Immigrant farm workers hoe weeds in a farm field of produce.
The nation’s agriculture sector, which relies heavily on undocumented workers, could face a significant challenge when President-elect Donald Trump takes office this month amid promises to enact stricter immigration policies.
The percentage of undocumented farmworkers — those without legal status — dropped from 54% in 2020 to 42% in 2022, according to the USDA and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Trump said his mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start with the “criminals,” but that “you have no choice” but to eventually deport everyone in the country illegally, according to a December interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, emphasized the potential consequences of such policies, telling Investigate Midwest, “If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse.”
“There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place,” she said.
As Trump policy changes loom, nearly half of farmworkers lack legal statuswas first published on Investigate Midwest, and was republised with permission.
Mónica Cordero is a Report for America corps member and part of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk team. Her expertise includes data analysis with Python and SQL, and reporting under the Freedom of Information Act.
A test tube with a blood test for h5n1 avian influenza. The concept of an avian flu pandemic. Checking the chicken for diseases.
The first human death from bird flu in the United States occurred on January 6 in a Louisiana hospital, less than three weeks before the second Donald Trump administration’s inauguration. Bird flu, also known as Avian influenza or H5N1, is a disease that has been on the watch list of scientists and epidemiologists for its potential to become a serious threat to humans.
COVID-19’s chaotic handling during Trump’s first term serves as a stark reminder of the stakes. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, last year, 66 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu were reported in the United States. That is a significant number when you consider that only one case was recorded in the two previous years.
Bird flu was first detected in domestic birds in 1996 in Southern China and has since spread to wild birds, mammals, and humans worldwide, with a fatality rate reaching 50% in some cases. In the U.S., cases have been mostly mild, affecting primarily poultry and dairy workers, until this recent death in Louisiana.
In the spring of last year, bird flu showed up in cows. When a pathogen—any organism that causes a disease—jumps species, scientists get nervous because its genetic makeup can reconfigure and become more transmissible or lethal. The fact that humans are now being infected is a red flag. Though human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has not yet happened, it does not mean it can’t.
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“That’s our concern — the more shots on goal that we give the virus, the greater chance of there being a mutation of some sort that precipitates a much larger situation,” said Dr. Nirav D. Shah, principal deputy director of the CDC. “But we’re also equally interested in the scientific finding that thus far, in the current outbreak, cases have been milder than what we’ve seen historically.”
Since the health of animals is directly linked to that of humans, the federal government took swift action. In a joint op-ed in USA Today, Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tom Vilsack, secretary of Agriculture, said, “As heads of the federal departments responsible for human health and animal health, we quickly stood up a coordinated response organized around four key priorities: monitoring and stopping transmission, protecting workers and the public, keeping animals healthy and ensuring the safety of our food supply.” Drinking raw milk, for instance, is especially risky now.
The key question is whether the new administration has the political will to prioritize Americans' health. Trump’s nominee to lead Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., is a vocal vaccine skeptic critical of federal mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Dr. Dave Weldon, the nominee for CDC, has questioned the efficacy of vaccines and public health measures to control disease outbreaks.
For an in-depth conversation on the role of Health and Human Services, listen to this 1A podcast episode with host Jenn White by clicking HERE.
Rebecca Katz, Director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University and author of The Outbreak Atlas, reminds us that bird flu is the latest threat to human health. This past year alone, the world witnessed a Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda, Mpox in central Africa, and a resurgence of measles worldwide, primarily driven by diminished confidence in childhood vaccines.
“There are death, taxes, and emerging infectious diseases. You can guarantee that there will be more diseases,” Katz told the Fulcrum, adding there is a collective tendency to pivot from cycles of panic to neglect. “We had the biggest generational disease event five years ago. Now, we are in the biggest valley of neglect. There's no money, no workforce, and no confidence. We're going to have to fix that.”
On January 3, President Joe Biden’s administration announced US$ 306 million in additional funding for the H5N1 response. However, experts such as Katz believe there are still insufficient resources allocated towards long-term pandemic preparedness. Despite the likelihood of future outbreaks, Trump has suggested disbanding the Office of Pandemic Preparedness, established in 2022, which would hinder coordinated national responses. Making childhood vaccines optional could further erode collective immunity and prompt insurers to stop covering them.
“The reason why vaccines are so readily available to people is because of the Affordable Care Act and the vaccine for children program,” said Sam Bagenstos, former General Council to HHS under President Biden, on the 1A show aired January 8 on NPR. “If the CDC Director were to take vaccines off that list, vaccines would instantly become effectively unavailable to most people in the country. There is a very substantial risk that even without taking away the approval of vaccines, even without any regulatory changes, a new administration could make it much harder for people to get vaccinated.”
