December 10, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

Pro-Inflation Democrats Oppose President Trump’s Plan To Help Farmers Boost Production

By Robert Romano

“The reason farmers need relief at all is largely because Donald Trump betrayed them and decimated their businesses with his disastrous tariffs.”

That was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) making a speech on the Senate floor on Dec. 8 opposing President Donald Trump's $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program.

The program is actually a response to unfair trade practices from abroad, unfair trade practices, subsidies, dumping and tariffs from abroad that have hurt U.S. farmers and other industries for decades that were in place long before President Trump’s second term even began, but who’s counting? 

For years, trade partners have waged a trade war on the U.S., but we had forgotten how to fight back, until President Trump delivered us the most pro-American trade agenda in modern history. The $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program is an important stage of the Make America Great Again agenda that puts America first by putting American farmers first. 

The program is virtually identical to the $28 billion 2018-2019 Market Facilitation Program, and both are authorized by Congress under 15 U.S. Code Sec. 714c, the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, to make direct payments to farmers who are harmed by foreign trade practices and barriers. The Commodity Credit Corporation was established by Congress to 'Support the prices of agricultural commodities (other than tobacco) through loans, purchases, payments, and other operations.' 

Congress has the long-settled power now delegated to all presidents to spend money via the Commodity Credit Corporation that it also had the power to create on agriculture and other industries to support the general welfare, to regulate international trade — trade subsidies are used globally to create trade advantage — and ultimately to protect national security by preventing agricultural depressions (historically, those have led to the collapse of governments), and this is one of the manners in which it chose to do so. 

That is the power of the purse that Congress has authorized presidents to use — and President Trump is now wisely putting the money to use just as he did during his first administration to support his America first trade agenda by increasing domestic supplies. Many aspects of the New Deal were struck down, but spending money on farmers wasn't one of them.

In practice, the payments should make it easier for farmers to boost production and help bring food prices down in the wake of the Covid and post-Covid expansion of the money supply and simultaneous contraction of global production that fueled the inflation seen since 2021 and 2022 that is still being felt by the American people. 

Like all other countries, we desperately need to boost production, but very similarly, with such a short memory everyone has forgotten the temporary global supply chain crisis price shock caused by the pandemic and the pandemic response that caused the inflation in the first place — except for President Trump. You have all forgotten that shutting down the country has years-long consequences, and this is one of them.

If you just went back to Joe Biden's tariff levels, all the foreign farm subsidies would still be there, hurting our ability to boost domestic production and bring down prices. Biden was wasting the Commodity Credit Corporation on fighting climate change, and doing nothing to bring down food prices or even advance the U.S. trade position. And overall, Biden was restricting farm production with his environmental rules and via Environmental, Social and Governance investors to restrict supplies and drive prices up. President Trump, once again, has corrected that problem. They broke it, and he's fixing it. 

Every day the President's critics in Congress failingly try to knock down the President's trade program but some of you obviously don't know much about it, or do know and are falsely misrepresenting it to the future detriment of all presidents. The President needs to be able to do this when necessary. 

Just think about it: This was a program created by Franklin Roosevelt, and now the Democratic leader of the Senate is blasting the Republican president for using it.

Just the framing of this issue to serve some failed globalist, liberal, free trade narrative that trade adjustment assistance is somehow a response to U.S. tariffs when it's the opposite, it's a response to foreign tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers Congress has long since granted the President the authority to regulate international trade via the Necessary and Proper Clause to counter with tariffs, sanctions, subsidies and everything else that strong, sovereign countries have utilized for centuries, and from his absolute Article II responsibility to engage in foreign discourse, make commercial agreements with other countries and protect the U.S. economy, all of which the Supreme Court would be very wise to uphold in its coming tariff decision. That's a big one.

Either way, one of the ways foreign governments exert and will continue to exert trade advantage particularly in agriculture is via subsidies. President Trump is restoring the U.S. trade position globally versus our competitors, and, yes, there's this thing called competition. America forgot how to compete and that the U.S. has a strong interest or any interest at all for that matter in defending our economic borders and our producers against unfair foreign trade practices. We must be able to control the domestic food supply and push prices down. No serious person would object to that. It is vitally important. We'd still be living in the stone age if it wasn't for agriculture, and in the modern world, cheap food is the best anti-poverty program ever devised.

