Trump Cracks California’s Egg Regulations
No one had the guts until Trump to place the blame for higher egg prices right where it belongs: on California’s animal rights regulations that add enormous costs to poultry farms nationwide. California has been misusing its ballot initiative process to regulate farmers in other states, and it’s costing everyone when we buy eggs at our local grocery stores.
Egg prices have declined recently under Trump, but they are still far higher than they should be. Some blame the avian flu, yet even after that flu has subsided, egg prices remain 69% higher today than they were a year ago.
California regulations require that all eggs sold in the Golden State, which is America’s largest consumer market, be laid only by cage-free hens. This is an enormously costly burden on poultry farmers nationwide, as some of their eggs are inevitably sold in California and thus poultry farmers in Iowa and elsewhere are forced by California to conform to its regulations.
At first, it seems impossible for animal rights zealots in California to dictate how chickens are housed in Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas, which are the top five egg-producing states in our country, in that order. Trump carried all five states in 2024, most by double-digits.
California imports up to 70% of its eggs from other states, while California is our largest consumer of eggs and nearly every other product. The U.S. Supreme Court has so far allowed California to regulate the production of goods produced elsewhere but sold in California, despite how those regulations burden farmers and residents of the other 49 states.
New automobiles today contain ugly warnings based on overregulation by California of out-of-state car manufacturers. California dictates that silly statements must be provided for virtually every product to caution about trace carcinogen levels that the federal government has found too low to worry about.
California provides for lawsuits in California state court against any out-of-state supplier, such as a farmer in Iowa, whose products might find their way to customers in California. Midwestern farmers cannot survive lawfare brought against them in California for violating its ridiculous regulations.
The Supreme Court has refused to stop this racket, ruling against one legal challenge in 2023, and on June 30 denying a petition by Iowa pork producers whom California has ordered to maintain their pigs with a minimum amount of spacing between them. Only one Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, voted in favor of Iowa pig farmers against the California regulators.
Enter Donald Trump, who criticized high egg prices during his campaign. His Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court on July 9 seeking an injunction against California laws dictating how egg-producing chickens must be housed in the Midwest and elsewhere.
This lawsuit properly challenges two ballot initiatives funded by liberals in California, known as Proposition 2, which went into effect beginning in 2015, and Proposition 12, which took full effect beginning in 2024. Egg prices shot up as these laws, including a similar one passed by the California legislature, are enforced by private lawsuits seeking big judgments.
Proposition 2, as enforced against egg-producers by a California statute enacted in 2010, prohibits the sale of eggs in California unless the chickens have mobility for a majority of the day in “(a) Laying down, standing up, and fully extending his or her limbs; and (b) Turning around freely.” California punishes violators with fines, imprisonment, and private lawfare that would bankrupt any Iowa farmer.
Trump’s new lawsuit against California points out that egg production there sharply declined by 35% within a year and a half after this measure and a similar California statute took effect. Within two years, the average cost of eggs to Americans was 20% higher than it would have been without those laws, Trump’s DOJ explains.
In 2018 California made this suffocating regulation even worse by enacting Proposition 12. This proposition requires full mobility by the egg-laying hen without constant contact with other chickens or any restraint at all times of the day and night.
The hen must be able to roam freely, where it might be snatched by a chicken hawk, or reside in an expensive “cage-free housing system.” This law incorporates guidelines requiring each hen to have “a minimum of 1 square foot of usable floorspace per hen in multitiered aviaries and partially slatted systems,” while “providing a minimum of 1.5 square foot of usable floorspace per hen in single-level floor systems.”
Trump’s winning argument is that federal law preempts these bizarre California regulations. We have a national economy, and no single state should be able to regulate producers in the other 49 states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom complains that Trump is picking on California. But Newsom and his fellow liberals have been picking on the Midwest, and Trump’s lawsuit protects poultry farmers.
Record-breaking Victories for Trump at SCOTUS
Another day, another headline-grabbing victory by President Trump in the U.S. Supreme Court. A string of injunctions issued against him by liberal district court judges, as typically affirmed by Democrat-majority appellate panels, has resulted in a string of rulings in favor of Trump by a 6-3 majority at the SCOTUS.
Each time there has been a strongly worded dissent by one of the three liberal justices on the Court, usually Justice Sotomayor or Jackson, as joined by colleagues in their voting bloc. The long-winded dissents are not making any difference in the outcome.
Trump’s attorney in the High Court is the Missourian John Sauer, who has set a record for quickly and repeatedly prevailing there. Sauer wrote in his emergency application in this case of Linda McMahon v. New York, “For the second time in three months, the same district court has thwarted the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions.”
