Iowa is crucial
Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that compels slaughterhouses to remain open, setting up a showdown between the giant companies that produce America’s meat and the unions and activists who want to protect workers in a pandemic.
Which is more important – the continued ability to eat far more meat than is either necessary or healthy, or the survival of people who work in meatpacking plants? Tough question, isn’t it.
Using the Defense Production Act, Trump is ordering plants to stay open as part of the critical infrastructure needed to keep people fed amid growing supply disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak. The government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance.
The government – state if not federal – will also make sure that workers who refuse to return to the plants will be denied unemployment benefits.
A handful of companies account for the majority of the nation’s meat, and as workers fell sick in March, plants initially continued to run. But pressure from local health officials and unions led to voluntary closures.
Companies have been pressing to reopen. The president himself has long agitated for Americans to return to work and restore an economy crippled by social distancing measures.
Because who cares if workers get sick? They’re probably all brown people, right?
Environmental Working Group called the order a potential death sentence. The United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement that if workers aren’t safe, the food supply won’t be either. At least 20 workers in meat and food processing have died, and 5,000 meatpacking workers have either tested positive for the virus or were forced to self-quarantine, according to UFCW.
Blah blah blah; shut up and give us our burgers.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he expects U.S. meatpacking plants to fully resume operations within a week to 10 days, during a meeting with President Donald Trump and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.
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More than half of workers at some American meat plants tested positive for coronavirus, which has slowed production even as some facilities reopen. While Smithfield Foods Inc. is restarting its giant Sioux Falls slaughterhouse on Thursday, it doesn’t expect to return to full operations until late May. Absenteeism is spiking at some plants as workers take leave out of fear of being infected.
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Trump is prodding states to reopen their economies, even as cases and deaths continue to mount in the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, the world’s largest. Reynolds, a Republican, announced last week that certain businesses — including restaurants, malls and fitness centers in roughly three quarters of the state — could open with limited capacity. She also lifted restrictions on religious services statewide, as long as they follow social distancing guidelines.
Iowa is crucial to Trump’s re-election bid and the White House is paying close attention to the situation there.
And throwing other people’s lives away for the sake of his continued dictatorship.
I hope he is coughing a dry cough right now.
Iowa isn’t even in play (unless he’s already lost the election) so he’s killing workers for no reason. Fantastic…
Speaking as an Iowan, I can’t say which way Iowa will go in November, although our paltry six electoral votes will probably not be “crucial”. The vote that matters is whether to keep our one-term, Trump-hugging Republican senator Joni Ernst — she’s considered to be the most vulnerable Republican in the Senate. That’s probably the contest Trump is most worried about (if he even thinks that deeply).
BKiSA, he has already got the primary, but Iowa is a purple state, and could go either Dem or Republican in the next election. While their neighbor, Nebraska, where I live, is going to show Trump love so he doesn’t have to play footsie with us. And we don’t have that many electors, seeing as how we are not very populous – not even 2 million people. We have half as many people as Oklahoma, which is all but ignored because it’s small and safe, but we have twice as many COVID cases…and we’re starting the reopening process. Our guv, Pete Ricketts, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Dr. Evil, is a man who can buy the legislators he wants (and does) because he had more money than anyone needs, and it isn’t enough for him. Double reasons why my husband refers to him as Dr. Evil.
I got the impression that Iowa was roughly as purple as Ohio was (which is to say not very)… I’m quite willing to stand corrected though…
Iowa has been almost solid blue in recent memory, and it could conceivably swing that way again. Iowa City, where I live, is like Berkeley, except you can actually park a car, and a two-bedroom house doesn’t cost a million dollars.
I have seen a number of lawyers on Twitter point out that the DPA doesn’t actually enable Trump to direct a business or category of businesses to open. It enables the Government to direct a business to manufacture a certain thing that the Government will contract to buy at an agreed price.
Presumably, since the meat packing companies want to open, they will not challenge the executive order in court. I wonder if the unions or others have standing?
Peter N, my husband is from Iowa, and he’s been surprised to see some of the strange things lately. He was surprised when I pointed out some religious right things happening; he didn’t think they’d buy into that. He tends toward surprise whenever they go toward the red end of purple. His town tended red, but it is small, small town. He went to college in Des Moines which, of course, is definitely more to the blue end.
@Peter N
#2
I remember in 2012, when Iowa’s six electoral votes put Obama at 257, thinking that he won because Colorado (nine) and Nevada (six), while uncalled, were in the bag.