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The Trump administration last week announced it would be giving about $12 billion in direct cash assistance to American farmers, similar to how it assisted farmers in 2018 – only, its stated reasons for doing so are different.
At a roundtable, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said Biden-era policies had plunged farmers into “one crisis after another” and the new Farmer Bridge Assistance program was meant to transport them from a tumultuous present to a more prosperous future.
“This bridge is absolutely necessary, based on where we are right now,” Rollins said. “[This is] the bridge that is needed to get from the last administration and what basically happened under the last president… to this new golden age for farmers.”
The first Trump administration also provided American farmers with a bailout of $12 billion in taxpayer dollars, only that time, it said the disbursement was needed as a temporary buffer while the administration worked out better trade deals. The bailout was described as “a short-term relief strategy to protect agricultural producers while the Administration works on free, fair, and reciprocal trade deals to open more markets,” according to a Department of Agriculture press release at the time.
Even though President Donald Trump has brought a renewed intensity to tariff and trade policy in 2025, the farm economy is in a different place, according to senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Joseph Glauber – which could account for the difference in messaging.
In 2018, when the first supplemental aid package was announced, the farm economy had endured more sustained losses.
“Back in 2018 you really did see some big trade losses… and they were sustained, right? They lasted a year and a half, or almost two years,” Glauber said.
But American farmers have received a lot of supplemental aid since 2018, in addition to that first payout.
Farmers received additional financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as did most segments of the American economy, amounting to about $57.7 billion in 2020 alone, according to a USDA working paper.
“We find $57.7 billion in total financial assistance was provided to farm operations and households in calendar year 2020,” the paper reads. “Programs specifically designed to address the economic impacts of COVID-19 in 2020 delivered an estimated $35.2 billion, the assistance provided under non-COVID-19 related programs (other than net indemnity payments) delivered an estimated $16.8 billion, and the net indemnity payments provided the remaining $5.7 billion.”
The Agriculture Department is also given broad authority under the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act to issue discretionary agricultural support payments of up to $30 billion per year, in addition to the regular funding, insurance and disaster assistance provided by the Farm Bill. (Congress can also authorize more if needed.) The Act was passed in 1933 as an emergency relief measure to help farmers during the Great Depression. Like many other New Deal programs such as Social Security, it remains in effect today.
As a result of these additional disbursements in recent years and shifts in global food markets, the American farm economy overall is in a better position, according to Glauber.
“If you concentrate on farm income, which is the big, big number that includes both livestock and crop producers, that’s pretty good and is higher than the 10-year average,” Glauber told The Center Square. “By a lot of measures like that, it’s pretty good.”
Glauber said land values, too, would likely reflect signs of a crisis if the farm sector was, in fact, facing a crisis that most American farmers “haven’t seen in their lifetime,” as Rollins described it.
“If the farm sector were in a serious downturn, you would think that land values would be falling. They haven’t been. They’ve actually been holding fairly firm,” Glauber said.
Crop farmers have been hurt by recent government policy, but because of the infusion of supplemental assistance the sector has seen since 2018, they likely suffered worse during the recession in 2009 or in the 1980s when they didn’t have that kind of assistance, according to Glauber.
Ryan Young, senior economist with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said much of the damage that has been done to the farm sector comes from tariffs both from Trump’s first and second terms – and former President Joe Biden could have improved things for farmers if he had undone some of them.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s the main point. President Trump’s tariffs got farmers in this mess in the first place. The solution is to remove the tariffs, not to try covering up that mistake with a taxpayer-funded bailout,” Young told The Center Square.
Tad DeHaven, policy analyst with the Cato Institute, called attributing farmers’ current challenges to the Biden administration “laughable” due to the fact that the Trump administration’s choice mirrors the bailout in the president’s first term, before Biden had been president.
“Certainly the Biden administration was responsible for a good part of the inflation that we went through,” DeHaven told The Center Square. “The first Trump administration initiated a trade war and they lost. Farmers lost market access. They got a bailout.”

Despite only having until the end of January to pass the remaining nine annual government funding bills, Congress has so far made minimal progress.
The U.S. House is not planning on advancing anything before its Christmas recess, with all of leadership’s focus currently on a healthcare policy plan.
Republicans unveiled the text of the plan – the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act – Friday night, a counterproposal to Democrats’ failed bill to extend the Obamacare Premium Tax Credits.
The Senate, meanwhile, is currently stuck on a proposed five-bill minibus due to a couple of recalcitrant Republicans fighting over earmarks within some of the appropriations bills.
Congress has only seven weeks to find a solution before the government runs out of money, and it can take two to three weeks to pass appropriations bills through both chambers even after the text is agreed to.
The minibus, which hasn’t been publicly released yet, purportedly has $5 billion in earmarks.
