hospitals’ eligibility periodically. This review started last year and the issue seems to be a reclassification of roads, Spannagel said.

From Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez on public media

I've written often on this blog of Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez's campaigns and stances; she represents WA-03 in the southwest corner of Washington, a district with a great deal of rural area.  I was struck by fundraising email I got from her today (I get a lot of them!) because it stands up for public broadcasting while invoking the rurality of her district.  Here's what the email says:  

Last week, I voted against a hyperpartisan package that guts federal funding for nonpartisan, independent public broadcasting, a critical resource that rural communities like ours rely on every day.

The House Majority’s plan will force public radio and television stations across the country to close, including 14 here in Washington. We depend on public broadcasting for so much: quality local journalism, educational children’s programming, and even lifesaving emergency alerts.

Lisa, I’m all for tackling waste and making sure our tax dollars are used efficiently, but that doesn’t mean compromising our safety, health, or general well-being.

I’ll continue calling out D.C.’s misplaced priorities and getting things done for Southwest Washington – but to keep this work going, I need your help defending this seat.

I'm glad that the Congresswoman sees public broadcasting as a critical resource for rural communities.  I do, too.  I am guessing many of her constituents see public media as hyper-partisan, and not in ways favorable to their interests. 

In fact, NPR does a great deal of fine reporting--nuanced reporting--on a wide range of rural issues.  I trust NPR to deliver the facts, and I listen to it everyday.  That said, there are times when I think NPR has been  unhelpfully woke in ways I suspect alienate rural voters and those with less formal education.  

CLE on recruiting and retaining rural lawyers sponsored by Virginia Bar Association

See the announcement here for the program on June 26 at 12:00 pm/noon Eastern.  I'm cutting and pasting core details below.   

Recruiting and Retaining Rural Lawyers: Challenges and Incentives

Join the VSB for its new virtual Lunch & Learn series—monthly CLEs and webinars featuring topics of interest to VSB members. Tune in from your office to learn more about the programs and initiates of the VSB and earn free CLE credits (when applicable).

Recruiting and Retaining Rural Lawyers: Challenges and Incentives

Thursday, June 26, 12–1 pm

Join us for a Lunch and Learn webinar sponsored by the Virginia State Bar’s Entry, Growth & Distribution of Virginia Attorneys Study Committee(EGAD VA), on June 26 at noon. Rural legal practice is vital to ensuring access to justice, yet many underserved communities continue to face a shortage of attorneys due to geographic, economic, and professional barriers. Professor Hannah Haksgaard will examine the landscape of rural legal practice and share research-based strategies for recruiting and retaining lawyers in these areas, including insights on effective incentive programs.

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.”

Postscript 2:   NPR's Politics podcast on June 17 is about this issue.   And WSJ has just published a brief story about Chobani Yogurt CEO's statement that the U.S. food system cannot function under current immigration enforcement strategies.