Republican Leaders MIA in Rural America

Republican Governors and Members of Congress Silent while Trump Hammers their Constituents

Robert Leonard

and

Matt Russell

Mar 26, 2025

This column is also posted at Matt’s Substack “Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm.”

(note: Spencer Dirks and I will host our Iowa Revolution/Deep Midwest Subtack Live event at Deep Midwest; Politics and Culture, today at noon CT. If you are a subscriber you will get an email notification when we go live).

We’re rural people. We live in unincorporated Marion County, Iowa. Matt’s Lacona Zip Code includes 997 people. Robert’s Bussey Zip Code includes 963 souls. Republicans have turned against farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and all the people and institutions that are important to us.

If elected Republican leaders believed in Iowa farmers and rural people, they wouldn’t be cutting federal funds, firing federal employees who provide much-needed services to us, and destroying trade. If they cared about rural America, if their values and identity were aligned with ours, they wouldn’t be defending billionaires and kicking us in the teeth.

Republicans are cheering on President Trump as he takes a wrecking ball to our nation. We work in or adjacent to Iowa agriculture and show up in rural communities across the state. It’s become clear to us that elected Iowa Republicans are also abandoning rural Iowa and rural America.

Let us count the ways Republicans are showing disdain for our neighbors, our family members, our friends, and our co-workers in rural Iowa. Their actions reveal their loyalty lies with the community of Trump rather than the communities where we live, work, and play.

Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst should know how many USDA employees have been fired by President Donald Trump or took the resignation offer Elon Musk gave them. Representatives Randy Feenstra, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, and Ashley Hinson should all know how many USDA jobs have been lost in their districts. We’ve seen no evidence that they do.

The courts are now demanding that thousands of federal employees fired by Trump to shrink the federal workforce must be reinstated. Politico reported on March 13, “U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a ‘sham’ strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce.”

This is an easy lift. If Republicans valued our local USDA agricultural leaders, they would stand with federal labor law, the courts, and these public servants. They aren’t. They chose Trump and Musk over the mostly rural Iowans who work at the Farm Service Agency (FSA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and Rural Development (RD). They do not stand with the researchers at Agriculture Marketing Services, who provide the public information farmers depend on to sell their crops. They don’t care about the enforcement that employees at the Packers and Stockyards Act do like making sure farmers get paid when they sell livestock. USDA also employs Iowans who work in fields such as food safety, veterinary science, and many other fields of research.

Federal employees do two things that are core to their oath to the Constitution. They make sure that every American eligible for service and who applies for it gets that service. And they hold those who participate accountable for following the rules.

These USDA leaders mostly live and work in rural Iowa. They are our friends, family, and neighbors. They serve all of Iowa's agriculture and rural communities. They provide access to participants and accountability to the American public.

Iowa Republican leaders show who they are by ceding power to Trump rather than standing up for the federal employees who provide the services farmers and rural communities depend on.

That shouldn’t be a surprise because these Republicans aren’t going to fight for the services USDA employees provide either. We struggle to find one clear example since Inauguration Day where any member of Iowa’s congressional delegation has chosen to defend these services in opposition to Trump and Musk who are dismantling them.

For example, most of the agriculture community rallied for greater investments in clean energy, soil health, water quality, and farmers helping solve climate change during the Biden administration. Now Trump and Musk are dismantling these efforts.

If elected Republicans actually believed in the work farmers can do to advance agricultural solutions to big environmental challenges, they’d be fighting like hell for these historic investments passed by Congress and signed into law. Instead, they are defending Trump’s efforts to eliminate the funding for these programs.

The demand is there. Billions of additional dollars obligated by Congress for these investments haven’t kept up with applications. Farmers, rural communities, and small businesses are ready to lean into these solutions. We’ve heard that in many Iowa NRCS county offices, the result of these cuts and freezes means that only 10% of interested farmers will be funded.

Instead of using their political power to ensure farmers have access to these investments to clean up our water, improve our soil, help solve the climate crisis, build up our farms, and empower Iowa’s rural communities, Republicans use their power to defend a political movement led by the billionaires Trump and Musk.

Speaking of not investing in farmers, Trump is ending the programs that connected small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers with schools, hospitals, food banks, and daycares. In Iowa, that cut is $11.3 million dollars over three years. Chris Clayton at DTN has details here.

Last month the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture passed a resolution supporting programs like this. Less than two weeks later, Trump ended these programs and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said nothing. Governor Kim Reynolds said nothing. Ernst, Grassley, Feenstra, Nunn, Hinson, and Miller-Meets said nothing we can find.

In the past three years, Iowa farmers accessed nearly $7.8 million dollars in these programs. Because of those new markets, Iowa farmers were able to leverage additional sales. Cutting the $11.3 million dollar investment for the next three years means a loss of nearly $20 million dollars in potential economic impact for smaller and more diversified farmers and rural communities across the state.

Iowa Republicans are using their political power to defend Trump rather than fighting for Iowa pork producers, apple orchards, vegetable growers, beef producers, and dairies that stand ready to provide Iowa-grown foods to children, seniors, and people wrestling with hunger.

Trump is still trying to sell himself as a champion of farmers and rural America, but his actions speak louder than his words. Iowa Republicans are empowering Trump’s sales pitch, largely by keeping their heads down but also repeating White House talking points about the “savings” Musk and his team are supposedly finding. Defending Trump does far more than just allow the cuts. They are amplifying the damage by lending their political power to Trump and Musk instead of using that power to fight for us.

Trump is again wielding a chainsaw and destroying trading relationships. Our partners will look even harder for other sources of agricultural commodities, even as he pulls back some of the threats.

