DAILY Bites
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The USDA is suspending federal financial awards to Minnesota and Minneapolis amid ongoing fraud investigations, according to a letter sent to Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey.
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Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said on X the suspension is effective immediately, “until sufficient proof has been provided that the fraud has stopped,” citing estimates that billions were lost and referencing a nearly $250 million Feeding Our Future case.
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The Department of Health and Human Services also froze certain assistance funds, though a judge on Friday temporarily blocked the freeze.
DAILY Discussion
Most Americans don’t think about the U.S. Department of Agriculture unless a storm wipes out crops, a drought hits, or the grocery bill jumps. But farmers think about it every day. We think about it the way you think about your paycheck clearing. The way you think about whether your insurance is real. The way you think about whether the rules you planned your life around will still be there next month, because farming is not a one-season decision. Instead, decisions are made years, decades, and generations at a time.
That’s what made this week so alarming.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and the Trump administration announced that USDA would suspend all federal payments to Minnesota last week. Not a single program and not a single organization deserving investigation or punishment; instead, they decided to punish everyone. This is not a targeted enforcement action. Instead, more than $129 million in active and future awards has been suddenly stopped.
Enough is enough! The Trump administration has uncovered MASSIVE fraud in Minnesota and Minneapolis—billions siphoned off by fraudsters. And those in charge have ZERO plan to fix it.
Today, @USDA is SUSPENDING FEDERAL FINANCIAL AWARDS to Minnesota and Minneapolis, effective… pic.twitter.com/xEus3GAcGX
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) January 9, 2026
What that means in real life is this: farmers, food producers, rural businesses, and local programs are now caught in the middle of a political standoff they did not create and cannot resolve.
This is not how American agriculture has ever worked.
If someone commits fraud, you investigate them. You charge them. You recover the money. Farmers understand that. We live under inspection, audit, and compliance more than almost any profession in this country. But you do not shut off the water to the whole town because one house is under investigation.
Until now, that line had never been crossed.
This is the first time farmers have been pulled into a strategy of collective punishment by the federal government. Not because they were accused of wrongdoing. Not because their farms were under investigation. But because the administration is pressuring state leadership.
That should stop every American cold.
The USDA is not a political office It is the backbone of the food system. It underwrites crop insurance. It supports disaster recovery. It funds conservation work that protects land and water. It keeps rural credit moving. It stabilizes markets so farmers can plant in the spring and lenders will back them in the winter.
You don’t threaten that system lightly. Because when you do, you aren’t punishing politicians. You are destabilizing the part of America that grows the food. The danger here isn’t only the money currently frozen. The danger is what just became possible. A precedent has now been set that federal farm support can be turned off broadly, preemptively, and politically. That states and the people who farm inside them can be told, your funding is conditional not on your compliance, but on whether the administration is satisfied.
That is a fundamentally different relationship between farmers and the federal government. For decades, farmers have lived inside a tough system, but a predictable one. You knew the rules. You knew the enforcement mechanisms. You knew that if something went wrong, it would be handled through audits, investigations, courts, and due process. What we are seeing now is something else. It is power exercised outward, not downward. Pressure applied wide, not precise. And farmers are being used as leverage.
This new relationship should trouble conservatives who believe in limited government. It should trouble independents who believe in stability. It should trouble liberals who believe in fair process. And it should trouble anyone who eats. Because agriculture runs on trust.
Trust that if you take out an operating loan, the programs behind it will exist. Trust that if you sign a multi-year conservation contract, it won’t vanish mid-stream. Trust that if a flood hits or a disease spreads, disaster programs won’t be held hostage to politics. When that trust breaks, farmers don’t plant less ideology. They plant less food. And instability in agriculture does not stay on the farm. It shows up in food prices. In shortages. In bankruptcies. In who controls the land when family operations fail.
This is not a Minnesota issue. This is a warning shot.
If USDA funding can be broadly suspended once, it can be done again. In any state. Under any pretext. By any administration that decides pressure works better than process. Make no mistake, accountability matters. Fraud should be prosecuted and every dollar should be
traceable. But collective punishment is not practicing accountability. It is cruelty and coercion turned on our farmers.
Joy Powers is a fourth-generation cattle farmer from Bedford County, Virginia, a small-business owner, and a rural advocate. She currently serves in agricultural leadership roles in her community and is a candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 9th District, where she is focused on agriculture, healthcare access, and rural economic stability.
