April, 28 2020, 12:00am EDT
Without Worker Protections, Trump's Planned Order To Keep Meat Plants Open During Pandemic Could Be a Death Sentence
President Donald Trump announced today he will use the Defense Production Act to declare meat-processing plants essential infrastructure, forcing them to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the growing numbers of food and farm workers sickened by the virus, according to a report by
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump announced today he will use the Defense Production Act to declare meat-processing plants essential infrastructure, forcing them to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the growing numbers of food and farm workers sickened by the virus, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
The Trump administration has already waived regulations limiting meat-processing line speeds and tried to cut farm and food workers' pay, and Trump's Occupational and Safety Health Administration has done little or nothing to ensure these essential workers are protected from the virus and its impacts.
There are at least 6,500 workers from meat processing facilities who are either sick from COVID-19 or in isolation, reported Bloomberg.
In response, here is a statement from Scott Faber, EWG senior vice president for government affairs:
Sending workers back to meat-processing plants without proper protection is tantamount to a death sentence.
Rather than escalating this danger with reckless fiats, President Trump should be ensuring food and farm workers have adequate PPE, plenty of space to work safely and free testing - not to mention paid sick leave and medical care if they do get sick.
These workers have been on the front lines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, risking their lives to feed the rest of us. President Trump should order OSHA to issue immediate, urgent standards to protect them.
See all of EWG's work on COVID-19 and Farms.
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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Amid Warnings of Atrocities in Sudan, Van Hollen Says Senate 'Missed Opportunity' to Cut Off Arms to UAE
"The United States shouldn't just be talking about ending the slaughter in Sudan," the senator said. "We should actually be using our leverage."
Jun 24, 2026
After the US State Department warned earlier this week of imminent “atrocities” by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Tuesday criticized the US Senate for missing a recent opportunity to cut off weapons to the United Arab Emirates, which has supplied the genocidal paramilitary group.
On Monday, the State Department warned that RSF forces were massing near the city of El-Obeid and could commit “mass atrocities” against civilians if allowed to take the city.
"The belligerents must uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and ensure that those seeking safety can do so without fear or obstruction," the department said.
The statement echoed concerns expressed last week by a coalition of states at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which said that roughly 500,000 civilians, including more than 100,000 displaced people, could be at risk of violence if RSF escalated its assault.
UN human rights experts have said RSF's October offensive in Darfur bore the "hallmarks of genocide," with more than 6,000 people killed and numerous civilians tortured, raped, and starved during a three-day rampage across the city of El-Fasher.
But while Trump's State Department has sanctioned some entities accused of supplying fighters for the RSF, the Monday statement made no mention of the UAE, which rights groups point out is the group’s principal foreign backer.
A report issued last year by Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) found that the UAE was continuing to provide weapons to the RSF despite telling the US that it was not.
Following previous failed attempts at pushing Congress to impose an arms embargo on Sudan through standalone legislation, Van Hollen attempted to do so again last week by tacking a pair of amendments onto the bipartisan PEACE in Sudan Act, which requires the State Department to assess designating armed Sudanese groups as terrorists and allows Trump to impose optional sanctions on foreign actors funding the war, but stopped short of introducing any hard leverage.
At a markup session for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Van Hollen introduced an amendment banning the US from selling or transferring military equipment to the UAE as long as it continues supporting the RSF. The amendment failed in a 15-7 vote, with four Democrats—Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Chris Coons (Del.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), and Jacky Rosen (Nev.)—joining every Republican on the committee, aside from Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), in opposition.
A second amendment, which did not single out the UAE specifically but restricted arms sales to any country arming either side of the conflict, also failed 13-9, but received support from Shaheen and Rosen.
Coons said he'd have "enthusiastically" supported the amendment, but voted no because he believed it would "bring down" the broader Sudan bill in a GOP-controlled Senate. Duckworth did not explain her reasoning for voting no.
In light of the State Department's warning this week about RSF's march toward El-Obeid, Van Hollen told a Drop Site News reporter on Tuesday that he believed the no vote on his amendments "was a missed opportunity."
"The United States shouldn't just be talking about ending the slaughter in Sudan. We should actually be using our leverage," he said.
