Trump’s Immigration Plans Are Already Wrecking the Food Industry

Fear of increased ICE raids have already negatively affected the nation’s agricultural sector, causing alarm that food prices could skyrocket in the near future as a result of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.

Bakersfield, California, saw a massive drop-off in the number of field workers showing up for work Tuesday while ICE agents in unmarked Chevy Suburbans rounded up and detained immigrants in the area, profiling individuals they believed to be field workers, reported CalMatters. The end result: acres of unpicked oranges roasting in the California sun at the height of the season.

Bakersfield makes up a small portion of California’s Central Valley, which produces approximately a quarter of the nation’s food. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, has ranked within the top three agricultural counties in the nation for the last several years, largely off the backs of undocumented laborers, who are estimated to comprise more than half of the county’s workforce, according to CalMatters.

Undocumented workers have been targeted walking in and out of gas stations, getting breakfast, at Home Depot, or while driving along the 99 Highway, leaving many with no other option than to simply stay at home.

“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting,” Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters. “This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25 percent of the workforce, today 75 percent didn’t show up.”

Losing the bulk of America’s agricultural workforce overnight is a recipe for “absolute economic devastation,” according to Richard S. Gearhart, an associate professor of economics at Cal State-Bakersfield, who spoke with the nonprofit news outlet.

“You are talking about a recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm,” Gearhart said, arguing that the end result of Trump’s policies will be felt in the grocery store checkout lines across America.

The forty-seventh president has effectively promised a full-throttle immigration crackdown for the next four years that includes attacking birthright citizenship and ordering high-profile ICE raids around the country against undocumented immigrants.

But just two days into the administration, it appears that anti-immigration efforts will be a relative free-for-all. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would roll back an Obama-era directive, suddenly allowing the immigration agency to detain people in sensitive areas such as hospitals, places of worship, courtrooms, funerals, and weddings.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

Recently pardoned former Proud Boys founder Enrique Tarrio promised “retribution” in an interview with Alex Jones shortly after being freed from prison on Tuesday.

“I’d like to thank again President Donald J. Trump for helping us through these difficult times and releasing me, Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola. Right? And all the J6ers,” Tarrio said. “We went through hell, and I’m gonna tell you, it was worth it, because what we stood for and what those guys stood for was what we’ve been fighting for and what we saw yesterday on the inauguration stage. I can’t tell you it’s been easy, but I will tell you it’s been worth it.”

The former Proud Boy was serving 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy over his role in planning January 6. He was freed after Trump pardoned or commuted every single person involved with the insurrection on Monday.

Tarrio struck a vengeful tone in what was nearly a 45-minute interview with Jones after his release.

They didn’t care about the evidence. They cared about putting Trump supporters in prison. Well, now it’s our turn. Now it’s our turn. I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I’m not gonna play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. They pardon the J6 committee? Fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be put in prison for anything. They need to be imprisoned. We need to find and put them behind bars for what they did. They need to pay for what they did.

“We’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next 4 years sets us up for the next 100 years.”

Tarrio split with the Proud Boys in 2021 after his former work as a federal informant came to light.

Donald Trump repeatedly promised during his presidential campaign to quickly end Russia’s war with Ukraine. It appears his plan to do so involves the threat of sanctions against the country.

In a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, Trump called out Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, saying that if “we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

Although Trump began by praising Russia and the Russian people, as well as touting his close relationship with Putin, the rest of the post contains possibly some of his toughest language to date against the country and its leader. Some of Trump’s threats are already in place, however: Sanctions have been in place against Russia since the early days of the Ukraine war, hurting the country’s economy.

Trump repeatedly bragged on the campaign trail that he could end the Russia-Ukraine War in “24 hours,” but after he won the election, Russia threw cold water on that idea, even boosting its troop levels less than a week later. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the new president’s choice for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a post solely focused on ending the war, has suggested withholding aid for Ukraine in order to force negotiations with Russia.

Kellogg has already backtracked on a quick end to the war, suggesting that Trump never really had a concrete plan to quickly end hostilities as he promised. The fact that the president is now bringing up sanctions when only four months ago, he decried their use against Russia, seems to indicate that his threat is a bluff and he’s making up a plan on the fly. Russia is probably not going to respond in the way Trump wants.

Vivek Ramaswamy was pushed out of the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency because his vision didn’t align with the sieg heil-ing shadow president Elon Musk, according to an exclusive report from The Washington Post.

Ramaswamy was behind November’s Wall Street Journal op-ed that outlined a plan to slash trillions of dollars’ worth of essential government services and contract out the functions of the administrative state. He wanted DOGE to function more like a think tank, determining which government agencies could be shut down and which regulations could be repealed without congressional approval.

While Ramaswamy focused on that, Musk was meant to focus on spending and technology. But, the technocrat billionaire—glued to the president’s side—was reportedly on an entirely different page about how to best eviscerate the administrative state, according to several people who spoke with the Post. And his vision seems to have won out.

