SACRAMENTO, California — The Newsom administration is appealing the recent elimination of $47 million in Agriculture Department grants that California food banks and other nonprofits spend at local farms.
California officials in a letter to the USDA obtained by POLITICO demanded immediate reinstatement of the state’s cut of agricultural subsidies that the USDA recently canceled. They argued the wipeout of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program not only appears illegal but would hit farmers’ bottom lines, reduce people’s access to healthy food and undermine the Trump administration’s own goals.
What they’re saying: “These efforts to make local and minimally processed foods available support the Administration’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda,” California Department of Social Services Deputy Director Alexis Fernandez Garcia wrote, “making the termination of this program even more inexplicable.”
Impact: The pushback illustrates the Newsom administration’s selective opposition to President Donald Trump’s dramatic reshaping of the federal government in his second term. Gov. Gavin Newsom has of late narrowly centered his criticism of Trump’s Washington on the economic pain it is inflicting, repeatedly blasting newly announced tariffs and now fighting another action opposed by California’s gargantuan agriculture industry.