President Trump's commitment to agriculture is one of the ways farmers will be able to afford to boost domestic production and reduce food prices. Every day the President's critics all complain about inflation but then mindlessly work against the policies that increase supplies and bring down food prices. It's called supply and demand. With $12 billion for farmers, President Trump is by definition boosting domestic food production to bring down prices and you’re all senselessly wringing your hands about prices. Make up your minds already. Boost production and supplies or not? Everyone against boosting production is pro-inflation. 

Fortunately, President Trump is teaching the next generation of leaders how to run a country. You can thank him later.

Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/pro-inflation-democrats-oppose-president-trumps-plan-to-help-farmers-boost-production/

Cartoon: Nose Deep

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/cartoon-nose-deep/   

President Trump Promises Halt Third World Refugees After Murder Of National Guard Member And Critical Injury of Another

By Manzanita Miller

The Trump Administration is taking a strong stance against violence from third-world nations after two National Guard members were shot on Nov. 26 while on duty in Washington, D.C. The suspect in the shooting, an Afghan-national, murdered one Guard member and injured another, prompting outrage against a system that repeatedly fails to identify individuals with mental illness and hatred toward the U.S. and law enforcement. 

20-year-old National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old National Guard member Andrew Wolfe were shot while on duty in the nation’s capital the day before Thanksgiving. Beckstrom passed away the next day due to her injuries, and Wolfe was left in critical condition.   

In response to the tragic shooting, the Trump Administration is pausing green card requests from a list of countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen. The list is set to expand to around 30 nations according to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and will focus on halting applications from unstable nations.  

“If they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?” Noem stated in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Dec. 4.   

Because of the severe mishandling of immigration, asylum, and green card programs over the past few years, Americans are growing weary of the numbers of immigrants into the country and largely support scaling back that number.  

Views on accepting refugees are tense, with the latest YouGov survey from Dec. 5 showing while 32 percent of Americans say accepting refugees makes the U.S. better off, 50 percent say accepting refugees makes the country worse off or makes no difference. Another 18 percent aren’t sure.  

New data from the New York Times released Nov. 19 shows vast support for efforts to roll back the impact of the Biden Administration’s open borders policies, with voters saying by a resounding 30 points they support deporting immigrants who entered the U.S. over the past four years. Americans also support deporting immigrants who don’t show up for their immigration hearings by 43 points, and deporting illegals who have committed crimes by a broad 77 points.  

President Trump’s dedication to border security, which has resulted in the lowest number of illegal border encounters in over half a century, is his strongest issue. The Times data shows Americans favor President Trump’s work to secure the southern border by eight points, 54 percent to 46 percent. 

Even support for legal immigration is wavering, likely as a result of the vast numbers of immigrants and asylum-seekers admitted during the Biden Administration. The Economist/YouGov poll from Nov. 25 finds that the largest majority of voters — 35 percent — want immigration numbers decreased or reduced to zero.  

In the survey, 26 percent say they want immigration decreased, while nine percent say they want immigration reduced to zero. Another 26 percent want immigration kept the same and the smallest number of voters — 23 percent — want to see immigration increased. 

While Republicans and conservatives are more likely to want to see immigration decreased or reduced to zero, close to a third of independents favor lowering or halting immigration altogether, as do seventeen percent of Democrats.  

Among Republicans, 41 percent would like to see immigration decreased and 19 percent would like to see it reduced to zero, according to the survey. Among independents, 23 percent would like to see immigration decreased and seven percent would like to see immigration reduced to zero. Among Democrats, 14 percent would like to see immigration decreased and three percent would like to see immigration reduced to zero.  

Border security repeatedly ranks as one of the top issues for Americans, with voters giving President Trump credit for securing the southern border and reducing the number of illegal encounters to numbers not seen since the 1970s. However, tragedies like the incident that happened on November 26^th continue to underscore the need for a wide-spread audit of the immigration, green-card, and asylum-seeking process to ensure newcomers are not harboring mental health issues or hatred toward the U.S. and law enforcement. That is exactly what President Trump is calling for, a citizens-first approach to immigration and the green-card system to prevent another tragedy. 

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/president-trump-promises-halt-third-world-refugees-after-murder-of-national-guard-member-and-critical-injury-of-another/