At the end of 2024, Congress passed a “Continuing Resolution” to fund the government. This was back when Congress still had a heartbeat.

The one thing both parties agreed on was that farmers would get $21 billion. I’m all for free money. So, I looked forward to my tiny piece of the pie.

Then came Inauguration Day. Elon Musk was suddenly the most powerful person in our country. He was given free rein to cut agencies and programs that both parties had built up over decades. He did this with the subtlety of a herd of bulls in a China shop and all the thoughtfulness. DOGE was fabricated to give a sense of legitimacy to Musk’s impetuosities.

A logical question was what would be left of the $21 billion for farmers?

Maybe nothing?

USAID after all was gone in a day, and that had been supported by every administration since Kennedy.

Amazingly, amidst the slashing and burning, the chunk of government spending for farmers went untouched.

Did it help that 80% of farmers voted for Trump?

On March 31, you taxpayers gave me some thousands of dollars. Thank you. That came from something called ECAP, the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program.

If you’re a reader of this column, you know the routine when I get a government payment. I point out that if I got that much on my small acres, there are farmers who got a lot more. Many farmers got tens of thousands. Some got hundreds of thousands.

There is a payment “limit” of $250,000. But any farmer with an accountant and a few family members can work around that.

This follows good farming years. We’ve had weather problems. But crop insurance, which is subsidized by you taxpayers, has been a lifeline.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, farm payments and subsidies are heavily weighted toward large operators. The top 10 percent of recipients receive 80 percent of subsidies.

What’s unique about this time is the ECAP faucet flowed when so much was being cut as “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Apparently, thousands of dollars going in some cases to millionaires doesn’t count as waste or abuse.

To make matters weirder, the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed the House. (Do we have to talk like sixth graders?) In that, food aid for low-income people will be cut by $300 billion. This will result in seven million people, including over two million children, seeing food assistance terminated or reduced.

If you want to square the circle that has the government cutting food stamps while giving some farmers a couple hundred thousand dollars, go ahead.

At any given time, there are farmers who are at risk. There are young farmers, farmers who made investments at the wrong time, and some who got beat up by nature more than others. It wouldn’t be that hard to target farm aid to those who really need it. It would take common sense and political courage. Both of those are easier said than found.

Speaking of common sense, it was like “common sense” got deported in the Musk Era. Historians will struggle to understand what that was all about.

For a $258 million investment in the Trump campaign, Elon Musk was given incredible power for two months, more power than any single person has ever had in the United States. Donald Trump is annoyed by details, and there is no way he understood half of what was going on. Trump does crave attention, and he basked in that.

Day after day, valuable agencies and programs were gutted and talented people were laid off. Most of us were hearing about that. If you are in the group who only know the world through right wing media, you didn’t. Half-truths, non-truths, and exaggeration hold sway there.

Now the courts are saying much of that was illegal or unconstitutional. Essential workers are having to be rehired. Important research must be started back up at a cost.

Musk and Trump called each other names for a day, then moved on. Musk left to spend more time with his fourteen children. Trump moved on to the next episode of chaos.

Here are two stories from two friends. One friend has a disabled son who lives in a group home. The North Dakota Center for Persons with Disabilities was told 23 of 72 staffers were getting laid off. None of those were cut because of performance issues. In addition, other programs that served disabled people in healthcare were cut. My friend’s son’s life will be diminished.

Another friend works in the pork industry. One day, he was shaken when he told me about sweeping layoffs to the 58 diagnostic labs around the country that coordinate testing and disease containment efforts. My friend knows some of these people personally. They are talented and dedicated.

There is no way to overstate the risk to animal agriculture in our country from these cuts. The response to the next bird flu or PRS virus will be delayed, possibly long enough to devastate an entire industry. Other agencies that regulate veterinary drugs and ensure food safety were also gutted, putting your safety at risk.

Musk was looking at numbers on a spreadsheet. Trump was seeing his name in the news. Neither of them understood the cruelty of the cuts in my first friend’s world or the rank stupidity of those in my second friend’s.

Fox News and Newsmax didn’t tell the truth about those cuts. They were too busy reporting on some immigrant getting some minor public service they weren’t entitled to.

Each of my friends contacted their Representatives, Michelle Fischbach by my first friend and Brad Finstad by the second. Each received the sort of canned response that tells you no one really read their email. Or if someone did read it, well, don’t bug us.

It’s unfortunate because either representative is perfectly situated to challenge some of the craziness. One-time moderate congresspeople from relatively safe districts, they could have just once said, “This is wrong.” They’re both intelligent and surely know the world beyond the right-wing bubble some of their constituents live in.

I have to think in their hearts, they don’t support defunding group homes or putting the pork industry at risk. For whatever their reason, they couldn’t express the slightest concern about the Musk Blizzard. That’s their choice. But I would suggest then they let someone else in the office.

Jesuit priest Fr. Thomas Reese wrote, “The Trump administration, like barbarians and terrorists, is capable of destroying but not building. It has turned on its head the Gospel imperative of caring for the most vulnerable, and cares only for the rich and powerful.”

Happy no kings day.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.