Monday’s executive order officially establishing the Department of Government Efficiency was merely a rebranding of the U.S. Digital Service, an Obama-era group created to respond to manage issues with the Affordable Care Act’s website, and that now determines best practices for the government use of technology.

While it seems like a pivot from creating a brand-new agency, this change is far more aligned with Musk’s technology-forward vision for the organization. It also lands him a White House office, and all the unfettered access that entails.

The executive order gave Musk “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” a privilege that will likely benefit the billionaire technocrat who has already made tens of billions of dollars from government contracts.

Musk also imagined DOGE being structured as a small team within the government, not the nongovernmental body structure Ramaswamy imagined. Because it’s a White House office, Musk will also be able to sidestep federal hiring rules—and Trump’s hiring freeze.

None of the work from Ramaswamy’s team garnered mention in an executive order Monday, according to the Post.

Earlier reports said that Ramawamy exited the cost-cutting department over clashes with rank-and-file members. Someone close to Trump said that Ramaswamy had “worn out his welcome.”

And it seems that held true up the ranks. “They’ve been wanting Vivek to step aside so Elon could have more control,” one person briefed on the matter told the Post. “There was tension, and then they had an out and kind of took the out.”

Donald Trump’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget continued his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, but his uncanny ability to slide past tough questions—and the committee’s complicity in allowing him to do so—didn’t get past some of the Democratic lawmakers interviewing him.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse torched Russell Vought’s evasive and bureaucratic non-answers, arguing that the nominee didn’t have any special privileges that afforded him the ability not to be completely transparent with the American public.

“Why can I not get an answer—is there some new rule in this committee?—as to where these executive orders came from?” Whitehouse pressed. “That’s perfectly, to me, legitimate congressional oversight. Over and over again this witness has told us what questions he will answer, but the oath he took was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in response to our questions.”

“So if there’s some new limitation about what question I can [have answered], I would like to understand that. And if not, I would like to have the chair tell the witness to answer my questions,” he added.

That roped Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham into the heated back and forth, who impressed on Vought that he did not have attorney-client privilege to evade a line of questioning as some of Trump’s other nominees did.

“I am not claiming a privilege, Senator,” Vought said.

“Generally speaking, you know, I guess the question is, did you advise on executive orders and which ones?” Graham insisted. “Can you kind of tell us that please?”

“Senator, I was not a member of the transition, I was not a member of the campaign,” Vought said, before adding that he did not have a “comprehensive knowledge of where the executive orders were drafted.”

But despite the clarification, Vought still refused to pinpoint where the sudden flurry of Day One executive orders had been drafted, despite the fact that many of them fell in line with Project 2025, a plan of Vought’s own design.

Last week, Vought similarly dipped and dodged hard inquiries by the committee, claiming that a Congressional statute used to reexamine executive branch withholdings from the budget was unconstitutional, and refusing to pledge that he wouldn’t deny grants based on the requester’s political alignment.

Vought ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021, during which time he froze military aid for Ukraine, claimed that foreign aid expenditures were “wasteful spending,” and worked to expand the number of federal employees required to work during a government shutdown.

He scooped up another supporting role in Trumpworld during the incoming executive’s presidential campaign: developing a 180-day “transition playbook” to expedite Project 2025’s implementation into the federal government. But his appointment to run the nation’s budget office could see him enter a critical role in shrinking the federal government and advancing Trump’s agenda.

Vought was also the architect of Trump’s “Schedule F” proposal, which plans to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with as many as 54,000 pre-vetted Trump loyalists to the executive branch via executive order.

The Fraternal Order of Police has finally spoken: Trump was wrong for pardoning January 6 insurrectionists who were convicted of assaulting police officers.

The country’s most powerful police union released a statement condemning Trump’s pardons after not having a “statement about that” when the pardons initially dropped.

“The [International Association of Chiefs of Police] and FOP are deeply discouraged by the recent pardons and commutations granted by both the Biden and Trump Administrations to individuals convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers,” the union said in a statement. “The IACP and FOP firmly believe that those convicted of such crimes should serve their full sentences. Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety—they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law. Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.”

The FOP endorsed Trump for president in 2024. On Monday, he pardoned over 1,500 people in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Some, like Julian Khater, who pepper-sprayed Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick in the face, committed deliberate violence against police and were found guilty of doing so (Sicknick died the day after the attack). Multiple Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were also pardoned.

The FOP’s statement is actually fairly weak, as it doesn’t name a single person or pardon it has issue with and even takes time to throw stones at the prisoners Biden pardoned. The union being “discouraged” with both Trump and Biden for pardoning “individuals convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers” could be referring to Biden’s commutation of the sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier—a man whose own prosecutor thinks he is innocent. If the FOP truly thinks that Trump pardoning violent insurrectionists is wrong, it should say that with its chest.