Managing outbreaks, says Katz, is complex and requires coordination at all levels. While the CDC, as a federal agency, is tasked with the genetic sequencing of a virus, two things must be prioritized locally: disease surveillance and public awareness. However, “if I had to pick one priority investment, it would be people,” says Katz. “I am deeply concerned about our workforce. We don't have enough people, and the ones we have are not sufficiently supported to be able to do their jobs effectively.”
The lack of trust and outright threats directed at U.S. medical personnel and public health officials at the height of the pandemic prompted many to resign, leaving behind a demoralized and weaker workforce. Mistrust is fueled by rumors and inaccurate information. But disinformation, which is false and deliberately intended to mislead the public, plays an even greater role in undermining trust.
The Outbreak Atlas, co-authored by Katz and Wellcome Trust scholar Mackenzie S. Moore, uses global case studies to explain outbreak preparedness, response, and recovery. It aims to educate people with the tools to make informed decisions during disease outbreaks, regardless of federal actions.
“I'm a professor, so I believe in increasing public literacy,” says Katz. “The more people know, the more they're able to understand, the better they're able to digest and make sense of the information that comes out around the next threat.”
Incoming administration officials would be wise to read The Outbreak Atlas. When George W. Bush was president, he urged his top officials to read The Great Influenza by historian John M. Barry, recognizing the need for a national strategy to prevent another catastrophe like the 1918 flu pandemic. His foresight was a model of preparedness. Why wait for bird flu—or any other infectious disease—to spiral out of control when the time to act is now?
Beatrice Spadacini is a freelance journalist who writes about social justice and public health.
There is no question that the Democratic Party has lost touch with the working class. Candidates actually rarely use the phrase "working class," while they never stop saying "middle class." Working class, to most Democrats, feels like a pejorative term. Everyone, after all, wants to rise up to the middle class, which makes up 50 percent of the country.
The 35 percent of the public who fit into the working class, in Rodney Dangerfield's terms, don't get no respect.
So, yes, President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans have turned the tables on Democrats and become the voice for the working class, especially white and Hispanic male working class citizens. Trump needed plenty of middle-class voters, too, but all of the statistics are showing that he got a historically large percentage of working-class voters.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has turned down the request to start a third party representing the working class, at least for now. And he should. A party focused on the working class will never elect a president and will not be successful in House or Senate races either.
What America wants is a party or independent candidates who give attention, respect and compassion to working America and retired America — that's most of us. We’re talking about men and women (and their children) of all races who work for a living or who are retired from decades of work and rely on Medicare and Social Security for the majority of their expenses.
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Trump, who got just under 50 percent of the votes although a large share of the Electoral College votes, basically spoke better to working America than Vice President Kamala Harris did, and he managed well enough with retired America.
America needs a new agenda for both working America and retired America. Any viable platform would support and probably improve upon both Social Security and Medicare. That is a no brainer. The harder task is to meet the needs, ethics, interests, and hopes and dreams of working America, as well as the middle class. That is a tall, immensely complicated order. Getting 50 percent to 55 percent of their votes in a given election will probably be sufficient. It is not as though a candidate needs 70 percent, or even 60 percent, to win.
But candidates and elected politicians cannot afford to focus on either middle-class or working-class voters. They must focus on them both, along with retired voters.
A family policy that provided paid parental leave and a choice between child care and a tax credit for stay-at-home parents would apply to both hard-working middle-class families and hard-working working-class families. Such a policy — I ran on it during my 2016 House campaign in Maryland — would cut across class lines.
A policy setting the minimum wage at $15 an hour, on the other hand, would not cut across class lines. That is basically a working class policy. Strengthening the National Labor Relations Board would also be chiefly a working-class policy since it would benefit the 7 percent of American workers in unions. Promoting tax deductions for state and local taxes, on the other hand, is primarily a middle-class tax deduction although wealthy Americans benefit from it and some working-class Americans do, too.
Finally, note that a political party or independent candidates who gave due respect to working-class issues, middle-class issues and retiree issues would succeed in presenting an intergenerational agenda to voters. No candidate wants to speak only to young or old voters. You have to do both.
Although voters do not vote only on issues of economic class — as there are issues related to gender, sex, sexuality, national origins, health and other factors — the time is right for all candidates and elected politicians to elevate the old topic of economic class to a higher plateau.
Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, there is much talk about tariffs as the foundation for his economic policy. Trump himself says he’s “a Tariff Man,” and in fact implemented tariffs on a number of countries in his first term. But what are tariffs exactly, and how do they work? What are the pros and cons?
There’s a lot at stake, and like many things “economic,” it’s kind of complicated. So let’s break it down.
First, what is a tariff?
