{"id":1771,"date":"2025-11-13T13:55:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmstand.chee.studio\/case\/deep-dive-trumps-ten-search-terms-to-cancel-american-farmers\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T15:54:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:54:57","slug":"deep-dive-trumps-ten-search-terms-to-cancel-american-farmers","status":"publish","type":"deep_dive","link":"https:\/\/farmstand.org\/es\/deep-dive\/deep-dive-trumps-ten-search-terms-to-cancel-american-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Dive: Trump\u2019s Ten Search Terms to Cancel American Farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

02\/25\/2026 Update:<\/strong> In response to our ongoing requests for a complete administrative record, the government produced two supplements to the administrative record in December 2025 and January 2026. New documents from these supplements have been included below. Even after these supplements, the administrative record remains woefully incomplete. FarmSTAND filed motions in court to require the government to produce a complete record, as required by law, and for sanctions due to its prolonged failure to do so.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

07\/09\/26 Update:<\/em><\/strong> In late May of 2025, the court<\/em> granted our motion to supplement the administrative record. The court ordered USDA to begin rolling productions<\/em> of documents to complete the record by<\/em> September 2, 2026. The court also ordered defendants to respond to requests for information, called interrogatories, and additional requests for documents.<\/em> While USDA almost immediately<\/em> started missing their agreed-upon deadlines, they have begun supplementing the administrative record. Key new documents have been added to the Deep Dive below.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The United States Department of Agriculture was established in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, who called it \u201cThe People\u2019s Department.\u201d\u00a0USDA is supposed to support America\u2019s farmers and build a resilient food system, including through the grants it awards to\u00a0farmer and nonprofit groups. In 2025,\u00a0USDA abandoned farmers\u00a0by\u00a0recklessly terminating millions of dollars in grants, all to fall in line with the Trump administration\u2019s crusade against DEI, environmental justice, and climate action.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These cuts have thrown the livelihoods of farmers across the country into turmoil. Without these funds, farmers have lost access to markets to sell their goods, educational programs for new farmers have been cancelled, and fields have gone unplanted and unharvested. In short, much of the progress we\u2019ve made towards a fair food system has been undermined and undone by the USDA\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before their grants were suddenly ripped away, the farmer organizations impacted went through a robust application and approval process to win these grants in the first place, spending hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages justifying their grants to the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we sued USDA and DOGE over these grant cancellations<\/a> alongside Earthjustice and Farmers Justice Center, we had good reason to believe that the government hadn\u2019t spent nearly as much time deciding which grants to cancel and instead hastily and unlawfully terminated hundreds of grants without individualized consideration. One big clue was that the cancellation notices were clearly from a template used en masse. Some even had the file name \u201cFull Termination Letter Template.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We suspected that the \u201cprocess\u201d for finding grants the administration found worthy of termination was\u00a0hardly more than a simple search\u00a0through grant documents for words it associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate change.\u00a0Now we can prove it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We won preliminary relief<\/a> to the tune of $34 million for our plaintiffs whose grants were cancelled, but we\u2019re still arguing in court that the broader policy that resulted in over 600 grant terminations is unlawful. Through the suit, we are forcing the government to show its work \u2014 whether it went about these cancellations lawfully, or, as we believe, with callous, corner-cutting methods to achieve the administration\u2019s political ends: boosting Big Ag and shutting down progress towards a fair food system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government has now produced the\u00a0administrative record\u00a0in this case. An administrative record is supposed to be the complete collection of documents that the government\u00a0considered when\u00a0making a decision\u00a0\u2014 in this case the decision to terminate these grants. While the government has so far failed to give us a complete administrative record in this case,\u00a0what the government has given us thus far reveals just how careless and unlawful these terminations were.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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