Donald Trump’s executive order on Monday against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives includes a provision to investigate DEI “discrimination” at “institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion,” and the MAGA right is celebrating.

The provision would target a large section of universities in the country, including wealthy institutions in the Ivy League, such as Harvard University. The news has right-wing personalities and pundits celebrating, including public education foe Christopher Rufo.

Rufo’s X post received several approving replies from conservatives, including from Elon Musk, and demonstrates the deep hatred among the right wing for colleges and universities that seek to improve diversity.

It would appear that this executive order is the result of Rufo’s efforts. Rufo met with Trump shortly after the election in November, presenting him with a plan to withhold federal money from universities unless they end diversity measures. The conservative activist has sought to push Christian nationalism and right-wing ideology into a dominant place in American life, having given the right its talking points on “critical race theory” and tested out his anti-DEI efforts as a trustee at Florida’s New College.

Now Trump’s executive order seems to be the first step in remaking all of American society to push racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ minority groups out of public life, not just in education but also in the workforce. It’s essentially a culture-war purge that will play out in federal lawsuits.

Donald Trump’s decision to pardon some 1,500 January 6 offenders was a spontaneous move that overrode his administration’s internal debate.

“Trump just said: ‘Fuck it: Release ’em all,’” one White House adviser told Axios.

That was, apparently, completely kosher with Vice President JD Vance, who told Fox News just last week that Trump’s more violent supporters didn’t deserve pardons.

“I think it’s very simple: Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6, and you had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Vance told host Shannon Bream. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

But when push came to shove—as in, when Trump was ready to make his own executive call on the long-promised pardons—Vance’s dissenting opinion suddenly caved.

“Vance was 100 percent on board,” a Trump insider told Axios. “The president didn’t change his mind. He just made up his mind, and Vance got a little over his skis on Fox, but it’s no big deal.”

“Never get ahead of the boss,” another Trump transition source told the publication, “because you just never know.”

Trump’s decision to legally and unilaterally forgive his most aggressive supporters was, actually, wildly unpopular with the American public. A November Scripps News/Ipsos survey found that few Americans—just 30 percent—actually supported a legal reprieve for the Capitol rioters, versus an overwhelming 64 percent of the country that was against it. Just 1 percent of respondents believed that the pardons should be Trump’s first priority—let alone something that he issued a sweeping executive order for on his first day in office.

Trump has claimed for years that he would free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021, forcing the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press in December, the MAGA leader said he would act “very quickly” to release the January 6 defendants.

“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said at the time.

Trump is so intent on winning the DEI culture war that he’s now killing bedrock programs from the segregation era.

The president on Tuesday revoked Executive Order 11246, which was signed into law in 1965 by Lyndon B. Johnson and installed antidiscriminatory practices into U.S. federal government contracting.

EO11246 prohibited federal contractors “who do over $10,000 in government business” from “discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.”

Trump’s executive order, which was first reported on by Law Dork’s Chris Geidner, formally repealed those protections.

“The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs within the Department of Labor shall immediately cease: Promoting ‘diversity’; holding Federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking ‘affirmative action’; and allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin,” Trump’s order read. Contractors have 90 days until they have to comply.

This is a massive, regressive attack on basic policy that helps protect people from real discrimination. And it won’t lower the price of eggs.

The Trump administration has only been in power for two days, but some of its core players already appear to be at odds.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced Stargate—a public-private joint AI venture between the federal government, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, which the forty-seventh president claimed could invest as much as $500 billion into the bubbling tech sector over the next four years.

“This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “We’re going to make it as easy as it can be.”

But hours later, one of Trump’s closest tech advisers—the richest man in the world, Elon Musk—was already publicly questioning the initiative, telling users on his platform that the effort was a dud.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X in response to a post from OpenAI announcing the digital infrastructure deal. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

OpenAI and SoftBank are set to lead the project, with SoftBank taking on Stargate’s financial responsibility, according to Fortune. OpenAI’s chief Sam Altman called the venture the “most important project of this era.” Stargate involves an initial private investment of $100 billion into America’s AI infrastructure, a move that would begin a digital “re-industrialization of the United States,” ushering in “hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” OpenAI said in a statement Tuesday.

But Musk’s decision to reveal the rocky ground beneath Trump’s trophy deal, all while elevating his own know-how, could cause cracks in the powerful duo’s dynamic. In December, tech journalist Kara Swisher argued that the relationship between the two self-imagined strongmen is destined to flame out, just as it did with Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon.

“They’re both narcissists, and there can be only one narcissist as head of the country, and that’s Donald Trump who just won the election,” Swisher said. “You know he owes things to Elon, but at some point, you know if he takes too much of the attention—think about Steve Bannon. You remember he was on the cover of that magazine, and how quickly he got out, even though he was critical to Trump’s first campaign and he was right in the middle of the White House, and then he wasn’t.”

“Trump goes through people like tissues, essentially,” Swisher noted at the time. “And even if it’s Musk, they’re going to clash at some point.”