The package includes fiscal year 2026 funding for federal agencies that handle Transportation and Housing and Urban Development; Defense; Labor and Health and Human Services; Commerce, and Justice, Science; and Interior.
Most federal government agencies are still running off of appropriations levels from fiscal year 2024. Congress never passed a real budget in fiscal year 2025, instead punting forward the shutdown deadline via three consecutive Continuing Resolutions.
The government then shut down Oct. 1, when Democrats refused to vote for a fourth CR due to Republicans’ refusal to extend the expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
After a record long 43-day shutdown, enough Democrats voted to reopen the government by passing a CR. Congress also passed a three-bill minibus that same day, which knocked out three of the twelve fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills.
It authorized full-year funds for Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; the Food and Drug Administration, Agriculture and Rural Development; and the Legislative Branch. Agencies covered under the remaining nine bills – including those in the five-bill minibus currently under consideration – are covered by the CR.
This means that if Congress does not pass those bills in some form by Feb. 1, the end date of the CR, they risk a partial government shutdown.

A First Nation reservation located in upstate New York and extends into Canada says it is grappling with transnational and illegal border crosser crime. One of its law enforcement chiefs came to Texas seeking help.
Ranatiiostha Swamp, chief of police of the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, spoke with The Center Square in an exclusive interview about the challenges his community faces while joining an Operation Lone Star Task Force operation in south Texas.
His territory, which straddles the international border, has been a target of human, drug and weapons smuggling, as well as other crimes, The Center Square reported.
The territory borders the Canadian Cornwall Port of Entry, includes Cornwall Island and smaller islands on the St. Lawrence River, and a coastal region of Quebec. In the U.S., it borders the Massena POE in upstate New York, and the northernmost parts of Franklin and St. Lawrence counties. Cornwall, Ontario, is roughly a 20-minute drive to Massena; Ottawa to Messena is roughly a 1.5-hour drive. To reach either city, travelers, including residents, must go through the reservation.
Chief Swamp has jurisdiction in the province of Quebec and Ontario and transits through New York State. The reservation also has a chief of police on the New York side who receives grants to work with U.S. Homeland Security and Border Patrol. Swamp’s jurisdiction includes the St. Lawrence River; the vast amount of his region is divided by water. Because of the vast region and lack of resources, despite their best efforts, they are limited in law enforcement efforts, he says.
Each side of the reservation falls under different laws, Canadian and American, including a political, judicial and currency system. The international border divides the reservation. “The only thing that we share is our culture,” he said. Every morning, they say a prayer of unity and thanksgiving, “Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen,” to bring their mind together as one, he said. “That is what we’re doing today,” he said, when coming to Texas to seek solutions.
Their community is facing increasing criminal threats, he said.
“Mexican cartels are buying up property along the border, that’s primarily what we’re seeing from where I’m from. It’s all on the U.S. side where they’re buying up all the farmlands connected into different farms,” Swamp said. “We’re working with U.S. Border Patrol and state police in our area.” The properties being purchased are in strategic locations where open farmland provides easy access to cross the river, he said.
He’s working to create memorandum of understandings with law enforcement agencies “to have some border law enforcement patrol on land. We have had a shiprider [maritime law enforcement cooperation] come through on the moving area on the water. I’d like to incorporate that same concept and bring it to” law enforcement cooperation on land in Canada, he said.
Dwayne Zacharie, president of First Nations Chiefs of Police Association and Chief Peacekeeper of the Kahnawake Peacekeepers, oversees law enforcement operations on a reservation roughly an hour from Montreal. “Where we are located, all of the land around us is farmland where many of the workers are migrants from Guatemala, Mexico, India and other countries. They’re coming to Canada and into our community,” also connected to an illicit tobacco trade, he said where organized criminal organizations have seized on an opportunity.
“More and more and more, our community is being inundated by immigrant traffic,” Zacharie said. “We’ve had a number of contacts from a Homeland Security office in Montreal about what they’re seeing in Montreal. The immigrants are illegal, so we see this influx in our community and all of these impacts lead to other statistics: theft, fraud, vehicle theft, all of these things are starting to rise.”
The reservations’ designations have existed since the 1700s but all of a sudden these communities are experiencing a wave of crime from illegal immigration, he said. “We’re not big, but we are in the middle of all of this. We see what the impacts are, and we see where the hole is. We see that there’s a lack of understanding at the federal and provincial level about how to combat the issue that we’re all facing.” After meeting with OLS Task Force sheriffs in Texas, he’s hoping to develop solutions and form new partnerships.
The police chiefs face legal and prosecutorial constraints stemming from the Indian Act and Immigration and Protection Act, they argue, which contribute to lack of border enforcement. Another is not receiving funding from Public Safety Canada, which is expected to cut funding for First Nation policing organizations next March, Zacharie said. Another struggle they face stems from the Canadian government refusing to designate them as essential services, The Center Square reported.
