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Attorney Ben Crump Files Class Action Suit Against U.S. Gov’t on Behalf of Black Farmers

NNPA NEWSWIRE — In August, Congress repealed section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which provided funding and authorization for the federal government to pay up to 120 percent of direct and guaranteed loan outstanding balances as of January 1, 2021, for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, breaking the government’s promise and leaving farmers in foreclosure.
The post Attorney Ben Crump Files Class Action Suit Against U.S. Gov’t on Behalf of Black Farmers first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 years ago

October 12, 2022

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

America’s “Black Attorney General,” Civil rights attorney Ben Crump on Wednesday, October 12, announced a class action suit against the United States government on behalf of the National Black Farmers Association.

The lawsuit comes amid findings that Black farmers lost about $326 billion of land in America because of discrimination during the 20th century.

During the announcement of the suit on the National Mall in Washington, Crump and the farmers claimed the federal government breached its contract with socially disadvantaged farmers under the American Rescue Plan Act.

Farmers contend that the law included provisions to pay off USDA loans held by 15,000 African Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics and Latinos in the farming industry.

In August, Congress repealed section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which provided funding and authorization for the federal government to pay up to 120 percent of direct and guaranteed loan outstanding balances as of January 1, 2021, for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, breaking the government’s promise and leaving farmers in foreclosure.

Black farmers said they relied on the federal government to keep its promise to fund $5 billion to the farmers when it passed the American Rescue Plan Act.

“Black and other farmers of color did exactly what the government asked them to do. They maintained or expanded their operations to strengthen America’s food supply during the COVID-19 crisis,” Crump asserted.

“They believed the U.S. government’s promises. They took Congress and the Administration at their word, expecting that the government would pay off their debt, as the USDA promised in writing.

“Instead, it was 40 acres and a mule all over again, 150 years later – broken promises that doomed generations of Black farmers to become sharecroppers and robbed Black families of billions in intergenerational wealth.”

With Crump at the helm, Black farmers across the country said they’re prepared to fight for the money promised.

“I’m very disappointed in this legislative action,” said John Wesley Boyd, Jr., founder and president of the National Black Farmer’s Association, a nonprofit representing African American farmers and their families.

“I’m prepared to fight for debt relief for Black, Native American, and other farmers of color all the way to the Supreme Court. I’m not going to stop fighting this.”

A 2019 report highlighted how many federal agencies have systemically discriminated against Black farmers, including the USDA.

“Through discriminatory loan denials and deliberate delays in financial aid, the USDA systematically blocked Black farmers from accessing critical federal funds,” the report authors noted.

“If you are Black and you’re born south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and you tried to farm, you’ve been discriminated against,” Lloyd Wright, the director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and a Black Virginia farmer, said in the report.

The report noted that the debts Black farmers “consequently accrued cost them millions of acres, which white buyers then snapped up.”

In 1920, Black farmers peaked at nearly 1 million, constituting 14 percent of all farmers. But between 1910 and 1997, they lost 90 percent of their property. By contrast, white farmers lost only 2 percent in the same period.

As of 2017, there were just 35,470 Black-owned farms, representing 1.7 percent of all farms.

Black farmers lost some 16 million acres, Conservatively estimated to be worth between $250 billion and $350 billion in current dollars.

Lawrence Lucas, President Emeritus of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and representative of the Justice for Black Farmers Group, said USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack had done nothing to help Black farmers.

“The amount of wealth loss could be in the trillions of dollars,” Lucas remarked. “We’ve had administration after administration, president after president, and Congress after Congress does nothing. Secretary Vilsack was a disaster even when he worked under President Obama, who wasn’t good to us.”

In a letter to the agriculture secretary, Lucas expressed his disappointment.

“We have watched with disbelief and discouragement as a sequence of events played out in a self-fulfilling prophesy: a Vilsack agriculture transition team member declared that what we wanted, debt relief for Black farmers, was unconstitutional,” Lucas wrote.

“We contend that there was an unnecessary length of time spent on Senator Warnock’s two bills, voted into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, and the decision by a Florida judge to issue a temporary restraining order against you, which stopped relief for Black farmers.”

“We contend that you slow-walked the processing of these claims with a process that went beyond 100 days. With the stroke of your pen, we are fully aware that you could have removed the debt these farmers have suffered because of USDA’s long history of discrimination, not a process but debt relief.

“Instead, we have white privilege that continues to be a part of the USDA landscape at the pain and suffering of Black farmers and others,” Lucas continued.

“[Former President Donald] Trump paid out $16 billion in allotments to white farmers quickly, and Black farmers received only a small fraction of those funds. Why for them and not us?” he concluded.

The post Attorney Ben Crump Files Class Action Suit Against U.S. Gov’t on Behalf of Black Farmers first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Stacy M. Brown

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Recently Approved Budget Plan Favors Wealthy, Slashes Aid to Low-Income Americans

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

The new budget framework approved by Congress may result in sweeping changes to the federal safety net and tax code. The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts. A new analysis from Yale University’s Budget Lab shows the proposals in the House’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Resolution would lead to a drop in after-tax-and-transfer income for the poorest households while significantly boosting revenue for the wealthiest Americans. Last month, Congress passed its Concurrent Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 2025 (H. Con. Res. 14), setting revenue and spending targets for the next decade. The resolution outlines $1.5 trillion in gross spending cuts and $4.5 trillion in tax reductions between FY2025 and FY2034, along with $500 billion in unspecified deficit reduction.

