Trump-Associated Legal Firm Sues USDA for ‘Anti-White Racism’
The group is furious that historically disadvantaged communities will be given an advantage.
Earlier this month, Stephen Miller, former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, launched a legal firm dedicated to throwing legal rocks at the Biden administration.
That firm, called America First Legal, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Biden administration from implementing certain programs under the USDA. Those programs, as we’ve covered, are designed to provide more access to land and capital for some farmers, especially Black farmers, who have been historically discriminated against by USDA policies.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, insists that these programs are racist and deprive certain farmers—white farmers—of some benefits. In an inflammatory press release, America First Legal quotes Martin Luther King, Jr.
Stephen Miller, as advisor to Trump, has been credited with many of the anti-immigrant policies under the Trump administration, including border separation and reduced refugee limits.
The farmers who stand to benefit from the programs in the American Rescue Act targeted by this lawsuit are primarily Black farmers. The programs, totaling about $5 billion, were also attacked by Republican-written amendments in Congress, but they passed despite that. They include expanding access to land for disadvantaged farmers through grants and loans, financial support to agriculture-focused HBCUs, debt relief and a study of systemic racism at the USDA. As The Counter reports, systemic racism has a long history at the Department of Agriculture, and USDA policy has had a major role in hobbling Black agriculture.
This $5-billion figure, in fact, is far from the amount that USDA policies have cost Black farmers, who have lost around 90 percent of their land since 1910. Roughly 98 percent of American farmers today are white, much higher than the total percentage of the population that identifies as white.
The USDA told The Hill that it is reviewing the matter and that the policies will continue to be in effect during this review.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Trump-Associated Legal Firm Sues USDA for ‘Anti-White Racism’
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
April 29, 2021
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Far right shows its true colors again. They will be trying to take away food stamps to the poor because it discriminates against the wealthy next.
It is really sad to see arguments such as this one. I believe the author to be a good person, taking a stand for what they believe is true and right. We all have blind spots though, especially when politicians are working so hard to poke out everyone’s eyes. Does anyone really think that to fix racism we need to institute more racism? History is littered with examples of how terrible this becomes and we need to be wise enough to learn from that history. A move like this vulcanizes the public, as does the natural reactions that everyone would… Read more »
It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race/skin color – this is an (another) outrageous racist Biden policy – would not stand up in court. Also how black do you have to be to qualify for this race based money? How far do we extend this through society. Do wealthy Nigerians or Caribean immigrants qualify? Opening a nasty can of worms here. But you folks are woke so I guess you don’t see it. I’m hoping for you to fail in all these racist endeavors. Tim Scott is correct – you can’t rectify racism with more racism. You’re… Read more »