‘Just Want To Be Left Alone’: Farmers Fed Up With Newsom’s Latest Gambit
'Rural folks just want to be left alone.'
Agriculture secretary unveils plan to stop China’s farmland grab, bio-material smuggling threats
The Trump administration is moving to prevent foreign adversaries from owning farmland in the United States, following reports that foreign entities own nearly 45 million acres of agricultural land.
During a Tuesday morning press conference, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the National Farm Security Action Plan, a multi-agency effort to protect America's food supply by banning foreign rivals, including Chinese entities, from purchasing farmland in the U.S.
'We are working to issue regulatory action to remove over 550 entities from foreign countries of concern from our preferred catalog.'
Rollins was joined at the press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
"American agriculture is not just about feeding our families but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research, and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us," Rollins stated.
The action plan includes "seven critical areas," as outlined on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website. These areas focus on increasing transparency and imposing stricter penalties for foreign ownership of farmland. Additionally, it emphasizes redirecting domestic investments to strengthen supply chain resilience, combating foreign crime syndicates and biological threats, safeguarding research, and ensuring the USDA aligns with the administration's America First agenda.
The USDA aims to partner with state leaders and members of Congress to swiftly implement executive action and legislation to prevent "countries of concern or other foreign adversaries" from purchasing farmland.
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Rollins stated that the Trump administration would use presidential authorities to "claw back what has already been purchased by China and other foreign adversaries."
She noted that she signed a memo on Tuesday, canceling USDA-affiliated contracts or research arrangements with 70 citizens from countries of concern.
Rollins added, "We are working to issue regulatory action to remove over 550 entities from foreign countries of concern from our preferred catalog."
The agency will roll out an online portal for those in the agricultural industry to "report possible false or failed reporting and compliance with respect to [the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act]."
As of December 2023, nearly 45 million acres of agricultural land are owned by foreign countries, including hundreds of thousands of acres by Chinese entities, according to a report by AFIDA.
Another top goal of the administration's action plan is to address biological material threats. This follows reports in June that federal authorities arrested multiple Chinese nationals who allegedly attempted to smuggle biological material into the United States.
During Tuesday's press conference, Bondi stated that two of the individuals allegedly involved in the schemes had ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
"It's going to stop. FBI has opened over 100 bio-smuggling investigations in recent years," Bondi said.
She also stated that the administration is cracking down on pesticide trafficking across the southern border, noting that "illegal and highly toxic chemicals from Mexico were smuggled into the U.S."
"The Department of Justice is prioritizing the arrest of those illegal aliens doing it," Bondi added.
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Canada bows to Donald Trump — tariff negotiations are back on
In the trade war with the rest of the world, Canada threatened to tax Big Tech companies in America. However, just a few comments from President Donald Trump caused Canada to back down, and tariff negotiations are back on the table.
“So Canada put a charge on some of our companies, and Canada’s been a very difficult country to deal with over the years, and we have all the cards,” Trump said in a press conference last week.
“Economically, we have such power over Canada, I’d rather not use it, but they did something with our tech companies today trying to copy Europe. You know, they copied Europe. It’s not going to work out well for Europe, either, and it’s not going to work out well for Canada. They were foolish to do it,” he continued.
Trump went on to explain that while America does a “little” business with Canada, they do “most of their businesses with us.”
“They’ve had farmers that are getting like 300, 400, 200% in tariffs. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We have cases, you don’t read this, and the people don’t report it, but they charge us 400% on some dairy products,” he said, adding, “And it’s not fair to our farmers, and we’ve got to protect our farmers.”
“Now, Canada is the second largest United States trading partner after Mexico, also, the largest buyer of United States exports, which is kind of to President Trump’s point, they stand a lot to lose here,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments.
“This tax plan would have put a 3% tax on companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber, Airbnb, and it also would be retroactive going all the way back to January of 2022. So for some of these companies, I mean, that’s quite a bit of money,” she says.
Now, Canada caved and dropped the digital tax plan in order to give themselves more time to reach a deal with President Trump by July 21.
Gonzales isn’t surprised by Canada’s move, adding, “It’s the art of the deal man.”
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Build back better? Then stop outsourcing our agricultural soul
Drive through our country’s heartland — past golden fields, cattle-speckled hills, and humming dairies — and you’ll see the soul of America at work. But look closer, and a bitter truth emerges: The hands harvesting our crops and milking our cows are too often foreign-born laborers here illegally or on a costly visa program.
