2025-11-21 20:40:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
More than 5,500 toxic sites nationwide could face coastal flooding by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to new research.
The study, published on Thursday in Nature Communications and led by scientists at the University of California, warns that if heat-trapping pollution continues unabated, rising seas will flood a wide range of hazardous facilities including those handling sewage, toxic waste, oil and gas, as well as other industrial pollutants.
The analysis relies on projections of a 1 percent-annual-chance flood—commonly called a 100-year flood—under two emissions scenarios: a high-emissions scenario and a lower-emissions scenario.
After examining 23 coastal states and Puerto Rico, scientists found that flood risk is far from evenly distributed. Florida, New Jersey, California, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas account for nearly 80% of the hazardous sites expected to be at risk by 2100.
By examining over 47,600 coastal facilities across the US, more than 11%, or 5,500 facilities are projected to be at risk of a 1-in-100-year or more frequent flood event by the end of the 21st century.
The study also noted: “Restricting greenhouse gas emissions to the low emissions scenario makes little difference in terms of the number of projected sites at risk in the near term (2050) but would reduce the number of at-risk sites from 5,500 to 5,138 (a reduction of 362 or 7% of sites) in the long term.”
“Flooding from sea level rise is dangerous on its own—but when facilities with hazardous materials are in the path of those floodwaters, the danger multiplies.”
Moreover, it found that most of this risk is already locked in due to past emissions. By 2050, nearly 3,800 hazardous facilities are projected to face flooding threats.
The study found that under a high emissions scenario, over a fifth of coastal sewage treatment facilities, refineries and formerly used defense sites, roughly a third of power plants and over 40 percent of fossil-fuel ports and terminals are projected to be at risk by 2100.
In addition to mapping toxic sites vulnerable to flooding, the study examined communities living nearby. It found that under a high-emissions scenario, neighborhoods with one or more at-risk facilities contain higher shares of renters, households in poverty, Hispanic residents, linguistically isolated households, car-less households, older adults and non-voters than neighborhoods without such sites.
The study added: “Racial residential segregation and the inequitable distribution of stormwater infrastructure further contribute to racialized patterns of flood risk across US cities.”
Pointing to the many health risks posed by floodwaters contaminated with industrial waste and sewage, Sacoby Wilson, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, outlined a range of symptoms during a press briefing about the study. These include rashes, burning eyes, headaches, fatigue and respiratory issues, as well as longer-term dangers such as cancers and organ damage to the kidneys and liver.
“Based on this research, we see that you have underlying vulnerabilities that drive risk…Think about those communities that are overburdened by those industrial hazards…or agricultural hazards like CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations],” Wilson said. “And so you have compounding vulnerability when it comes to their socioeconomic status, in some cases, the role of racism…and also you have a hazard vulnerability, plus you have the geographic vulnerability based the proximity to the hazard.”
Researcher Lara Cushing of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health said: “Flooding from sea level rise is dangerous on its own—but when facilities with hazardous materials are in the path of those floodwaters, the danger multiplies. This analysis makes it clear that these projected dangers are falling disproportionately on poorer communities and communities that have faced discrimination and therefore often lack the resources to prepare for, retreat, or recover from exposure to toxic floodwaters.”
Rachel Morello-Frosch, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said there were potential solutions “if policymakers are ready to move forward. And there is a clear need for disaster planning and land-use decision-making, as well as mitigation strategies to address the inequitable hazards and potential health threats posed by sea level rise.”
Thursday’s study comes as a number of the US’s east coast cities including New York, Baltimore and Norfolk are sinking, with subsidence linked to groundwater extraction, natural gas, and building weight pressing into the ground.
It also follows a June study by the Union of Concerned Scientists that found rising sea levels, driven by climate warming, will threaten nearly 3 million Americans across 703 coastal communities. Critical infrastructure including affordable and subsidized housing, wastewater treatment facilities, schools, and hospitals could face monthly disruptive flooding by 2050, the study found.
2025-11-21 03:07:28
Remember the horrifying text messages that caught a Border Patrol agent bragging about shooting someone in Chicago last month?
Well, it seems that those texts—and the looming release of even more potentially damaging messages—are now prompting federal prosecutors to move to dismiss their charges against the woman, who prosecutors had accused of assaulting an officer.