Noting that Trump likely would not support a restriction on arms to the UAE given his extensive financial entanglements with the Emiratis and his previous policy of fast-tracking weapons to the country without any strings attached, Van Hollen said his goal was simply to "keep the pressure on."
He said, "We need to keep showing the hypocrisy of the Trump administration policy, where they claim they want to do something but refuse to take some of the basic actions we can take as a country."
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Applause as Judge Halts 'Blatantly Illegal and Cruel' ICE Courthouse Arrest Policy Nationwide
"The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE," said one attorney.
Jun 24, 2026
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a nationwide halt to a Trump administration policy expanding immigration enforcement officials' authority to arrest non-citizens at US immigration courthouses.
US District Judge P. Casey Pitts, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled that the courthouse arrests carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated the Administrative Procedures Act's requirement for "reasoned decision making" in federal agencies' policy decisions.
After reviewing the evidence, Pitts found that the government "failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions," which he thus deemed "arbitrary and capricious."
"The expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decision making," Pitts emphasized, "but a complete lack of decision making."
The Trump administration last year rescinded previous policies that had restricted ICE agents' ability to make arrests at courts, and allowed agents to keep noncitizens detained for up to 72 hours.
In prior years, noted Pitts, courthouse arrests "would be undertaken only against noncitizens whom ICE had a heightened interest in detaining immediately because, for example, they were ‘suspected of terrorism or espionage,’ had been convicted of crimes, ‘participated in organized criminal gangs,’ or ‘otherwise pose[d] a serious risk to public safety.'"
Pitts' ruling, which the Trump administration is expected to challenge, restores those previous restrictions on courthouse arrests.
Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at the Bay Area chapter of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, told The San Francisco Chronicle that Pitts' ruling restored the notion that "the courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE."
“No one, including immigrants, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court," added Wells, whose organization is co-representing a group of asylum seekers who had filed a complaint to overturn the ICE courthouse arrest policy.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) hailed Pitts' ruling as "excellent news."
"Immigrants who show up to court—'the right way'—have been targeted by this administration," Escobar wrote in a social media post. "So glad to see this blatantly illegal and cruel policy struck down."
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Heritage Foundation Brags That Trump Has Implemented More Than Half of Project 2025
"These actions will have devastating consequences for workers, the environment, public health, and the rights of millions of Americans," warned progressive groups tracking the far-right agenda's implementation.
Jun 24, 2026
The right-wing Heritage Foundation boasted in a fundraising email on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump's administration has implemented more than half of the policy proposals laid out in the group's Project 2025 agenda, a sweeping conservative governance plan that Trump repeatedly claimed to know nothing about during his campaign for a second White House term.
The Heritage Foundation's email, first reported by Bloomberg, stated that 53% of Project 2025 is now federal policy, pointing to the administration's dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and broader attack on "diversity, equity, and inclusion policies" as examples. The group emphasized that its work is far from finished, declaring that "in this special 250th anniversary year, we must work to implement all of Heritage’s policy recommendations to ensure another 250 years of American greatness.”
Heritage's estimate that the Trump administration—which includes Project 2025 chief architect Russell Vought, the head of the White House budget office—has enacted 53% of Project 2025's proposals aligns precisely with a tracker maintained by the Center for Progressive Reform and Governing for Impact. The groups warned that "these actions will have devastating consequences for workers, the environment, public health, and the rights of millions of Americans."
The tracker, last updated in February, shows that the Trump White House had by that point implemented 283 of the 532 policy actions recommended by Project 2025 via executive order—from the dismantling of the Education Department to halting federal grants for environmental organizations to stripping civil service protections from federal workers.
That the Trump administration's policy actions mirror those recommended by Project 2025 should not be entirely surprising, given that the agenda broadly reflects the conservative movement's priorities. But Project 2025's creators have publicly taken credit for the White House's moves.
“This is exactly the work we set out to do,” Paul Dans, who worked in the first Trump administration and oversaw Project 2025's creation, told CNN last year as the administration's early actions mirrored the right-wing agenda. “We wanted to make sure the president was ready to hit the ground running on day one. The rapidity and the depth of what they’ve rolled out this quickly is a testament to the work done in Project 2025."
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