While Swamp’s community on the New York side has benefitted from U.S. federal funding, there is nothing comparable in place locally on the Canadian side, which is a goal of his, he said. “I continue to spearhead that and that’s part of the reason why I’m here [in Texas] so I can learn from what’s going on here and bring it back home. Because of the border that goes straight through the Akwesasne reservation, it divides our community despite us saying that we are one community,” he said.
As a result of their trip, Texas policy makers and OLS Task Force members are working on border security solutions with First Nation police chiefs.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass sent a letter this week to city council members, urging them to pass a budget that would allow the Los Angeles Police Department to hire 410 new officers.
In the Dec. 10 letter, Bass implored the council to approve $4.4 million in funding, without which the police department will no longer be able to hire incoming recruits.
“It will mean no new cadets in the police academy in January of 2026,” Bass wrote in the letter. “It will mean increasing overtime hours and costs as fewer officers will have greater workloads. It will mean that we strain officers’ health with longer shifts and more responsibility.”
Bass and the president of the Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, did not respond to The Center Square for comment this week. The Los Angeles Police Department deferred questions to the city council and mayor’s office on Thursday and did not return calls and emails from The Center Square on Friday.
In her letter, Bass noted the nation’s second-largest city can’t have a police force that staffs at the same levels as 1995. She also noted Los Angeles doesn’t have enough police officers per 1,000 residents the way other large cities throughout the country do. The demands of the police department with the upcoming 2028 Olympics and 2026 FIFA World Cup, she wrote, would strain the LAPD.
“Mayor Bass sees the handwriting on the wall,” Assemblymember Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale and a member of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, told The Center Square on Friday. “We’ve got some worldwide, high-profile events coming with the World Cup and the Olympics coming. They would be one of the most understaffed police departments in the country per capita.”
Some groups outside of the electorate of the city support the funding package, telling The Center Square on Friday that a robust police presence is crucial in keeping the city safe.
“Without this very paltry amount of money in the scheme of things, there would be no hiring for a period of time,” Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a police union in Los Angeles, told The Center Square on Friday. “That would have devastating impacts to the safety of not just our police officers who need backup, but also the residents of Los Angeles.”
However, a local anti-police group, Stop LAPD Spying, told The Center Square on Friday that the organization did not support the $4.4 million package deal.
“We absolutely reject it,” organizer Hamid Khan said. “They [the LAPD] are constantly bleeding the city of its resources. This goes to show the completely sick priorities in that it is more about policing the youth, criminalizing unhoused people and giving more money to the LAPD rather than investing in communities and their health and wellness.”
Another group, the Anti-Police Terror Project, did not respond to The Center Square on Friday.
The National Police Association, a nationwide industry group for local law enforcement, was unreachable on Thursday. Another pro-police group, the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, did not respond to The Center Square on Friday.
Hilda Solis, the chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, also did not return calls.

A new bill protecting children was introduced this week by U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, called the National Educator Safety and Accountability Act of 2025.
It aims to protect, prevent and respond to educator sexual misconduct in schools.
The legislation would establish a National Educator Misconduct and Discipline Registry to track offenders and create a federal task force on educator sexual misconduct. Hunt presented the bill Tuesday to the House of Representatives.
Studies state 10% of children experience sexual misconduct or grooming by a school employee before graduation. That’s around 5.2 million and 9.4 million U.S. public school students. This misconduct can result in lifelong consequences, negative physical, psychological and academic outcomes.
There are no systems that exist to prevent employees dismissed for misconduct from moving to new districts undetected, according to Hunt.
“Under no circumstances should a child fear the adults who are supposed to provide a supportive, educational environment,” Hunt told The Center Square in an email. “This situation is unacceptable, and it is the responsibility of leadership to ensure that our children have safe communities. This bill will establish the National Educator Misconduct and Discipline Registry, which will give school districts the proper background checks on school employees. This incentive is crucial for ensuring our children’s safety.”
Arizona state Sen. Janae Shamp, R‑Surprise, praised Hunt’s proposal, as she has long supported stronger protections for children against sexual predators.
“This bill will finally end the shameful practice of ‘passing the trash’ by creating the mandatory National Educator Misconduct Registry for every federally funded school employee, volunteer and contractor, banning secret settlements that hide sexual deviants, and withholding federal funds from non-compliant districts,” Shamp told The Center Square. “Our kids deserve to learn in safe environments, and good teachers deserve a profession free of sexual predators hiding in plain sight.”
Shamp emphasized the legislation is a critical step toward ensuring schools are safe and accountable. She noted offenders cannot continue moving from district to district without consequence.
The Texas Education Agency did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment on this bill.