A bit of a refresher on the case: On October 4, Charles Exum, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, shot Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, multiple times and accused Martinez of ramming her car into his vehicle. Martinez was part of what the government alleged was “a convoy of civilian vehicles” that had been trailing the federal agents during their immigration enforcement operations. A lawyer for the government said Martinez had been broadcasting the incident on Facebook Live for a couple of minutes before the shooting.
As I wrote earlier this month:
When Exum got out of the car, Martinez allegedly drove her car “at” him, and the officer then fired five shots at her.
Martinez has pled not guilty, and contests the government’s allegations. In her account, Exum sideswiped her car, and fired the five gunshots at her “within two seconds” of exiting his vehicle, according to court documents filed by her lawyer. After driving about a mile from the scene, Martinez took an ambulance to a hospital, where she was treated for gunshot wounds and later arrested. She has been released from custody on $10,000 bond; a jury trial is scheduled for February.
This all occurred as federal officials were conducting immigration raids in the Chicago area, as part of an action dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Soon after, court documents revealed Exum expressing pride over the shooting. As I wrote:
In one exchange, the agent sent an article from the Guardian describing the shooting, adding, “5 shots, 7 holes.” In another, he clarified that he was explaining his pride of his abilities as a marksman: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” (Reuters reported that, when asked about these messages at a court hearing on Wednesday, Exum said: “I’m a firearms instructor and I take pride in my shooting skills.”)
In other messages, Exum wrote: “I’m up for another round of ‘fuck around and find out’” and “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.”
According to CNN, Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Perente, asked Exum about another text, in which Exum wrote about the incident: “I have a MOF amendment to add to my story.” Exum explained ‘MOF’ meant “miserable old fucker,” a term meant to refer to someone trying to one-up others, per CNN’s account. Exum explained the text by saying: “That means illegal actions have legal consequences.”
Following that explosive hearing, a federal court directed the government’s lawyers to provide the agent’s unredacted texts to the judge for her private review. Then, on Monday, the judge told the government’s lawyers they needed to provide the texts to Martinez’s lawyer, which would wind up making them public. But rather than do that, the government on Thursday moved to dismiss the case entirely, just hours before another hearing was scheduled to take place.
So what do those additional texts say? For now, we don’t know. Neither the lawyer representing Martinez nor spokespeople for the Department of Justice and Border Patrol immediately responded to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Thursday afternoon.
But for the government to drop the case entirely, there’s a good chance they are even more embarrassing for Exum than the previous texts were. And they likely add to a disturbing trend our reporting has repeatedly revealed: The federal agents the government claims are helping the supposedly terrified residents of American cities are, in fact, posing a danger to residents themselves. And sometimes, they’re even bragging about it afterwards.
2025-11-21 02:43:56
It’s been a week of Donald Trump outrages—he barked at a female reporter, “Quiet, quiet, piggy,” and during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he denigrated Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was slain and dismembered by Saudi operatives, allegedly on bin Salman’s orders. But perhaps his most horrendous transgression, so far, is his amplification of a call to execute Democratic members of Congress.
Yes, the president of the United States endorsed hanging senators and representatives.
This distinctly Trumpian episode began with a video made by six Democratic lawmakers who each served in the US military or the intelligence community: Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona (Navy) and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan (CIA), and Reps. Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania (Navy), Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire (Navy Reserve), Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania (Air Force), and Jason Crow of Colorado (Army).
Addressing members of the military and the intelligence community, these legislators noted that the Trump administration “is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” They pointed out, “Like us, you swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” and they stated that “right now the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home.”
Then the Democrats presented a dramatic reminder to service members and intelligence officers: “You can refuse illegal orders.” In fact, the six noted, “You must refuse illegal orders.” They acknowledged that this could be “hard” and that “it’s a difficult time to be a public servant.” But they added, “We have your back.” The video ended with a plea to stand up “for our laws, our Constitution” and the message, “Don’t give up the ship.”
The video was posted on social media on Tuesday, and within two days it had 12 million views and had made national headlines.
Republicans immediately howled about the video. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “Stage 4 [Trump Derangement Syndrome].” On Fox News, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said, “It is inconceivable that you would have elected officials that are saying to uniformed members of the military who have taken an oath that they would defy the orders that they have been given to execute their mission.”
And Trump went ballistic.
On Thursday morning, the president, on his Truth Social account, posted a link to an article about the video and wrote, “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT.”
