News: Ag, enviro rules in jeopardy after SCOTUS decision

Monday, July 1, 2024

Ag, enviro rules in jeopardy after SCOTUS decision

Jul 01, 2024

With help from Meredith Lee Hill

The Supreme Court is pictured.

The Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court overturned a judicial principle known as Chevron deference on Friday. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP

QUICK FIX

— The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Chevron deference has sweeping implications for food and ag policy.

— A post-presidential debate meltdown within the Democratic party could imperil House Democrats’ plans to hold off on negotiating a farm bill until they’re in the majority.

— New data helps explain why low-income Americans are unhappy with the economy.

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Driving the day

GOODBYE CHEVRON: Long the holy grail for conservatives, the Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court overturned a judicial principle known as Chevron deference on Friday.

“For too long, unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats have wielded unchecked power with wide-reaching implications,” said House Ag Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.).

The decision upends 40 years of legal precedent and reorients power from expert agencies toward the courts and Congress.

James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, said the decision will give judges free rein to shape agency policies according to their personal preferences.

“What the case will do is deregulate judges,” he explained.

Ag rules in jeopardy: Controversial USDA regulations could be in the crosshairs, including new rules to strengthen the Packers and Stockyards Act, a 1921 competition law. Pesticide regulations and the EPA’s new regulation setting limits on forever chemicals in water could also be challenged.

Tarah Heinzen, legal director at Food & Water Watch, noted several environmental regulations that could be in jeopardy in the new judicial landscape, including a proposed EPA rule on slaughterhouse pollution under the Clean Water Act.

Even some of USDA’s discretionary spending could be challenged, explained said Steph Tai, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

For example, in the next farm bill, Congress could charge USDA to develop ways to spend its discretionary funding, a process done through rulemaking. That spending, they explained, could then be potentially subject to review because it wouldn’t have Chevron deference.

The ruling could also have a chilling effect.

“One of the biggest concerns I have is that agencies will be so worried about litigation that they won’t use the authority they do have,” Heinzen said.

Industry readies the javelins: Just as the Biden administration is putting the finishing touches on regulations it says will curb corporate control of the food system — and bring down prices for consumers — U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo could help the food industry undo it all.

“[Friday’s] ruling will certainly be a part of our decision making as we look at legal strategies in opposing the Administration’s misguided and damaging proposed rules changes to the Packers and Stockyards Act,” said Sarah Little, a spokesperson for the Meat Institute.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which had submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, celebrated the ruling, arguing that Chevron had enabled administrative “overreach” to the detriment of farmers and ranchers.

“Long-term, this decision will impact almost every regulation that NCBA has worked on,” said NCBA Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart.

On the Hill

PANICKING PARTY: Congressional Democrats are shaken after a meager and sometimes unintelligible performance by President Joe Biden in last week’s presidential debate.

“We’re in trouble,” one House Democrat told Meredith in the wake of the debate.

Another said it was a lost opportunity to push back on Trump and lay out Democratic policy achievements, for rural America and beyond.

Questions have swirled in the following days about whether Biden might be replaced as the Democratic nominee and how Biden’s showing could affect down-ballot races.

2025 farm bill? Some rank-and-file Democrats have told us in recent months, anticipating that they will win the House majority come November, that they’d rather wait to pass a farm bill until 2025 when they believe they’ll have the House majority and, therefore, more leverage to include their own priorities on climate and nutrition.

But the Democratic party’s growing anxiety could throw a wrench in some House Ag Democrats’ plans to wait to seriously negotiate a farm bill until next year, with new trouble facing House Democrats’ plans to retake the lower chamber.

GOP response: Key House Republicans are eager to drive home that point with time running out to clinch a new farm bill reauthorization still this year.

“Our hardworking farmers and rural America need and deserve a new farm bill, it’s time for House and Senate Democrats to rise above the partisan games and help move a bipartisan bill forward,” Thompson told MA.

SNAP implications: Thompson and other key House Republicans also note a second Trump administration would likely try to roll back Biden’s update of the Thrifty Food Plan that has expanded food benefits to low-income Americans.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 specifically calls for repealing that update to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest anti-hunger program that Democrats have tried to closely guard in recent years.

The House GOP-led farm bill, Thompson argues, would protect against such a repeal by limiting future updates to the program. However, Democrats are vehemently opposed to any changes to the policy, since they see it as the main way to increase SNAP benefits for years to come.

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FOOD PRICES AND NUTRITION

FOOD PRICES VEX CONSUMERS: Food prices were among the first topics discussed at last week’s presidential debate. Despite the Biden administration’s efforts, groceries remain expensive compared to pre-pandemic levels.

And it helps explain why despite macroeconomic indicators showing a strong economy, many Americans aren’t feeling the boom. New data on a group of low-income people known as ALICE — asset limited, income constrained, employed — helps explain why.

“[What] must be frustrating for the Biden administration is that ALICE started behind and so those wage increases have to not only keep up, but catch up from being behind for over a decade,” said Stephanie Hoopes, director of United for ALICE, a research program led by the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

According to the group’s latest report, “no low-wage jobs caught up to basic costs from 2010 to 2022,” despite wages growing by as much as 60 percent for some jobs during that time period.

Safety net: The Biden’s administration’s expansion of summer nutrition assistance for kids and increased benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program help, Hoopes said, but many ALICE households don’t qualify.

SNAP ERRORS STILL HIGH: New USDA data released Friday show many states continue to record high payment error rates under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest anti-hunger program, continuing a trend that began during the Covid-19 pandemic, Meredith reports.

Six states — Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon and Pennsylvania — along with the District of Columbia have received notice of financial penalties for two years of poor performance. All recorded payment error rates of 15 percent or more in 2023, the new data shows.

The U.S. spends more than $100 billion yearly on SNAP, which provides food benefits for more than 40 million low-income Americans.

Error rates: The average increase in FY 2023 payments that states made in error aren’t indicative of fraud within SNAP, but they do indicate a high rate of inaccuracy of payments states are making to recipients since the pandemic.

USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez said Friday in a statement that “poorly performing states will be held accountable.”

MIDWEST FLOODING

DISASTER IN MINNESOTA: President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Minnesota on Friday amid catastrophic flooding in the upper Midwest, paving the way for state farmers and producers to start receiving federal aid.

Floods and the growing bird flu outbreak are wreaking economic havoc on farmers in Minnesota and around the Midwest.

Minnesota ag chief Thom Petersen told Meredith last week that vast amounts of farmland were underwater and farmers are facing a “tough reality” of largely damaged crops.

Row Crops

— An FDA study released Friday confirmed that commonly used pasteurization time and temperature requirements are effective at inactivating the avian influenza virus in milk products.

— Total federal spending on USDA’s nutrition programs decreased “substantially” in FY 2023.

— Tanzania will sell 650,000 tons of corn to Zambia as the country suffers from food shortages due to a prolonged drought. (Bloomberg)

THAT’S ALL FOR MA! Drop us a line and send us your agriculture job announcements or events: gyarrow@politico.com, meredithlee@politico.com, marciabrown@politico.com, abehsudi@politico.com and ecadei@politico.com.