The Court then held in Sauer’s favor and authorized Trump to proceed with his firing 1,378 employees at the Education Department, which will gut this harmful federal agency as Trump promised. Within two hours of this unsigned decision by the Court, agency employees received the equivalent of pink slips.
“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump posted on Truth Social, while thanking the Supreme Court for his latest win.
President Jimmy Carter established the Education Department nearly 50 years ago, and conservatives led by Phyllis Schlafly have been trying to shut it down ever since. Local school boards and state legislators need the flexibility to adopt standards and curricula that are best for students, based on input from families and accountability in local elections.
There have been 24 years of Republican presidents since Carter, during which the Education Department has continued to interfere with local control over schools. Every federal initiative for education, even those by Republican presidents, has been a failure as reading and math test scores have plummeted.
In recent years, the Department of Education has become a way for liberals to require schools to embrace transgender ideology and woke indoctrination. For decades this federal agency and liberal judges have imposed a misinterpretation of Title IX to require colleges to cancel men’s sports teams to satisfy senseless numeric quotas relative to women’s sports, and to deny men due process when subjected to accusations by women.
The disbanding of the Education Department began with an executive order issued by Trump on March 20, 2025. He correctly and boldly explained that “closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”
“Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows. This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” Trump added.
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor complained in her lengthy dissent on July 14 that the Court’s decision in favor of Trump “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” But she left out that the election of Trump last November gave him the mandate to do this, and that until 1979 education was under local control.
Justice Sotomayor quoted from Trump’s campaign last year during which he promised (as slightly edited by the Court) to “close up the Department of Education” and “send all education and education work … back to the states” “early in the administration.” Promises made, promises kept.
Some staff at these agencies are needed to reverse the weaponization of the federal government by liberals, but that is already being accomplished. Linda McMahon as Trump’s Education Secretary has declared that the “final mission” is to return authority to the states.
In the second week in July the Supreme Court also held in favor of Trump on a different challenge to his authority to downsize the federal workforce at other agencies. Combined with July 14th’s ruling, Trump can move full steam ahead on the D.O.G.E. mass firing goals that began with Elon Musk.
The Department of Justice should rank high on the list of federal agencies where thousands of employees should be laid off or fired. To this day, prosecutions continue by the DOJ that never should have been in federal court.
Fortunately, Attorney General Pam Bondi has recently dismissed one of those prosecutions, against a Utah physician who helped families avoid the Covid vaccine that they did not want. Bondi has also recently fired DOJ attorneys in a refreshing attempt to clean house.
Skrmetti and More Transgender Cases
The 6-3 affirmance by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Skrmetti on June 18 was a decisive defeat for the transgender movement. The Court fully upheld a good Tennessee law banning transgender operations and treatments in children, and this conservative decision went further than it had to by declaring the law constitutional.
The pro-transgender side brought this appeal, apparently hoping for a Supreme Court ruling that would invalidate the Tennessee law and similar laws in at least 24 other states. Instead, the Court opens the door to additional states banning these surgeries and drug treatments.
Strident dissents by liberal justices on the Supreme Court are becoming a familiar pattern as 6-3 conservative decisions become the norm. On June 23, the same 3 liberal justices dissented with extreme dismay at a brief order by the Court majority that allows Trump to deport criminal migrants to other countries when their own country of origin won’t take them back.
The last election resolved the transgender and immigration issues as Trump campaigned on them at every rally. The Democrat Party ran and lost as the party that is pro-transgender and pro-illegal immigration, and no one should be genuinely surprised that the majority on the Supreme Court is rejecting the Democrats’ positions now.
Some liberals have been hopeful of bringing Justice Amy Coney Barrett to their side, after she ruled against Trump a couple of times. But her concurring opinion in Skrmetti was a complete rejection of the notion that there is any constitutional right that protects being transgender or transitioning to the opposite sex.
As a result of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment, racial discrimination gets special scrutiny from the courts. Justice Barrett flatly rejected giving that sort of scrutiny to laws touching on transgender issues, and Justices Thomas and Alito agreed with her.
On June 20, the Eleventh Circuit, while considering the issue of court-ordered taxpayer funding of transgender treatments for a county employee in Lange v. Houston County, immediately requested supplemental briefing on the impact of the Skrmetti decision on this case from Georgia. An initial panel of that court had ordered the county, and thus the taxpayers, to fund these medical procedures, but that ruling is being reconsidered by the full court on which Republicans have a 7-5 majority.
Skrmetti was not even the only transgender case being decided by the Supreme Court in June. The case of Mahmoud v. Taylor has proven to be as contentious for the High Court to decide.
In Mahmoud, a group of Muslim and Christian parents object to the indoctrination of their children in public school about transgender and sexuality issues without the parents’ consent, and without the parents even receiving advance notice. This is where the transgender issue is resolved long-term: whether schools can brainwash kids about it, rewarding pro-transgender answers with an “A” while penalizing students who disagree.