Trump went further and reposted messages from other users of his social media platform decrying the video as “treason” and “insurrection,” calling these Democrats “domestic terrorists,” and urging their arrest. Among the posts Trump boosted was one that exclaimed, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
Trump was spreading a call for deadly violence against members of Congress. Then Trump put up his own post directly suggesting these Democrats deserved execution: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Besides behaving like a tyrant, Trump was also showing his ignorance. Insurrection or sedition involve the use of force. It does not include encouraging anyone to disobey an illegal order.
This is not the first time Trump has endorsed the execution of a critic. Two years ago, he suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a traitor who deserved to be executed. And he pardoned violent January 6 rioters, some of whom had chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while they attacked the US Capitol.
Trump has long been a purveyor of violent rhetoric, and he has been accused of stochastic terrorism—the demonization of a foe so that they might become targets of violence. In recent days, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who earned Trump’s wrath by pushing for the release of Epstein files held by the Justice Department, has bitterly complained that Trump branding her a “traitor” has led to death threats against her. No surprise, Trump brushed aside a question from a reporter about violent threats Greene has received: “I don’t think her life is in danger. I don’t think. Frankly, I don’t think anybody cares about her.”
Elevating and echoing an explicit call for killing senators and representatives is a new high—or low—for Trump. For years, he has gotten away with horrific conduct that exacerbates and encourages political division and that could fuel violence. His supporters don’t recoil, and Republicans rarely say boo. Noting that Trump “just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), posted, “If you’re a person of influence in this country and you haven’t picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.”
Trump promoting a death threat should not be dismissed as just one more of his excesses. When a wannabe autocrat aligns himself with a call to execute political foes, it’s not just another Trump social media post. It’s another warning.
UPDATE: Slotkin responded to Trump’s death threat with her own video.
If you appreciate David Corn’s kick-ass reporting and analysis, sign up for his Our Land newsletter at www.davidcorn.com.
2025-11-21 00:02:51
Despite the anti-vaccine proclivities of the US Department of Health and Human Services under its secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s public-facing sites about vaccines had remained largely unchanged, reflecting scientific consensus.
That is, until Wednesday.
That’s when a new page from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on “Autism and Vaccines” appeared. Among other dubious assertions, it informed readers, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Also, it asserts, falsely, “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
In an emailed response to a request for comment from Mother Jones, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon repeated those statements and added, “We are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science.”
The information on the new page directly conflicts with that on other CDC pages that are still up. For example, an existing page about thimerosal, a vaccine additive, stated, “Research does not show any link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder.” A separate page about autism spectrum disorder states, “Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and ASD. To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.” A note at the end of the new site clarified the reason for the apparent contradiction, stating, “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”
The chair of this committee is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is also a physician and cast the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr. to his post. On social media, critics of the new change have pointed out that Cassidy appeared to require the old language to stay on the site as a condition of his vote to confirm:
“We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”
In response to the new page, Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, expressed strong disapproval. “The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”
In contrast, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded, cheered the change:
On X, Informed Consent Action Network, the anti-vaccine advocacy group helmed by Del Bigtree, a TV and film producer and close Kennedy ally, took credit for the new addition. “This is the culmination of more than 6 years of work for @icandecide, which sued the CDC in 2020 to remove the unscientific claim from its website,” the group posted. “This represents vindication for the 40-70 percent of Autism Parents in America who have been marginalized because of that unsupported claim.”
The new page is just the latest move by Kennedy’s HHS to sow doubt about the scientific consensus on vaccines. As my colleague Anna Merlan and I wrote:
Long before he became secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services under President Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was laying the groundwork for his war on vaccines. As the head of the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy amplified once-fringe conspiracies about vaccine safety and joined a larger crusade against the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the government initiative that was established in the 1980s by Congress to compensate people who were able to prove a likely vaccine injury. In his current leadership role, Kennedy has leveraged political power, transforming conspiracy theories into action—and reshaping American vaccine policy in just a few short months.
Read our timeline of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine crusade here.
2025-11-20 20:30:00
Recently, Clifford “Buzz” Grambo decided to upgrade his electric scooter. The old one he had purchased online reached only 16 mph and wasn’t cutting it anymore. He needed to go faster to keep up with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement cars he chases around Baltimore. So Grambo bought a Segway Max G3, which features a 2,000-watt motor and can get up to 28 mph.
“The first time I caught up to them, I could tell that they already knew who I was,” he told me when we first spoke on the phone in late October. “They had seen me before, so they thought they were just going to speed away. I was like, ‘Ha ha, bitches, I got a new scooter!’”
Grambo’s nickname comes from the buzz cut he has sported ever since a drunk driver crashed into his childhood bedroom, hitting him in the head and sending him to the hospital. Of late, he has earned another moniker, according to the Baltimore Banner, from fans of his mission to warn neighbors of ICE presence: modern-day Paul Revere. At the No Kings rally in the Charm City last month, Grambo dressed up as the Boston silversmith and revolutionary patriot, mostly because of his wife’s encouragement. (He also did it for Halloween, but trick-or-treating kids mistook him for Alexander Hamilton.)
“I told everybody: ‘I’m retired, I sit home all day. If we get any reports of ICE in the neighborhood, somebody text me, and I’ll run over on my scooter and go yell at them.’”
“A lot of people are worried about being under the spotlight of this regime,” Grambo told me. “I figure I’m already in their spotlight.”
Grambo, 43, is one of countless everyday people across the country stepping up to repudiate the descent of federal law enforcement agencies onto their cities and the violent abduction of their immigrant neighbors in broad daylight. In the face of increased threats of repression and at risk of retaliation, their displays of defiance, however small, show that resistance can surface anywhere.
These acts of peaceful disobedience look like the dozens, if not hundreds, of rapid response networks and neighborhood watch groups cropping up to bear witness to raids. It is the Chicago teachers blowing whistles outside schools when immigration agents are in the vicinity or someone is in the process of being detained. It is the Los Angeles “soccer mom” who drives after ICE cars and documents sightings on TikTok, raising more than $122,000 in donations. And it is Grambo on his scooter.
The work started a few months ago, after Grambo and his wife, Mandy, came across a post on social media about community members who had taken to the streets to protest ICE agents stopping an immigrant. The pair got in their car and drove over to join, shouting at officers until they left. Afterward, Grambo and others got together to discuss what seemed to have worked and what more they could do. A loose network formed.
“I told everybody: ‘I’m retired, I sit home all day,’” he said. “‘If we get any reports of ICE in the neighborhood, somebody text me, and I’ll run over on my scooter and go yell at them.’” Grambo soon started being notified about immigration enforcement activity, sometimes three or four times in a day. At first, when he went out on patrol in Highlandtown, a Latino-heavy neighborhood just east of Patterson Park that has seen a spike in immigration enforcement, residents seemed wary. But with time, he said, people came to recognize him as an ally.
“We’re not going out and getting rapists and murderers,” he said of agents’ raids. “We’re hunting people that support my community. I just want people to be treated like human beings.”
Grambo is cautious when it comes to sharing information or insights about his sources and tactics, in case ICE is paying close attention. It is sufficient to say that, by now, he knows what models of cars federal agents tend to drive and to be on the lookout for.
His goal is straightforward: He wants to make ICE agents uncomfortable. The way Grambo sees it, it’s a numbers game. If he can draw the attention of officers to himself, perhaps fewer immigrants will get swept up, and that’s a win. “I know I can’t stop them,” he said, “but if I can suck up their time, then at least I can help some people.”
While he’s at it, Grambo also hopes to deflate the agents’ spirits. It’s a lesson he took from his days in the military, having joined the Navy shortly after 9/11 and served as an aircraft mechanic with tours in Japan and Guam before retiring as a chief petty officer in 2022. “I want their morale as low as possible,” he said, “because a team with low morale is ineffective.”
On Veterans Day, I met up with Grambo as he braced the first bone-chilling cold temperatures of the season to join other former military members at Baltimore’s War Memorial Plaza to protest the Trump administration’s threats to send troops here and amid their deployment to other American cities. “Our people aren’t enemies, they’re neighbors,” said Tim Eppers, an Army veteran. “Our communities aren’t combat zones, they’re homes filled with stories, families, and dreams.”
Grambo was up next. “In America, we’re supposed to welcome the stranger, not hunt them,” he told a small group of reporters and supporters. He urged MAGA followers to turn off Fox News and realize they’re being lied to. He called for the dismantling of “concentration camps” on US soil. He urged Democrats to listen to their voters over their donors. “Veterans have done our part for democracy,” he concluded. “We should be at home watching sports and taking naps, not fighting fascism.”
