The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting what it calls “President Trump’s 500 Days of Wins” as farm bankruptcies have spiked.

On the social media platform X, a series of seven posts celebrates Trump administration programs such as “Make America Healthy Again” and “Farmers First,” while promoting the USDA’s efforts surrounding national security, rural prosperity, lawfare, forestry, and trade.

“Today we celebrate President Trump’s 500th day in office,” the post reads. “A historic period of progress for American agriculture and rural communities. We shattered export records, slashed burdensome regulations, rebuilt rural infrastructure, and unlocked energy independence so our farmers and ranchers can thrive. The work continues.”

The USDA added: “Delivered historic direct relief to farmers and ranchers through $12 billion in farmer bridge payments $10 billion in emergency economic assistance, $16 billion in supplemental disaster relief, and more than $2+ billion in livestock disaster assistance.”

NPR reported in December that the “Trump administration announced $12 billion in one-time payments to farmers in the wake of this year’s tariff hikes … primarily targeting farmers who grow crops such as soybeans and corn.”

According to the Farm Journal, farm bankruptcies spiked in April, and “recent Chapter 12 bankruptcy data shows a significant uptick in filings.”

Reporting that “there have been 62 Chapter 12 filings in April 2026 alone,” Farm Journal calls it “the highest monthly total since February 2020, and it’s a 130% increase from April 2025.”

President Trump’s Iran war has driven up the prices of diesel and fertilizer that farmers depend on, and his global tariff war has cut into exports to countries like China.

On the Instagram social media platform, some users were less than enthusiastic about the USDA’a post.

“Time to unfollow the USDA since it’s become a propaganda channel for the lunacy happening in the federal government under this administration,” wrote one user. Another wrote: “American agriculture is in shambles.” And a third said, “delete this.”

The Times of London reported that “farmers handed Trump his first loss of the midterms” this week.

“Unrest in America’s heartland over the impact of President Trump’s policies saw him suffer a rare primary setback in Iowa, and is leading Democrats to sense a revival in the former bellwether state,” The Times noted. “The mainly rural central state that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 has become reliably Republican since the rise of Trump but analysts say that rising fuel and fertilizer prices and the Iran war make its races for governor, a US Senate seat and two of its four House seats increasingly hard to call.”

Image via Reuters

Former Trump Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor is warning that President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an order that roughly “triples” the number of federal employees the president can dismiss at will, for any reason or none.

“The White House quietly issued an order turning 8,000 top ‘civil service’ jobs into roles that serve at the pleasure of the president,” Taylor explained, noting that these are the federal government’s “top lieutenants,” the “most senior career officials.”

These “are the people serving right under Trump’s political appointees (the ones he assigns to run federal departments and agencies). Presidents get ‘their people’ to reshape policy priorities.” The list of political appointees in any administration ordinarily runs about 4,000 people.

By making the next level down essentially political appointees, Trump “just tripled the size of his personal army inside government,” says Taylor, calling it “a breathtaking takeover of the machinery of state.”

“These aren’t rando’s,” Taylor added on social media. “They’re the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees. Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.”

The federal civil service exists to carry out the wishes of the administration, but its duty, as he said, is to the law, not to any one president. That’s how a new administration can enter the White House while the government continues to run.

As Taylor noted, as DHS chief of staff, he too was a political appointee — someone who could be fired at any time.

“I wasn’t protected by anything other than the president’s favor,” Taylor says. “That’s why — when you make a decision to speak out about wrongdoing — you’ve got to be prepared to quit or be fired. You have no protections if you fall out of favor with the president. Unfortunately, that’s why you see so many Pam Bondis and Todd Blanches, eagerly doing whatever Trump wants. They know how easy it is to lose their job.”

That’s why the “top lieutenants” should not be political appointees, Taylor argues.

“Everyone underneath those positions, some two million civil servants, has historically been insulated from political whim by removal protections dating to the reforms that ended the spoils system back in the 1800s,” he writes. “What just happened is almost certainly illegal. A coalition of federal employees unions are, I hope, prepared to fight hard.”

Image via Reuters

Karl Rove is out with a warning for Democrats who may be optimistic about their chances of a big blue wave in November.

According to the longtime Republican political strategist and consultant, things may not be quite as rosy as Democrats think.

As Mediaite reported, Rove pointed to a recent series of Marquette polls of Americans who are certain to vote in November, and found that the margins between Democrats and Republicans are far smaller than many other polls currently suggest.

“Well, look, I’m not certain how much change there really is,” Rove told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer. “You’ve got into the nitty gritty of these measures, how likely are you to vote, are you certain to vote etc., etc. But if you look at just the top line numbers among all the respondents in the survey, in May it was [46] D, 45 R — the Ds had a one-point advantage. In April it was 48-44, a four-point advantage. So the Democrats in the Marquette survey have dropped two, and the Republicans have added one, which is inside the margin of error.”

“Essentially,” Rove continued, “if you look at this one poll, what it suggests is that there hasn’t been much change, but if there is any change, it’s to the advantage of the Republicans.”

Rove urged viewers to “step back” and not lose sight of the “big picture,” which is that America is a “highly polarized country,” that has just gone through “a mid-decade redistricting that has mildly advantaged the Republicans.”

He says the real question is, “how big a gap do the Democrats need in order to pull off a significant sweep” in the House?

Democrats having an advantage of one point “ain’t much,” Rove said. He suggested that in order for Democrats to “take the House with a significant margin,” they will need at least a five or six point advantage, at a minimum.

According to Rove, many Democratic-held seats are in urban parts of the country, and therefore much more strongly Democratic than many GOP-held seats. Even when GOP-held seats are in “highly conservative rural America,” they are “not as conservative, not as Republican as their urban counterparts are Democrat.”

“So the Democrats right today have an advantage,” Rove declared, “but it’s likely to reduce — produce a relatively small margin in the House elections.”

“And remember, this is a contest between two unfavorables,” he concluded. “The president’s unfavorability is at 40 percent. The Democratic Party’s unfavorability is below 37. So who’s more — who’s less popular and how’s that going to affect the outcome?”

Image by LBJ Library via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain