American Agriculture Is Broken, and Tom Vilsack Is Not the Man to Fix It
Biden’s pick for agriculture secretary brings stale solutions to growing crises like climate change and labor inequality.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Tom Vilsack testifies during a hearing in 2016.
Somewhere on Earth 2, President Boe Jiden, after committing to a thorough review of the groaning, creaking, top-heavy agriculture industry, has decided that the time has come to start fresh. There, the Jiden administration is setting its sights on breaking up the corporations that, during a global pandemic, forced workers back into the aptly named slaughterhouses and demanded their farm laborers work the fields while smoke from the largest wildfire in American history filled their lungs, and that, for decades, have crafted policies that incentivize the consolidation and corporatization that long ago buried the family farm.
Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor has our report.
Yamiche Alcindor:
President Joseph Biden:
There s nothing new that we re doing here, other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring the Medicaid to the way it was before Trump became president.
Yamiche Alcindor:
President Joseph Biden:
Of all times that we need to reinstate access to, affordability of, and extend access to Medicaid is now, in the middle of this COVID crisis.
Yamiche Alcindor:
His first action, expanding enrollment. Beginning February 15, healthcare.gov, the federal online insurance marketplace, will open an additional sign-up period.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has found that 15 million uninsured Americans are still eligible for that coverage. But, in December, the regular enrollment window closed. And former President Trump declined to reopen it.
Alejandro Mayorkas is one step away from becoming secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas testifies during his confirmation hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 19, 2021. (Joshua Roberts/Pool via AP)
WASHINGTON (CN) The Senate continued to advance President Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks Thursday, approving a procedural motion for his Department of Homeland Security nominee while wrapping up a confirmation hearing for two others.
An architect of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects qualifying immigrants from deportation, Alejandro Mayorkas cleared another Senate hurdle to tee up a confirmation vote for his DHS leadership role.
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EXCLUSIVE: Fake news tricksters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are subpoenaed in New York over their voter suppression robocall campaign, as state gets ready to join Ohio and Michigan in prosecuting pro-Trump pair
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have been subpoenaed by the New York Attorney General over a voter suppression robocall campaign, DailyMail.com can reveal
The subpoenas order the men to turn over material to the New York Attorney General’s Office by 10am on January 5, 2021
Wohl, 22, and Burkman, 54, set up robocalls that phoned more than 80,000 people across the US in late August
The calls aimed to dissuade voters from mailing their ballots for the November election, targeting mainly black neighborhoods, according to prosecutors