Grambo was raised in a conservative part of Calvert County in southern Maryland. In 1995, when he was 13, he got kicked out of the Boy Scouts of America for admitting to being an atheist. That disciplinary episode made the pages of the Washington Post and, according to Grambo, caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who wanted to have him on her show.
He described himself as “Republican by zip code.” But by the time President Donald Trump came onto the national political scene, Grambo had grown disaffected with the party. For a moment, he thought a businessman like Trump could be the answer. Then Trump descended the golden escalator to announce his presidential candidacy, and Grambo thought, “Hell no.” (He said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and instead remembers having written in John McCain.)
By then an anti-Trump Republican, Grambo said Trump’s first term led him to break with the GOP. The infamous travel ban targeting immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries was too much. “None of the Republicans spoke up about it, and that was my breaking point,” Grambo said. “I was just like, this judging people based on their religion, that’s not America.” He decided then that the Republican Party was “irredeemable.”
While Grambo doesn’t identify as a Democrat, he has chosen a side. “I look at it as I’m fighting for democracy,” he said. “We don’t have a conservative and a liberal party right now. We have a democracy party and a fascist party.” Grambo will tell anyone who will listen exactly what he thinks is at the root of the deterioration of American democracy: a conservative media ecosystem that traffics in disinformation and feeds the “cult” that is MAGA. “I realized Fox News is completely full of shit, and that you can put on the record,” he said.
Grambo is chatty and gregarious. He curses a lot, and he knows it. At times, he seems to get overwhelmed and loses his train of thought. (He attributes some of it to head injuries and memory issues.) At the “Refuse Fascism” protest in Washington, DC, in early November, it wasn’t hard to spot him—in a Navy hoodie and Baltimore Ravens hat with a “Human rights are not political” pin—hanging out in front of the 24/7 sit-in tent outside at Union Station, where a group of veterans have been protesting the deployment of the National Guard to the capital.
Grambo said he tries to come support them once a week, but he makes it clear that he isn’t exactly thrilled about it. “I’m supposed to be retired,” he said once more. As we’re chatting, two women wearing the Handmaid’s Tale red outfit overheard us. “Thank you for being here,” Carrie Salamone from Cincinnati told him. “You’re the kind of people we want to hear from.” Right then, CNN’s Manu Raju walked by, and Grambo ran off to take a selfie with him. “My wife is going to be so jealous,” he said.
His wife, Mandy, wasn’t surprised when he started to go on patrols; Grambo seems to have a penchant for good trouble. “It’s just part of who he is,” she said. If her work in corporate benefits for an international company allows it, she joins him by car so they can cover more ground and report back to each other.
“When he runs out the door sometimes, I’ll say, ‘I have a meeting in 30 minutes and won’t be able to bail you out right away,’” she said half-jokingly. “I was with him probably for the last 15 years of his military career, and it has been scarier to watch him go out the door with some of the things going on now than it was seeing him off to go to deployment.” She has managed to convince him to wear a helmet, which he does begrudgingly.
The couple, who have been together for 16 years, have discussed scenario planning in the event that something goes truly wrong. In September, Grambo said, he had a run-in with ICE agents who stopped him and threatened to take him to jail. He protested, asserting he was exercising his First Amendment rights, and continued to follow one of the cars while yelling that ICE was in the neighborhood. “If you’re going to tell me I can’t do it,” said Grambo, who carries a whistle on his keychain and has since bought a body camera to document future interactions, “I’m going to do it even louder.”
That wasn’t his only encounter. On a recent Sunday morning, Grambo and Mandy drove to an intersection in southeast Baltimore where they had gotten word that ICE had been spotted. He called other activists in his network to come to the area and hopped out of the car with a megaphone in hand. Unmarked vehicles lined the residential street. “Hey, we don’t want you here!” Grambo shouted as he walked toward a group of agents with black vests marked “police,” some wearing face covers, a video his wife recorded shows.
Next, Grambo said one agent, dressed in a hoodie, pointed him to move to the sidewalk and shoved him more than once. (Grambo said he called Baltimore police and reported the incident. A police department spokesperson confirmed that officers responded to a reported “assault by a federal agent on a 43-year-old male” and would forward the information to the “proper federal agency” for investigation. ICE did not respond to a request for comment before publication.) Mandy yelled at the man not to touch her husband and told him he was being recorded. “I don’t care,” the agent said, moving toward her until another officer took him away.