In my state, the Idaho Dairymen’s Association admits a staggering 70% or more of dairy workers are using phony documents — illegal labor propping up Idaho’s top commodity and our country’s No. 3 milk-producing state.
Today, we’re fed a line that Americans have gone lazy, addicted to cubicles or city lights. Nonsense.
We’re told Americans won’t do these jobs. Really? From the 1880s through the 1940s, Americans built these very industries. So what changed? It’s not the workers. It’s the bosses who stopped believing in them.
American grit built our farms
Idaho’s dairies, ranches, and construction sites can thrive with American grit — if employers stop making excuses and start making offers.
Go back to the late 19th century, when Idaho’s Snake River Valley was raw desert. Local settlers — farmers, laborers, families — dug canals, built dams, and turned dust into fields of potatoes and alfalfa, as historian Mark Fiege shows in his 1999 book “Irrigated Eden.” These weren’t hired foreigners; they were Americans, mostly Western settlers, whose sweat and cooperation built an agricultural empire through the Depression and wartime into the 1940s.
Those were hard years. Yet, these people showed up, sleeves rolled, ready to work. They weren’t too soft for the sun on their necks or the ache of a long day.
Employers abandoned American workers
Today, we’re fed a line that Americans have gone lazy, addicted to cubicles or city lights. Nonsense. Some yes, but fewer than imagined. The problem isn’t our people; it’s an industry that’s forgotten how to call them home.
Don’t tell me Americans won’t work. Plenty of us still hunger for the kind of labor that smells of earth and steel — jobs that build calluses and communities. Idaho’s fields offer purpose: the roar of a tractor, the precision of robotic milkers, the quiet triumph of a harvest under wide skies.
Vice President JD Vance nailed it when he sarcastically gave in to the notion that deporting tens of millions of illegal aliens will send us back to 1960 — when homes apparently couldn’t be built without illegal labor. Absurd! The same goes for agriculture.
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These aren’t dead-end gigs; they’re the backbone of our nation. But employers need to stop acting like foreign workers are the only option. If you are one of these employers who show up to the town parade waving Old Glory, singing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” — if you claim to be America First — then hire Americans first. Anything less is just talk.
Illegal workers cost more
Here’s where the elites squirm. As state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen (R-Idaho) noted during a House debate, Idaho employers often admit that foreign labor isn’t even cheaper. Visas, travel, lodging, meals, and transportation add up — often rivaling what an American might earn in salary and benefits. Yet, they claim no amount of money will lure American workers.
Have they tried? Really tried? Take those bloated costs — every dime spent on foreign logistics — and pour them into wages, health plans, or housing for locals. Build training programs to teach kids how to run today’s high-tech rigs. If tech giants can sell college grads on coding in Silicon Valley, Idaho’s dairies can sell our youth on feeding America.
It’s not rocket science. It’s will.
The same elites twist unemployment numbers to prop up their narrative. They cite low jobless rates to argue that no one’s left to hire. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics excludes a key group: able-bodied men ages 25 to 54 who’ve dropped out of the workforce entirely. They’re not working, not looking, and not counted. That forgotten group alone includes an estimated seven million Americans.
Make American farming great again
Picture this: billboards across Idaho showing a young farmer steering a drone-guided planter, grinning like he owns the future. Community colleges partnering with ranchers to train veterans and high schoolers. County fairs where dairies hand out scholarships — not just milk samples. That’s not fantasy. That’s strategy. Businesses that want loyalty don’t wait for workers to show up — they go find them.
Right now, 70% of dairy workers rely on falsified papers. That’s not a workforce. It’s a failure of imagination. Legal, local labor builds trust, strengthens communities, and proves we take sovereignty seriously.
Idaho can lead the way. America’s watching.
Employers, quit hiding behind old excuses. Redirect your budgets, roll out campaigns, and watch Americans answer the call. Lawmakers, reduce or eliminate regulations that incentivize foreign labor.
Neighbors, cheer these jobs as the honorable work they are. Picture our fields alive with Americans, dairies humming with citizens who know this land as home.
That’s not just Idaho’s future, it’s America’s. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. All it takes is the guts to try.
One bad order could undermine Trump’s strongest issue
Thank God President Trump walked back his misguided order to grant de facto amnesty to illegal alien farm workers. Now he needs to kill the policy for good.