A tariff is a tax on imports of products from other countries. Taxing imports makes the price of those imported products more expensive and makes the cost of U.S. products cheaper in comparison.
Second, why does Trump want new tariffs?
Trump says tariffs will do several good things for the U.S. economy, including:
The president-elect sees tariffs as kind of a “price of admission” to the lucrative U.S. market. In his first term, Trump imposed tariffs on China, targeting imported solar panels and washing machines with a 30 percent to 50 tariff, steel 25 percent, aluminum 10 percent, along with other other Chinese imports. These tariffs then were later extended to Canada, Mexico, the European Union, India and other nations.
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Now Trump is promising to double down on that approach with new tariffs. The president-elect says he will sign an executive order for a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports. A $32,000 car imported to the U.S. subject to a 25 percent tariff would add $8,000 to the cost of that vehicle, while a 60 percent tariff would add over $18,000.
To show that he means business, when tractor manufacturer John Deere announced its plans to move some production to Mexico, Trump vowed to tax anything Deere tried to export back into the United States at 200 percent.
To see what new tariffs might do, it’s useful to look at what happened with Trump’s first-term tariffs. First and foremost, America’s trading partners, who together import/export the vast majority of goods with the United States, did in fact retaliate.
China imposed 25 percent retaliatory tariffs on 659 U.S. products, ranging from soybeans and autos to seafood and pork, equivalent to $50 billion and matching the value of the U.S. tariffs dollar-for-dollar. Canada also implemented $16.6 billion in retaliatory dollar-for-dollar tariffs covering 299 U.S. goods, including steel, aluminum, yogurt, whiskey and more.
Mexico and the E.U. implemented retaliatory tariffs worth $3 billion each on hundreds of U.S. goods, as did India. This global trade war had other unintended effects, including on jobs and U.S. exports to other countries that ended up hurting some of the manufacturers the Trump administration was trying to help.
For example, the tariffs on steel and aluminum had the desired effect of incentivizing some U.S. firms to produce more of those metals. But the import tax predictably caused prices from foreign producers to rise, which incentivized U.S. businesses to raise their prices. So other U.S. companies that manufacture products with steel and aluminum, such as industrial machinery and auto parts, had to raise their prices and ended up manufacturing less.
Prices for consumers on many products also increased due to the tariffs. A study by the conservative Tax Foundation found that the Trump tariffs imposed nearly $80 billion worth of what it called “new taxes” on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products. Valued at approximately $380 billion, the tariffs caused prices to increase on the imported products and “amounted to one of the largest tax increases in decades,” according to the Tax Foundation.
A study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard found that Trump’s tariffs did not restore jobs. For example, the number of jobs at steel plants didn’t change, remaining right around 140,000. In addition, the study found, the retaliatory taxes imposed by China and other nations had negative impacts on farmers who lost their overseas export markets, resulting in the Trump administration doling out billions in aid to farmers.
Still another study found that “the costs of the US tariffs continue to be almost entirely borne by US firms and consumers,” not by the foreign countries or companies, as Trump had promised.
So there were winners and losers all around, and in all likelihood there will be again with Trump’s new tariffs. The business-friendly Peterson Institute predicts the new proposals would cost the typical American household as much as $2,600 a year in increased prices for thousands of products. Some have called it a “fruit and vegetable tax” as it would likely increase the cost of many grocery items, since Mexico is Americans’ source for 69 percent of fresh vegetables and 51 percent of fresh fruit. The impacts would be felt disproportionally by middle- and lower-income people.
In the middle of this debate, some have argued that a limited number of very targeted tariffs to incentivize specific trading partnerships might be beneficial. Indeed, the Biden administration maintained most of Trump’s tariffs on China, involving more than $300 billion worth of goods, and added on another $18 billion on items including steel, medical supplies and electric vehicles. Especially with a trade rule-breaker like China, an argument can be made that targeted tariffs can be important tools to counter unfair trade practices.
The truth is, a high concentration of trade and jobs emanate from businesses that both export and import goods, so tariffs on imports can end up hurting export performance and associated employment. It turns out that the on-the-ground reality is more complicated than a campaign slogan.
There is also a chance that the higher tariffs proposed by Trump are merely a bargaining chip to get Mexico to crack down on fentanyl smuggling, or to get China to quit subsidizing its export companies. During his first term, Trump habitually tweeted out his tariff threats, using strong rhetoric initially only to exempt certain products or specific companies (sometimes aligned with Trump’s Republican allies’ businesses).
But by imposing tariffs across the board, not just on China, Trump will raise costs for many U.S. businesses, increase prices for U.S. consumers and alienate trading partners who ideally would be part of a cooperative response. A more measured approach has real potential.