“Hey, don’t run, we got you on camera,” Grambo shouted as the agents appeared to get ready to leave. He stood in front of one the cars and told the men to take their masks off. “You have an oath to the Constitution,” he pressed. “What did you take an oath to?” The car then raced away with its sirens on. For a little while, Grambo continued to follow them, this time on foot.
2025-11-20 20:30:00
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In a dramatic twist of political defections and contentious concessions, the longest ever federal shutdown came to a close last week as Congress finally managed to agree on a deal to reopen the government. Federal agencies are now beginning to resume operations, employees are returning to work, and payments are beginning to flow once again.
Experts say, though, that the shutdown has left behind fractures on the nation’s food system that are only beginning to appear. These cracks will only widen with time as they join with all of the other major food and farming policy changes enacted by the Trump administration—which altogether are affecting who eats what, where that food comes from, and which communities get left behind.
“The United States was definitely the leader in agricultural research in the entire world, and that’s slipping out of our grasp.”
“When agencies like the USDA or FDA halt or scale back operations, there are ripple effects through the supply chain because of the effect on crop payments, insurance, inspections, and nutrition programs,” said Ginni Braich, a data scientist studying food insecurity and climate change at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “These, along with unpredictable policies, can erode public trust and market transparency, weaken these support systems, and increase vulnerabilities to shocks like disease outbreaks or extreme climate events.”
Grist spoke to federal workers, farmers, economists, recipients of food benefits, and analysts throughout the country to piece together how the longest shutdown in US history is likely to affect America’s food system in the weeks, months, and years to come.
Among the furloughed federal staffers was Ethan Roberts, who represents the employee bargaining unit at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research as union president and also works for the Department of Agriculture as a physical science technician. After six weeks out of office, Roberts returned to work at the Agricultural Research Service in Peoria, Illinois, on Thursday.
Going into the shutdown, Roberts said his lab “mothballed” nearly all of their projects, including their work on fungal diseases, such as fumonisin toxin and wheat scab blight, in addition to finding new uses for crops: “Basically, we just lost, like, a month and a half worth of progress and work, and a lot of those things will have to be restarted.”
Some of Roberts’ colleagues had to file for unemployment to pay their bills. Many were forced to look for other work. More still might not return to the USDA at all. The losses only add to the cuts that the Trump administration made before the shutdown. Upward of 20,000 USDA staffers, or roughly a fifth of the agency’s workforce, have lost their jobs this year. Only a small group of staffers in Roberts’ lab stayed on through the shutdown to continue work that the USDA considered critical, including the cryogenic preservation of the largest publicly available collection of microorganisms in the world.
Without adequate federal financial support, “the nation’s food is on track to become more expensive and more limited in supply.”
The consequences of the lab’s dwindling administrative capacity will eventually reach the country’s ranchers and farmers. “It is our job to find new products, new uses, new everything for the crops that farmers produce,” said Roberts. “So if we’re not working on that for a month and a half, that’s time we weren’t working on solutions and implementations to assist these farmers.”
Fewer employees at labs like Roberts’, of course, also means that the USDA will fall further behind on agricultural research. “The United States was definitely the leader in agricultural research in the entire world, and that’s slipping out of our grasp,” he said. “In terms of ripple effects, it can’t get much bigger than that.”
This growing exodus of federal workers doesn’t just compromise research capacity, but also food safety oversight, putting Americans’ health at risk. Leading into the shutdown, federal food safety agencies had already faced significant staff losses threatening their ability to ensure the safety of the national food supply. Between January and April, the Food and Drug Administration lost around 4,000 staffers to mass layoffs, according to government data. Operational slowdowns during the shutdown then limited routine inspections, facility oversight, and ongoing food safety investigations.
Quietly tucked into the stopgap funding bill that will keep the government open through January 30 was a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill and an annual USDA funding bill.
