The Big Beautiful Bill Will Kill Billions of Animals
In March 2025, Elon Musk made a curious allegation against former President Joe Biden. “There was an insane slaughter of 150 million egg-laying chickens ordered by the Biden administration,” he exclaimed. And 269,000 people liked his tweet. Musk was referring to the mass slaughter of hens, through the most grotesque methods imaginable, due to outbreaks of bird flu around the country. Biden was alleged to have done the killing due to the $1 billion in subsidies given by his government to agricultural interests to roast animals alive. It was one of the few instances where Musk and I were on the same page.
In light of Musk’s commitment to efficiency, one might think that the stranglehold by agricultural interests over our government would be broken. But, sadly, one would be very wrong. While Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill threatens to cut 16 million Americans off of their health care plans, and cut food stamps to 2 million children, there is one area of government spending that is not just being massively amplified. It is not the military, though that is getting a small boost. It is not the border wall, though a significant amount has been allocated for that purpose. It is agricultural commodities programs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that $53 billion in additional expenses will be incurred by US taxpayers to support these programs, and another $1.6 billion for so-called Animal Health protection. Included in this massive increase is even more funding to roast animals alive.
Examples like this show how our system is fundamentally broken. Very few Americans support practices like roasting animals alive, with government funds or otherwise. Indeed, the vast majority of people are so horrified by the practice that they believe that it must be a crime. (It is, though government prosecutors have never bothered to hold companies accountable.) Yet instead of stopping this abuse, our government has shifted taxpayer money away from helping Americans with food and health care, including literally millions of impoverished children, and towards subsidizing the industries to engage in this practice.
And people wonder why Americans have lost trust in our government.
It’s evil 😈 when you inflict suffering on those already suffering and worse, when you seem to enjoy doing so or laugh about it as did Trump, DeSantis and Noem though not the only ones they are exemplifying immorality
Wayne, I’ve been seeing parallels between the mass incarceration on steroids now with the kidnap of immigrants, and the animals in cages in factory farms. I’m writing a Substack on that. I’ve seen arial photos of concentration camps next to “ detention centers” and they resemble CAFO’s. Just wanted to share that with you and if you had similar thoughts☮️ you may want to write about. The cruelty shown to animals is now reflected in the cruelty of an “Alligator Auschwitz” and people in cages.