Reporter’s Notebook From Florida: Farmers Suffer as News Cycle Turns
*By J.D. Durkin*
When I arrived in southern Florida two weeks ago to cover several days of campaign trail events, I had no way of guessing that a separate national storyline — about packages, postal codes, and pipe bombs — would unfold with the same aggressive timeline just miles away.
As news was breaking across the country about a flurry of pipe bombs directed at high-profile, Democratic targets, my colleague Sam Tadelman and I were meeting with specialty crop growers, off the grid on the edge of the Everglades. News of the suspicious packages felt a world away as I talked to farmers who had suffered under NAFTA because they couldn’t compete with Mexico. Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, both local Republicans, were in attendance at a roundtable at S&L Beans, a three-generation farm in the town of Homestead. At its peak, the farm spanned 7,000 acres. Today, it’s only 2,000 acres.
The day of our visit was 85 degrees and sunny — sunburn territory for me. The story of the farmers in this community is an agonizing one; several who had inherited the farms from their fathers and grandfathers told me that they each encouraged their own sons to find other work. Sal Finocchiaro explained the heart-wrenching dilemma like this: “I told my son to go to college and get a different job. I love him, I want him here, but my advice was not to come here because there is no future ... We're gonna try as hard as possible to make it work, though.”
That son, Salvatore Finocchiaro, is currently working on the farm to continue the family legacy, against his father’s wishes.
This is a community in tremendous economic pain: The open markets and opportunities afforded to Mexico in the NAFTA era steadily put farmers like Sal Finocchiaro out of business in this region of pristine farmland between Miami and the Florida Keys. The Trump Administration, at least so far, has not helped matters much here either; the recently-negotiated NAFTA replacement, known as USMCA, did not include provisions for these farmers.
Kern Carpenter, a tomato farmer in Homestead, put it in bleak terms: “We got left out of the NAFTA renegotiation ... they totally left southern Florida out. Fruits and vegetable growers were ignored, thrown under the bus.”
In my remaining days in Florida, I remembered those conversations even as the quieter voices of Florida’s farmers were drowned out by news of a frantic search for a would-be pipe bomber with vendettas against prominent Democratic leaders and Trump critics.
As fate would have it, the coming day and a half would render South Florida of all places as ground zero for the investigation and the pipe bomb story dominated our time on the ground. By Friday afternoon, Sam and I found ourselves — somehow, impossibly — standing in the very AutoZone parking lot in the sleepy community of Plantation, Fla. where suspect Cesar Sayoc has been arrested just hours before, [interviewing the sole eyewitness to the dramatic takedown](https://cheddar.com/videos/bombing-suspect-charged-but-national-nerves-remain-frayed).
Stories like the would-be pipe bomber dominate the national psyche so intensely at such a moment in time that all other narratives just seem to blur. With the news cycle turning at such a frantic pace, I thought: What chance does the story of the farmers in Homestead have of breaking through? Meeting Sal Finocchiaro and his boy reminded me that their struggle also needs attention if we are going to help them and the next generation of Florida’s farmers to survive.
Vice President Kamala Harris received impressive amount of media coverage in January for making history. However, the media attention waned significantly and some are now even saying she has almost disappeared from public view. Reecie Colbert, founder of BlackWomenViews Media, joined Cheddar Politics to discuss more.
If you thought you heard the last of the Mueller report back in 2019, you'd be wrong. While the bombshell report was the biggest story in Washington for years, much of the report remained redacted. Our friends at BuzzFeed News weren't satisfied, so they sued to have certain passages unredacted. They notched another win when a federal appeals court ordered ten passages from the report to be released.
Matt Topic, BuzzFeed's attorney in the case, and Jason Leopold, reporter at BuzzFeed News, join Cheddar Politics to discuss.
The U.S. reported its first confirmed case of the omicron variant in California on Wednesday. Scientists and health officials are racing to understand the variant, with the WHO saying it's still too early to determine whether it's more contagious, more deadly or more resistant to vaccines than other variants. Omicron has pushed members of the WHO to commit to start talks over a "gobal pandemic treaty" for future pandemic preparedness.
Priti Krishtel, co-founder and co-executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss.
Wednesday was not a good day for those who believe in abortion rights in this country as the Supreme Court heard arguments on a Mississippi abortion law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The majority of the court appears poised to roll back abortion rights, and the questions from the conservative justices seemed to indicate the law for nearly 50 years is likely to change.
Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior vice president and executive editor of Rewire News Group, joined Cheddar Politics to discuss Wednesday's hearing.
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, has been busy since completing his prison sentence in November. He's getting into the NFT space, selling his federal prison badge and the original manuscript of his book "Disloyal" as NFTs. Cohen joined Cheddar to discuss his latest venture and why he thinks there is still much to be revealed about his case.
Jonathan Adler, Law Professor at Case Western Reserve University, joined Wake Up With Cheddar to discuss Tuesday's ruling and provide legal context to recent battles over vaccine mandates.
Carlo and Baker wrap up the week talking about the Biden economic boom that no one seems to notice, a verdict in the Jussie Smollett case, the first Starbucks union in America and the pleasures of the "dude nod."
A new bill in Congress shows just how bipartisan cannabis really is. Rep. David Joyce, a Republican from Ohio, teamed up with progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a cannabis expungement bill. Cheddar cannabis reporter Chloe Aiello spoke with the congressman about the legislation.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus have lined up to support the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act introduced by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif. 41st District). The representative joined Cheddar to discuss how instituting a four-day workweek in the United States can be beneficial for both employees with the need of a work-life balance and employers looking both to retain talent amid a labor shortage and improve efficiency in their workforces. "We live in a different time than 90 years ago when we established a 40-hour workweek," he said. "We've had a lot of technological changes, the American worker is exponentially more productive than previous generations, so it's time to reexamine Americans and the way in which they relate to work."