The two bills will get essential services—think farm loans, conservation assistance, and local food grants—operating after weeks of disruption. But the appropriations bill also cut more than $75 million from conservation technical assistance programs, while the farm bill extension removed payment limits for cost-sharing conservation programs. Combined, this is both bad news for climate-weary farmers and could result in inequitable distributions of those funding pots, according to Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
All told, farm bankruptcies are soaring, and farm debt is set to hit a record high this year. Farmers are currently being squeezed by low commodity-crop prices, spiking interest rates, struggles following several successive federal funding cuts, blowback from the president’s tariffs on markets, and stubbornly high costs of energy and fertilizer, among other inputs. Livestock producers are confronting supply chain constraints, persistent droughts, and rising production costs. Climate change and extreme weather have been amplifying all of these existing issues—as has the shutdown. “When the government is closed for 43 days, it really does stunt the possibility of federal policy to provide more timely solutions,” said Lavender.
“When SNAP shrinks, the whole food economy shrinks.”
“The negative effects of the shutdown on the US agricultural industry, coupled with climate change-driven disruptions to agriculture in the US and globally, could create crop deficits and contribute to rising prices of food,” said Alla Semenova, an agricultural economist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Other typical effects of delayed climate adaptation include rising food production and transportation costs, falling nutritional quality of foods, and deteriorating population health.
The shutdown also further exposed the US agricultural sector’s high reliance on federal financial assistance, such as farm subsidies and loan programs. That reliance, warned Semenova, is at risk of only increasing over the next two years because of climate change.
“As the government shutdown froze financial assistance to farmers during the critical harvesting and crop-planning season,” Semenova said, it has created “potential risks to the US food supply chain in 2026 and 2027. Without adequate financial assistance from the federal government, the nation’s food is on track to become more expensive and more limited in supply.”
On Monday, USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden announced that the administration will release another tranche of the billions in emergency assistance to help struggling farmers authorized by Congress last December. According to Vaden, the agency is now opening up applications for another installment of a $16 billion pool for weather-related aid.
The effects of the shutdown have already begun reverberating throughout the supply chain. Nearly 42 million Americans who rely on programs like SNAP spent weeks waiting on their supplemental grocery stipends, while the Trump administration fought a series of legal battles to hold off on paying those benefits during the shutdown.
According to Parker Gilkesson, a senior policy analyst who researches SNAP at the Center for Law and Social Policy, every $1 in SNAP benefits generates up to $1.80 in economic activity. Even a single week’s suspension of the food stamp dollars, said Gilkesson, can drive lasting effects on everything from supplier relationships to business revenue.
She’s also near certain it will further inflate America’s rising food insecurity problem. New SNAP work requirements taking effect, alongside historically unprecedented program funding changes—now coupled with USDA warnings of an imminent program overhaul—threaten to push the nation’s food safety net to a breaking point. But tracking the fallout on food access will be close to impossible. That’s because, preceding the shutdown, the Trump administration got rid of the nation’s primary tool that would do so. “When SNAP shrinks, the whole food economy shrinks. And it doesn’t just affect households who receive SNAP. It affects every household,” said Gilkesson.
Jared Grant, an agricultural economist who specializes in food security at Ohio State University, said that the shutdown exposed vulnerabilities throughout the nation’s supply chain that could shift consumer behavior in the grocery stores and slow overall consumer spending. A new preliminary report from the University of Michigan found that consumer confidence dropped to its lowest point since June 2022 this month, largely driven by the shutdown.
“The government shutdown is going to affect consumers in their perception and behavior,” said Grant. “They might think they see higher prices on certain items.”
That will have a knock-on effect: When consumers slow their spending, that in turn can slow economic growth, which ramps up pressure on the labor market, strains public services, and widens income gaps.
It wasn’t so much the shutdown in isolation that created the biggest problems for America’s food system, said Rodger Cooley, executive director of the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, but the policies that fueled the congressional gridlock to begin with. The loss of health care subsidies has trickle-down effects for things like household economic stability, which is directly tied to food access and affordability. And the administration’s funding priorities for Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement agenda, which staunchly divided Democrats and Republicans during the government impasse, is what Cooley considers the biggest issue impeding the future of the food system, as the immigration crackdown continues to throttle the farm and food sectors with labor shortages that risk supply shortfalls and sticker shock.
“Leading up to the shutdown, many, many programs and policies had been turned over, shut down, and inverted. Food banks, local governments, and state governments just are in constant emergency-pivot modes, and now the administration is moving massive amounts of demand back to the private sector and local government sector to fill in that gap, which is impossible,” said Cooley. “There’s a lot of ‘Okay, what is next? What even is [Trump’s] vision of an operational food system?’”
