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For Immediate Release
September, 16 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Jackie Filson, jfilson@fwwatch.org, 202-683-2538
USDA's Dangerous Plan to Privatize Hog Slaughter Inspection Moves Forward
Today, the USDA's plan to privatize food safety inspection in hog slaughter plants has moved one step closer to becoming reality. On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget finished its review of the final rule and sent it back to USDA for final publication in the Federal Register. While the OMB may have made some changes to the rule, we know that the rule will result in fewer USDA inspectors on hog slaughter lines and company employees performing critical inspection tasks.
WASHINGTON
Today, the USDA's plan to privatize food safety inspection in hog slaughter plants has moved one step closer to becoming reality. On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget finished its review of the final rule and sent it back to USDA for final publication in the Federal Register. While the OMB may have made some changes to the rule, we know that the rule will result in fewer USDA inspectors on hog slaughter lines and company employees performing critical inspection tasks.
Privatization of hog slaughter inspections would remove up to 40 percent of trained inspectors from slaughter lines and replace them with company employees who are not required to be trained. This rule would also remove the cap on how fast slaughter lines can run. Now that the rule has been reviewed by the White House, USDA could publish a final rule at any time.
In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued this statement:
"The driving force behind USDA's plan to privatize inspection in hog slaughter facilities is to reduce the number of government inspectors and to push the pork industry's goal of increasing their line speeds.
"Removing government inspectors while increasing line speeds is a recipe for disaster. The House included a requirement in the USDA FY 2020 budget that the USDA's Inspector General conduct a full review of the data that went into the proposed rule. The provision states that USDA must not finalize the rule until this review is completed and issues raised are addressed.
"An overwhelming majority of Americans--in all parts of the country and across party lines--oppose this change to inspection in pork processing. National polling reveals that by an overwhelming 28-point margin (64% to 36%), Americans opposed the USDA's proposal to eliminate the speed limits on pig slaughter lines. Current law limits line speeds to 1,106 pigs per hour; the USDA proposal would remove all speed limits.
"A stunning 70 percent of Midwesterners--those closest to the pig slaughter industry--opposed this proposed change. By an even larger margin - 73% to 23% -- consumers in this poll rejected reducing the number of USDA inspectors on hog slaughter lines and turning over inspections for the companies to do themselves. The opposition was uniform across all demographics and political affiliations.
"It is unacceptable to put public health, worker safety and animal welfare at risk so that the pork industry can run faster lines and avoid government inspection," said Hauter. "We urge the USDA to withdraw this rule and fulfill its duty to protect food safety."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
‘Dark, Bizarre Stuff’: White House Posts Deepfake Image of Arrested ICE Protester Crying
"All of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters."
Jan 22, 2026
Continuing its bizarre and often legally questionable use of social media to publicize law enforcement operations, the official White House account published an artificially generated deepfake image of a protester arrested on Thursday by the FBI.
Earlier that day, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem had posted about Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three people who were arrested for disrupting a service last week at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and field office leader, David Easterwood, reportedly serves as a pastor.
Noem described Levy Armstrong, who leads a local civil rights organization known as the Racial Justice Network, as someone "who played a key role in orchestrating the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota."
There is notably no evidence that the protesters engaged in or threatened violence, as implied by her use of the word "riot." Video shows protesters disrupting the service by chanting slogans like "ICE out" and demanding justice for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the protesters had been charged under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which makes illegal any conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate," people from exercising "any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States."
In her post, Noem shared a photo of Levy Armstrong being led away by an agent, whose face is pixelated to hide his identity. In the photo, Levy Armstrong appears stone-faced and unfazed by the arrest.
Hours later, the official White House account shared the exact same image—accompanied by text describing her as a “far-left agitator”—but with one notable difference. Levy Armstrong's face was digitally altered to make it appear as if she was sobbing profusely while being led out by the agent. Nowhere did the account make clear that the image had been doctored.
"Did the White House digitally alter this image of Nekima Levy to make her cry???" asked Peter Rothpletz, a reporter for Zeteo, who described it as "bizarre, dark stuff."
Sure enough, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale later said the White House had "confirmed its official X account posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota after interrupting a service at a church where an ICE official appears to be a pastor," and that "the White House image altered the actual photo to wrongly make it seem like the defendant was sobbing."
Asked for comment, Dale said the White House directed him to a social media post by Kaelan Dorr, the White House deputy communications director, who wrote: "Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue."
Posting artificially generated images of their targets sobbing has become a house style of sorts for the White House account.
In March 2025, the account posted an image, altered to appear in the style of a Studio Ghibli film, of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, an alleged undocumented immigrant and convicted fentanyl trafficker, crying while handcuffed during her ICE arrest in Philadelphia.
In July, the White House posted an AI-altered photograph of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) after he criticized an ICE raid in which agents arrested hundreds of farmworkers in Ventura County, California. They edited Gomez's congressional photo to make it appear as if he was crying, referring to him as "Cryin' Jimmy."
But the fake image of Levy Armstrong hardly appeared as a "meme." It was subtle enough that, without having seen the original, it was not immediately apparent that it had been altered, raising concerns about the White House's willingness to publish blatantly deceptive information pertaining to a criminal investigation.
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, suggested that for the government to post a fake, degrading image of a criminal suspect could be considered a "prejudicial extrajudicial statement," which can undermine the case against Levy Armstrong.
The Trump administration has been caught in an untold number of lies, particularly about those arrested, brutalized, and killed by its law enforcement agencies. This includes Renee Good herself, whom members of the Trump administration tarred as a "domestic terrorist" within hours after her killing, without conducting an investigation and despite video evidence to the contrary.