Trump won in 2016 — and again in 2024 — on two core promises: lower the cost of living and stop the third-world invasion of the United States. Since he shows no interest in cutting deficits in a way that might restore pre-COVID price levels, immigration remains the battlefield that will define his presidency. And unless he corrects course, he risks failure on that front too.
No more half measures or donor-driven compromises. No more weakness. Only total war on the policies, programs, and pipelines that keep America under siege.
To his credit, Trump moved quickly to shut off the surge at the southern border during his first week in office. But he did the same in 2017, and the long-term results didn’t last. A future Democrat administration will simply escalate. If Biden brought in 10 million, the next one will aim for 20 million.
Temporary border control and modest deportation numbers won’t solve the crisis. Fewer than a million removals over a four-year term won’t reverse the demographic or economic damage — especially while legal immigration, foreign student visas, and guest worker programs continue at record highs.
Unforced errors
Trump must go beyond symbolic border enforcement. That means neutralizing judicial interference through must-pass legislation — or ignoring illegitimate court rulings outright. He should authorize maritime deportations using ships, suspend most of the 1.5 million foreign student visas — especially from China and Islamic countries — and permanently empower states to enforce immigration law.
Instead, Trump recently unveiled a set of policies that undermine those very goals.
He announced continued access for Chinese nationals to U.S. universities — just as a spy ring was uncovered at the University of Michigan. He expanded his support for white-collar visas for Indian nationals and revived his “golden visa” scheme, which allows wealthy Chinese Communist Party elites to buy their way into U.S. citizenship.
Worst of all, Trump issued an order halting removals of illegal aliens working in farming and hospitality. He later reversed course — but the damage was done.
In pushing for more illegal labor, Trump handed leftists a talking point they had already lost. He lent moral weight to one of their core claims: that America needs illegal immigrants to do the “jobs Americans won’t do.” That argument, long peddled by George W. Bush, John McCain, and the donor-class GOP, was the very reason millions turned to Trump in the first place.
Ten years after calling for a moratorium on illegal immigration and a drastic cut to legal migration, Trump now echoes the talking points he once dismantled. If he keeps this up, he won’t just squander his mandate — he’ll cement the invasion he was elected to stop.
Five points Trump should heed
- You can’t re-onshore manufacturing and offshore the workforce. Trump champions tariffs to bring jobs home — but what good is that if those jobs go to foreign nationals here illegally? Patriotism means putting Americans to work on American soil — not just moving the factory.
- This isn’t about labor shortages. It’s about labor suppression. Trump wants more white-collar visas even as tech jobs disappear. He supports handing green cards to foreign students. This isn’t policy — it’s donor-class economics wrapped in populist branding.
- You can’t modernize with AI while subsidizing human labor. Trump wants to “win the AI arms race” with China. Great. Start by automating farm work instead of importing cartel-affiliated field hands. Cheap labor delays innovation — and the status quo keeps us dependent.
- The welfare state distorts the labor market. Trump refuses to shrink entitlements and yet complains that Americans won’t work. Maybe that’s true — but the welfare state is the push, and illegal labor is the pull. Cut both, and you raise wages and get people off the couch.
- Illegal labor invites cartel exploitation. Agricultural guest labor provides the perfect cover. In 2019, an exposé by the Louisville Courier Journal revealed how Mexican farm workers served as mules for the Jalisco New Generation cartel. One man, Ciro Macias Martinez, groomed horses by day at Calumet Farm — and ran a $30 million drug ring by night.
The cash-based, transient, and legally vulnerable workforce offers a logistical gold mine for transnational criminal organizations. Cartels use job scams to traffic humans, set up safe houses, and move product. Rural communities lack the law enforcement resources to push back. The result: strategic sanctuary zones for America's most dangerous enemies.
RELATED: Trump shrugs at immigration law — here’s what he should have said
When Trump says these workers are “hardworking” and “not criminals,” he ignores the obvious fact that every illegal alien is a criminal. Amnesty for farm workers isn’t just a policy mistake — it’s an operational gift to America’s foreign adversaries.
No room for ambiguity
Trump knows immigration is his strongest issue. The polls prove it. But if he wavers, even slightly, on mass deportations or illegal labor, he opens the door for his political enemies to sow doubt — and for cartel operatives to sow chaos.
He reversed the farm worker carve-out. Now he must bury it. Then, he needs to go farther. No more half measures. No more donor-driven compromises. No more weakness. Only total war on the policies, programs, and pipelines that keep America under siege.
His base expects it. The country needs it. The future depends on it.
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