MAGA Farmers wondering who’s going to pick those damn crops:
The country’s largest agricultural constituency backed Trump in November, bucking California’s deep-blue electorate over his campaign promises to “open the faucet” and deliver more water to the state’s parched, conservative-leaning Central Valley. But now it’s reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction: Trump also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state’s agricultural workforce.
That’s left California’s agricultural barons, who employ the most farm workers of any state in the nation and grow half the produce consumed in the United States, nervously parsing Trump’s rhetoric.
“To say it would have an impact on California would be an understatement,” said Chris Reardon, vice president of policy advocacy at the industry group California Farm Bureau Federation. Reardon, who declined to say who he voted for, has been fielding calls from members asking him what exactly will happen to workers.
“We just don’t know yet,” he’s told them.
Trump has appointed anti-immigration hawks to top positions, like Thomas Homan as border czar, and pledged to begin deportations on “Day One” of his administration, through executive orders crafted to evade legal challenges and by undoing Biden-era restrictions on deportations. Dave Puglia, the president and CEO of the Western Growers Association, called the prospect of sweeps on farms “very troubling.”
Big Ag’s throwing a lot of money around in the hopes that a deal can be made to exempt agricultural workers from the mass deportation. I won’t be surprised if it works. They have a lot of clout.
Maybe there will be some raids on some processing plants or big farming operations to “send a message” and then they’ll let it go. I could see the same in some restaurants or certain neighborhoods and some ostentatious expulsions of people who are already in custody before they move on to something else.
Keep in mind that he was planning to run on closing the border until Biden pretty much did that and the Congress came up with that bipartisan draconian bill he ordered the Republicans to tank. Mass deportation was a relatively late campaign message. So, who knows how serious they really are beyond providing some thrilling visuals of abject cruelty toward migrants for their slavering cult members to enjoy.
It could happen, of course. It’s very hard to know just how much of this extremist agenda is for real and how much is Trump strutting around like a WWE wrestler. There will be legal challenges to everything they try and it’s always possible that events will overtake their plans in any case.
If it weren’t for all the human suffering involved, I’d say that all these Trump voting fools should have to get a taste of his toxic medicine. Let Miller and Homan have their way. However, these are human beings we’re talking about not pawns so I hope this is actually a show for the MAGA cult and not a real policy. Of course, even the show will bring misery to many people so it’s hardly something to wish for. But it’s probably the best we can do in the current circumstances.
Oh, and Trump can’t “open the faucet” either. And they, of all people, know that. It’s absurd. They believe what they want to believe about his policies but they backed him for the same reason all his voters did — he owns the libs. It’s what they all have in common, rich and working class alike. That’s what makes MAGA tick.