Bulwark journalist Will Saletan said that with this deepfake post, "all of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters. Nothing they say should be accepted without independent confirmation."
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Organizers hope to have "tens of thousands of workers in the street in the Twin Cities" for the day of action.
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Momentum for a planned general strike-like event in Minnesota is building amid increasing outrage over the actions of federal immigration officials in the state.
Schools and businesses across Minnesota are planning to stay closed on Friday as part of the "ICE Out! Statewide Shutdown" day of protest.
The event was first announced last week by a broad coalition of local labor unions and faith leaders with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their cities and towns.
Bashir Garad, chairman of the Karmel Mall Business Association and the owner of a Minneapolis-based travel company, told the Minnesota Star-Tribune that the planned shutdown is gaining "momentum and support from a wide variety of communities."
"Already, thousands of businesses have declared that they will shut down this Friday," Garad added, "and tens of thousands of workers and students have pledged to march in the streets, rather than go to work or school."
Hundreds of Minnesota businesses have announced plans to shut their doors so far, according to running list posted by Bring Me the News, which also lists dozens of other businesses that are remaining open while vowing to donate at least a portion of sales on Friday to nonprofit groups such as the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.
Keiran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7520, told Payday Report that organizers are hoping to "have tens of thousands of workers in the street in the Twin Cities" protesting against the actions of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In addition to the events taking place in Minnesota, Payday Report has published a map showing solidarity strikes occurring in 120 different cities across the US.
The planned Friday strike is the culmination of weeks of resistance against federal agents carried out by Minnesota residents.
In a Wednesday thread posted on Bluesky, author Margaret Killjoy explained how people throughout Minneapolis have banded together to track the movements of ICE and CBP agents and to provide help to their immigrant neighbors.
"First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ICE vehicle down the street, honking at it," she wrote. "Later, we didn't drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility... Half the street corners around here have people—from every walk of life, including Republicans—standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders."
Taken as a whole, Killjoy said that she had "never seen anything approaching this scale" of what activists have pulled off in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis-based attorney Will Stancil, who has become one of the most high-profile legal observers following and documenting actions by ICE and CBP agents, argued on Thursday that the Trump administration is committing deliberately cruel acts with the hope of inciting violence.
In particular, Stancil pointed to federal agents' decision to abduct a 5-year-old child and use him as bait to lure out and detain his immigrant father as a deliberately provocative action.
"They clearly believed that Minneapolis would riot after they killed one of us," Stancil wrote, in reference to Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was gunned down by an ICE agent earlier this month. "We didn’t, we organized. We followed them, we monitored them. We alerted our neighbors. We fought them in the courts. And now they’re desperate, so they’re brutalizing us, without a hint of legitimate government purpose."
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"Our legal team will continue its unwavering and proactive advocacy for Renee’s life and her family," said lead attorney Antonio M. Romanucci, whose firm commissioned the autopsy.
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"As a lawyer, I've been waiting for this," New York University law professor Ryan Goodman said early Thursday after attorneys for Renee Good's family released findings from an independent autopsy conducted as part of a civil investigation into her death.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good in Minnesota two weeks ago. While the Trump administration has tried to paint the 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three as a "domestic terrorist," and argue that the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, videos, eyewitness accounts, and analyses of the shooting have fueled calls for Ross' arrest and prosecution.
The independent autopsy provides "strong evidence against Agent Ross, given what it means about [his] second or third shot through [the] left-side window" of Good's vehicle, Goodman wrote on social media. Those shots make the "easiest criminal case of a willful killing."
The Chicago-based law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a Wednesday statement that it commissioned a "highly respected and credentialed medical pathologist" to conduct the autopsy at the request of Good's family, and the expert found:
- There were three clear gunshot wound paths to Renee's body;
- One gunshot wound struck the left forearm, causing soft tissue hemorrhage;
- One gunshot wound traversed the right breast without penetrating major organs;
- One gunshot wound entered the left side of her head near the temple and exited the right side of her head;
- The breast and left forearm wounds were not immediately life-threatening; and
- A fourth wound was a graze wound consistent with a firearm injury, but with no penetration.
"We believe the evidence we are gathering and will continue to gather in our investigation will suffice to prove our case," said lead Attorney Antonio M. Romanucci. "The video evidence depicting the events of January 7, 2026, is clear, particularly when viewed through the standards of reasonable policing and totality of circumstances. Additionally, our legal team will continue its unwavering and proactive advocacy for Renee's life and her family."
The firm noted that "the results of the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office autopsy have not yet been released to the family or legal team."
The Washington Post highlighted that "Romanucci, one of the firm's founding partners, was on the legal team that represented the family of George Floyd after he was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. That legal team also commissioned an independent autopsy that contradicted aspects of the Hennepin County medical examiner's autopsy."
The day after Good's death, Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, announced that the probe into the fatal shooting "would now be led solely" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Meanwhile, several officials with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), including prosecutors and others in the Civil Rights Division, have recently resigned over the case.
The DOJ has refused to open a civil rights investigation into Good's killing but is investigating Minnesota officials for alleged conspiracy to impede the thousands of federal immigration agents sent to the Twin Cities. On Tuesday, the department subpoenaed Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Saint Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.
"This Department of Justice investigation, sparked by calls for accountability in the face of violence, chaos, and the killing of Renee Good, does not seek justice," Walz said in a statement that mirrored those of the other targeted officials. "Minnesota will not be intimidated into silence and neither will I."
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