Congressional Committees have now been instructed to identify policy changes that align with these goals. Three of the most impactful committees—Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means—have been tasked with proposing major changes. The Agriculture Committee is charged with finding $230 billion in savings, likely through changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. Energy and Commerce must deliver $880 billion in savings, likely through Medicaid reductions. Meanwhile, the Ways and Means Committee must craft tax changes totaling no more than $4.5 trillion in new deficits, most likely through extending provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Although the resolution does not specify precise changes, reports suggest lawmakers are eyeing steep cuts to SNAP and Medicaid benefits while seeking to make permanent tax provisions that primarily benefit high-income individuals and corporations.

To examine the potential real-world impact, Yale’s Budget Lab modeled four policy changes that align with the resolution’s goals:

A 30 percent across-the-board cut in SNAP funding.
A 15 percent cut in Medicaid funding.
Permanent extension of the individual and estate tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Permanent extension of business tax provisions including 100% bonus depreciation, expense of R&D, and relaxed limits on interest deductions.

Yale researchers determined that the combined effect of these policies would reduce the after-tax-and-transfer income of the bottom 20 percent of earners by 5 percent in the calendar year 2026. Households in the middle would see a modest 0.6 percent gain. However, the top five percent of earners would experience a 3 percent increase in their after-tax-and-transfer income.

Moreover, the analysis concluded that more than 100 percent of the net fiscal benefit from these changes would go to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. This happens because lower-income groups would lose more in government benefits than they would gain from any tax cuts. At the same time, high-income households would enjoy significant tax reductions with little or no loss in benefits.

“These results indicate a shift in resources away from low-income tax units toward those with higher incomes,” the Budget Lab report states. “In particular, making the TCJA provisions permanent for high earners while reducing spending on SNAP and Medicaid leads to a regressive overall effect.” The report notes that policymakers have floated a range of options to reduce SNAP and Medicaid outlays, such as lowering per-beneficiary benefits or tightening eligibility rules. While the Budget Lab did not assess each proposal individually, the modeling assumes legislation consistent with the resolution’s instructions. “The burden of deficit reduction would fall largely on those least able to bear it,” the report concluded.

Stacy M. Brown

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A Threat to Pre-emptive Pardons

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

President Trump is working to undo the traditional presidential pardon powers by questioning the Biden administration’s pre-emptive pardons issued just days before January 20, 2025. President Trump is seeking retribution against the January 6th House Select Committee. The Trump Justice Department has been tasked to find loopholes to overturn the pardons that could lead to legal battles for the Republican and Democratic nine-member committee. Legal scholars and those closely familiar with the pardon process worked with the Biden administration to ensure the preemptive pardons would stand against any retaliatory knocks from the incoming Trump administration. A source close to the Biden administration’s pardons said, in January 2025, “I think pardons are all valid. The power is unreviewable by the courts.”

However, today that same source had a different statement on the nuances of the new Trump pardon attack. That attack places questions about Biden’s use of an autopen for the pardons. The Trump argument is that Biden did not know who was pardoned as he did not sign the documents. Instead, the pardons were allegedly signed by an autopen. The same source close to the pardon issue said this week, “unless he [Trump] can prove Biden didn’t know what was being done in his name. All of this is in uncharted territory. “ Meanwhile, an autopen is used to make automatic or remote signatures. It has been used for decades by public figures and celebrities.

Months before the Biden pardon announcement, those in the Biden White House Counsel’s Office, staff, and the Justice Department were conferring tirelessly around the clock on who to pardon and how. The concern for the preemptive pardons was how to make them irrevocable in an unprecedented process. At one point in the lead-up to the preemptive pardon releases, it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process. President Trump began the threat of an investigation for the January 6th Select Committee during the Hill proceedings. Trump has threatened members with investigation or jail.

Oakland Post

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Reaction to The Education EO

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking a higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

There are plenty of negative reactions to President Donald Trump’s latest Executive Order abolishing the Department of Education. As Democrats call yesterday’s action performative, it would take an act of Congress for the Education Department to close permanently. “This blatantly unconstitutional executive order is just another piece of evidence that Trump has absolutely no respect for the Constitution,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) who is the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. “By dismantling ED, President Trump is implementing his own philosophy on education, which can be summed up in his own words, ‘I love the poorly educated.’ I am adamantly opposed to this reckless action, said Rep. Bobby Scott who is the most senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Morgan State University President Dr. David Wilson chimed in saying “I’m deeply concerned about efforts to shift federal oversight in education back to the states, particularly regarding equity, justice, and fairness. History has shown us what happens when states are left unchecked—Black and poor children are too often denied access to the high-quality education they deserve. In 1979 then President Jimmy Carter signed a law creating the Department of Education. Arne Duncan, former Obama Education Secretary, reminds us that both Democratic and Republican presidents have kept education a non-political issue until now. However, Duncan stressed Republican presidents have contributed greatly to moving education forward in this country.

During a CNN interview this week Duncan said during the Civil War President Abraham “Lincoln created the land grant system” for colleges like Tennessee State University. “President Ford brought in IDEA.” And “Nixon signed Pell Grants into law.” In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush which increased federal oversight of schools through standardized testing. Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college. Wilson details, “that 40 percent of all college students rely on Pell Grants and student loans.”

Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) says this Trump action “impacts students pursuing higher education and threatens 26 million students across the country, taking billions away from their educational futures. Meanwhile, During the president’s speech in the East Room of the White House Thursday, Trump criticized Baltimore City, and its math test scores with critical words. Governor West Moore, who is opposed to the EO action, said about dismantling the Department of Education, “Leadership means lifting people up, not punching them down.”