Sky Chadde

1 month ago | investigatemidwest.org | Sky Chadde |Investigate Midwest

Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.Since taking power Jan. 20, the Trump administration has quickly frozen funding and fired federal workers en masse. USDA terminations started Feb. 13, the day Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was sworn in.

2 months ago | investigatemidwest.org | Sky Chadde |Investigate Midwest

One of President Donald Trump’s first-term achievements was a major tax cut, which he signed into law in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act largely benefited the wealthiest families in the U.S.But farm households also saw their tax rates decrease. That means many farms will see their tax liability increase when the tax cuts expire at the end of the year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture research.

Jan 24, 2025 | investigatemidwest.org | Sky Chadde |Investigate Midwest |John McCracken

Farmers have begun raising concerns about the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations on their operations, but the president’s nominee for agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said any issues stemming from a lost labor force are “hypothetical.” If farms are affected by mass deportations, she and other administration officials would “hopefully solve some of these problems,” Rollins said during her nomination hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture,...

Jan 24, 2025 | flipboard.com | Sky Chadde |Investigate Midwest |John McCracken

NowCNN — On the outskirts of Altadena, where one of the most destructive firestorms in Los Angeles history had just receded, a group of volunteers worked last week to gather fallen tree branches and leaves — removing fuel for potential future fires, bagging them up and taking them away. One of those …

Jan 16, 2025 | yahoo.com | Sky Chadde |Investigate Midwest

A Senate Agricultural Appropriations Committee meeting near Casselton, North Dakota, on Aug. 15, 2024, included, from left, Tina Smith, John Boozman, John Hoeven and Amy Klobuchar. (Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)The new leader of the U.S. Senate’s agriculture committee, Arkansas’ John Boozman, has several ties to meatpacking behemoths, including Tyson Foods, and has recently resisted efforts by his fellow Republicans to reign in their economic power.