There was a solid 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, led by Justice Alito, on the side of parents who object on religious grounds to LGBTQ+ indoctrination, in the Mahmoud decision rendered by the Court on June 27. During an exhausting oral argument that lasted nearly two-and-a-half hours in April, none of the Justices could point to any harm in letting parents opt out of this indoctrination.
But parents need advance notice before they can opt out, and public schools are not doing that. One of the objectionable books being taught was about a puppy who got lost during a Pride Parade, which is a clever way to make students comfortable with these parades that promote transgender lifestyles.
Ordinarily very few parents exercise the existing rights that they have today in many states to pull their children out of objectionable instruction relating to sex or health. The opt-out process can be cumbersome and parents who object the most have already taken their kids out of public schools.
Requiring public schools to give the community notice of these objectionable materials would be helpful, as then taxpayers could see what their high property taxes are being spent on. Lower reading and math scores in schools should be of concern to taxpayers, and so should high amounts of objectionable indoctrination.
Biden-appointed Ninth Circuit Judge Jennifer Sung wrote a decision for that left-leaning court in favor of Oregon schoolteachers who had been fired for objecting to the transgender ideology being imposed in schools there. The district court had dismissed the lawsuit by these schoolteachers, but the Ninth Circuit held in their favor and reinstated the case, captioned Damiano and Medart v. Grants Pass School District No. 7.
The school board later reinstated the teachers to different positions that were inferior to the ones they had before they spoke out. The courageous teachers had used their own electronic devices, on their own time, to promote the “I Resolve” campaign with resolutions for ending restroom access by the opposite anatomical sex and stopping the practice of schools using a gender-different name for a child without parental consent.
Illegal Alien Crisis Compels ICE Raids
A meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska, was employing nearly 80 illegal aliens, as uncovered by a much-publicized raid on June 10 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Americans have since flooded the company with applications for these jobs, according to Breitbart.
Included among these illegal aliens is a man who had a final order of removal issued against him in 2019, yet he remained in our country. Another had been previously deported four times, and a third had three DUI arrests plus an illegal reentry conviction.
Omitted from most stories is that an illegal alien from Honduras carrying a weapon assaulted officers and agents while they were doing their job to enforce the law and protect Americans. Additional crimes by these illegal aliens include fraud and misuse of visas and permits, resisting arrest, illegal reentry, and misuse of Social Security numbers.
Raids have become necessary because state and local authorities, particularly in California but also in other states, are refusing to allow ICE access to arrested criminals for deportation purposes. Earlier this year the California legislature rejected a bill introduced by a Republican to overturn the California sanctuary law, signed by liberal Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA), which prevents such cooperation.
ICE released a statement about its June 10th raid in Omaha that it “executed a federal search warrant at Glenn Valley Foods based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of aliens without authorization to work in the United States.” Their only punishment will be deportation back to their home countries, and three of them have already agreed to return to Mexico voluntarily.
Omaha is located in a conservative Midwestern state but is represented by the anti-Trump Republican Rep. Don Bacon. Omaha’s public school board invites illegal aliens by announcing that it will not inquire or share the illegal status of students who are enrolled in its schools.
The Omaha Public School Board issued this statement in response to the raid: “Omaha Public Schools serves students and families regardless of immigration status. We do not ask about or share a student or family’s immigration status.”
Most illegal aliens do not speak English at home, and thus their children are not learning the official language of the United States or assimilating into our culture. Our public schools should not be allocating scarce educational resources towards non-English-speakers, while American children are not acquiring basic reading and math skills.
President Trump confirmed his deportation program on the night of June 8 on Truth Social. He observed that “the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians,” but Trump vowed that “nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People.”
Trump resolved a pitched battle among his advisers as to whether these raids would continue at farms, food processing facilities, and the hospitality industry of hotels and restaurants. Trump’s Agriculture Secretary had briefly persuaded Trump to exempt these employers of illegal aliens, but Stephen Miller and a backlash by MAGA led to the reversal of these exemptions.
Jobs in the hospitality industry became more attractive with the promised elimination of the taxation of tips, about which Trump campaigned and which was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill enacted in early July. These benefits should flow to hardworking American workers rather than to illegal aliens.
The meatpacking industry, which was the focus of the raid in Omaha, pays more than the minimum wage in most places. But employers can pay illegal aliens less than Americans, which is why some businessmen look the other way as illegal aliens fill jobs in their companies.
Trump vows to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”
Trump linked this to the transgender travesty by criticizing those who “believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role.”
In words that describe Omaha and similar towns, Trump said he has “directed my entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” Rather than calling this deportation, Trump correctly calls this a “REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came.”
