Hundreds of farmers in Arkansas gathered at a town hall last week to ask Congress for help over mounting debt, aging equipment and disappearing profits. One soybean farmer in the state, Scott Brown, joins Katy Tur to share how. President Trump’s tariffs are impacting his business.
NASA has been given orders by the White House to destroy two major satellites in space that are used by farmers, scientists, as well as oil and gas companies.
According to NPR, the data from the satellites provides detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. The outlet stated that the objects are the only two federally used satellites that provide information built to specifically monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.
It is currently unclear why the Trump administration seeks to destroy the satellites, as they are state-of-the-art and were expected to last for several more years. In 2023, an official data review found that the data stored there was “of exceptionally high quality,” and they recommended continuing the mission for at least three more years. It comes after a chilling map revealed the US regions where 75% of people will die in a nuclear World War 3.
Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, reportedly used identical measurement devices to measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. While the devices were identical, one of the satellites is actually attached to the International Space Station.
Should NASA choose to comply with the directive, the standalone satellite will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission has since been dubbed Phase F, per David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022.
“What I have heard is direct communications from people who were making those plans, who weren’t allowed to tell me that that’s what they were told to do,” Crisp said to NPR. “But they were allowed to ask me questions.”
“They were asking me very sharp questions. The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan,” he added. According to Crisp, it makes no sense why Trump would order the termination of the satellites.
Crisp commented that it makes “no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data.” According to the expert, maintaining the two observatories only costs $15 million per year, barely a dent in the agency’s $25.4 billion budget.
Two other NASA scientists have confirmed that the Trump administration had contacted mission leaders to make plans for the termination of other projects that would lose funding under Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year.
Several scientists have expressed outrage at the proposal and argued that it could precipitate an end to the US’s leadership in space.To prevent this, lawmakers have attempted to draw up a counter to Trump’s plan to keep NASA’s budget roughly in line.
“We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions,” said Senator and top appropriator Chris Van Hollen, per Bloomberg. “Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters House representative and Committee on Science, Space and Technology ranking member Zoe Lofgren
“The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds,” she added. “This is illegal.”
It comes after a Trump family member revealed his body is “rotting inside” as she delivered a terrifying update on the president’s health.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/white-house-orders-nasa-deliberately-35680658
President Donald Trump was swiftly interrupted by Keir Starmer as the UK Prime Minister attempted to correct him about inheritance taxes on farmers.
The pair met in Scotland on Monday to discuss tariffs, Gaza, and other topics. During a press conference, the president slammed inheritance taxes on farmers, claiming farmers in the US had been driven to suicide by high taxes on their farmhouses and estates. Trump, who made a massive Epstein files radio blunder, bragged about removing those taxes, and suggested Starmer do the same.
“We were losing a lot of farms to the banks because a loving mother and father would die and left their farm to their children or their child…but they had a 50% tax to pay, so the land would get valued and at a high number because some of the farms were valuable but they…couldn’t quantify it,” Trump said, which comes amid alarming fears over the president’s health due to an injury being spotted.
“And they go out and borrow money to pay the estate tax or the death taxes it’s called. And they’d overextend and they’d lose the farm and they commit suicide in many cases.”
Starmer interrupted the president as he took aim at Trump’s figures.
“No, no, no, our levels are nowhere near 50 percent, they’re not. We’ve just introduced where it’s paid over many years, let’s get an extra 2 percent a year over 10 years, so it’s not at those levels by any stretch of the imagination,” Starmer said.
“But the other thing that we’ve done, as you know, is make sure that we’ve got a pathway for farmers that actually increases their year-on-year income, which is the most important thing.”
Trump also had some advice to offer to his British counterpart on winning reelection – cutting taxes and going after illegal immigration. The two leaders are conducting discussions at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland, where they’ve covered a broad spectrum of topics.
Trump’s guidance comes as Farage’s Reform UK maintains a solid advantage over Labour in polling data, according to The Independent.
When questioned about the race between Keir and Farage, Trump responded: “I don’t know the politics of it, I don’t know where they stand. I would say one’s slightly liberal, not that liberal, slightly, and the other one’s slightly conservative, but they’re both good men.”
Trump also reflected on how his unprecedented second state visit, scheduled for later this year, has never been done and reminisced about his last state visit in 2019 during his first term.
“It was one of the most beautiful evenings I’ve ever seen,” Trump said of his first visit. As he spoke about the pomp and ceremony of the evening, he said to Starmer, “Nobody does it like you people.”
Starmer, too, pointed out how the nation had never invited a U.S. president for a second state visit. “You can imagine just how special that’s going to be,” Starmer said.
It comes after a Trump family member revealed the latest chilling symptom of his cognitive decline and revealed he is “far gone”.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-interrupted-panicking-uk-prime-1295386
A growing labor shortage triggered by increased immigration enforcement is threatening the stability of the U.S. food system, according to a report by The Guardian. As undocumented workers leave jobs or avoid public life out of fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, disruptions are mounting from farms to restaurants nationwide.
In Texas, farmers contacted by the news outlet report that longtime laborers are staying home, fearing arrest and deportation, while in Los Angeles, restaurants and food trucks are shutting down as kitchen and service staff disappear.
“They are scared, there are fewer opportunities, and they are no longer prospering here,” said Elizabeth Rodriguez, director of farm worker advocacy at the National Farm Worker Ministry to The Guardian. “Their fear will soon be seen in the harvest, when the quantities of produce are depleted.”
Immigrants make up about 20% of the entire food sector workforce—some 14 million people—including 27% of agricultural workers and 33% of meatpackers. In restaurants, nearly half of all chefs and nearly a third of cooks are foreign-born, most commonly from Mexico, China, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
“These workers are the backbone of the food chain,” said Mark Lauritsen, a vice president at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. “Without a stable, skilled workforce, safety and quality can decline, shelves can sit empty and grocery prices could rise even more.”
These jobs are often low-paid and physically demanding. Farmworkers are frequently paid per box of produce, working long hours in extreme heat with limited protections. Nearly half of the most strenuous food industry jobs are filled by undocumented workers.
Amid mounting criticism, officials have suggested the administration is considering exceptions for certain sectors. Tom Homan, White House border advisor, recently confirmed that discussions are underway about policy adjustments for farm and hospitality workers.
President Trump, on his part, has proposed allowing farmers to vouch for migrant workers to avoid deportation.”If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people… I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good,” he recently said at an event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds
President Donald Trump said on Friday that farmers may be able to keep employing undocumented migrant workers without fearing enforcement raids under a system in which they would take “responsibility” for them.
“We’re looking at doing something where in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire, and let them have responsibility, because we can’t put the farms out of business, and at the same time, we don’t want to hurt people that aren’t criminals,” Trump told press on Friday.
It was not immediately clear how the system would work, and is the latest of several changes of tune regarding the matter.
The Nebraska business owner whose facility was raided by ICE on Tuesday said he’s worked to ensure that employees are legally in the United States by checking their identity with E-Verify, a system managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
However, officials told him the system was “broken” after the raid, which left him clueless on how to properly process individuals who’ve applied for employment.
“I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? This is your system, run by the government. And you’re raiding me because your system is broken?” Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, told The Associated Press.
ICE officials told him they’d help him figure out the best method for hiring …