American farmers and their organizations have been building trading partners around the world for decades. Our friend Joshua Manske, an Iowa farmer, says trade is like a tree. It takes years for it to grow while it only takes a few minutes to cut it down. That’s what Trump did in his first term. He continues to double down on that strategy in his second. In his first term, China went looking for other soybean supplies, and for American soybean growers that trade hasn’t come back yet.

Trade wars evaporate demand and lower the price for American farmers. American consumers will also pay more for products from around the world. In his first term, Trump sent $23 billion in Marketing Assistance Payments from American taxpayers to farmers to help cover some of their losses. These billions built nothing. They simply were an attempt to make up for some of the costs farmers paid for his trade war. In his second term, he’s threatening new trade wars that will permanently destroy much of the global demand for what we grow in Iowa.

Further, these Republicans are undermining Iowa’s unique role in the industry of agriculture. Iowa State University is a cornerstone of our global leadership in agriculture. Tens of millions of USDA dollars are invested in ISU every year. Or at least that was the case until the second Trump administration. Iowa Republican leaders should be fighting for graduate students, research, and the amazing partnerships between ISU, USDA, farmers, rural communities, and small-town businesses. They aren’t.

No other University in the United States surpasses the contributions Iowa State has made to advancing American agriculture. Trump is tearing down American agricultural leadership and Iowa Republicans are complicit.

With attacks on Iowa farmers and Iowa State University, Republicans are also undermining the investments Iowa agriculture businesses make in our unique global position. For more than a decade, the Greater Des Moines Partnership has leveraged this leadership in the Cultivation Corridor.

“The Corridor was founded in 2014 by a group of Iowa agricultural leaders to strengthen the state’s resources and focus on driving innovation and growth in the food-tech, ag-tech, and bioproducts industries. Investors and partners work together to accelerate the development of new technologies, strengthen Iowa’s bioscience workforce, and attract economic development, all focused on meeting the challenge of feeding a growing world population in a sustainable way.”

These important relationships are at risk after so many cuts to Iowa’s agricultural research and attacks on USDA capacity in the state. Further, cuts at USAID will impact the work of the World Food Prize, research at ISU, markets for Iowa commodities, and Iowa’s global leadership. That our elected Republican leaders are afraid to raise these concerns is proof that they don’t think Iowa’s place in global agricultural leadership is really that important. If they did, they’d be fighting together to maintain it rather than allowing Trump and Musk to tear it down.

Last year when Iowa farmers were hit by tornadoes and floods, Iowa Republicans were unified in calling on President Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to invest in their recovery. In July, Reynolds and the Iowa Congressional Delegation called on Vilsack to use his statutory authority to help Iowa farmers recover from the disasters.

They conclude the letter:

“Again, we urge you to prioritize program flexibility and the allocation of resources toward expanding and enhancing disaster assistance programs to meet the needs of Iowa farmers and ranchers. These programs are crucial in providing essential support to communities working to recover and rebuild after disasters.”

Resources through FEMA, USDA, and SBA were already in place and more did eventually arrive to help fill much of the need. Republicans fought for the hundreds of farmers and more than a dozen communities impacted by these disasters. The Biden-Harris Administration worked with them to deliver as many resources as were available. We believe, along with most Americans, this is one of the key roles of the federal government.

The hundreds of millions of dollars being frozen and canceled right now across Iowa’s entire agricultural landscape are magnitudes greater to our state than the impact of the tornadoes and floods in 2024. Where’s the unified effort by Iowa’s elected Republicans to defend historical agricultural and rural investments and to stand with farmers, ranchers, researchers, public servants, rural communities, ag students, and the partnerships between businesses and nonprofits with USDA?

Clearly, their true colors are showing. When it serves the party they send the letter to attack the Democratic administration. But when that letter and unified voice would confront Trump, they chose partisan politics and welcomed devastating Trump policies over farmers and rural Iowans.

In a remarkable display of disrespect for farmers, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggests that as a response to the high cost of eggs, people start raising backyard chickens. If she thinks this is actually a good idea, our Secretary of Agriculture has no understanding of modern agriculture. She has no understanding of what American farmers and ranchers do every day to provide food, fiber, energy and so much more to Americans and people all over the world.

If she was joking, it wasn’t a belly laugh--it was a gut punch. The American farmer, with support from all the programs under attack above, makes it possible to supply the American public with products that are generally safer, more abundant, and less expensive than if Americans attempted to grow their own food.

That’s not to say that we don’t support people growing a garden and raising livestock. We do. The value of doing these things is tremendous. But when the Secretary of Agriculture suggests that people can do this themselves cheaper and better than farmers, that’s the highest level of insult for a farmer.

If a Democrat had said something like that, Republicans would be outraged. When Republicans are silent while the Secretary of Agriculture mocks the value of the work farmers and ranchers do to feed Americans and often our fellow human beings around the world, the truth is revealed.

Iowa Republican elected leaders are investing all of their political power and aligning their political identity with a radical anti-government, pro-big business, anti-farmer, and anti-working class president. In doing so they are selling out Iowa farmers, ranchers, agricultural leaders, and rural communities.

Our Republican Governor, Secretary of Agriculture, both Senators and all four Representatives don’t have the courage to stand up to Trump and fight for Iowans.

As we talk to our fellow rural Iowans, we’re starting to hear serious concerns that Iowa Republicans no longer believe in us, will not fight for us, and are scared of Trump and Musk who have taken over their party.

That is a wake-up call for all Iowans. We hope Democrats are paying attention to the political reality in rural Iowa. Fighting Trump and standing up for rural America need to be one and the same. The sooner leaders in the Democratic party invest in those of us willing to fight for ourselves and others in rural America, the sooner we can help expose the truth about elected Republicans. Loyalty to Trump means Republicans are no longer standing with and fighting for farmers, ranchers, rural communities, small-town businesses, and American agricultural leadership.

And maybe the moment also reveals that they never really did.

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