Tribes hope Farm Bill can feed more people & preserve Indigenous culture
HOPKINTON, R.I. (AP) — At Ashawaug Farm in southwest Rhode Island, Dawn and Cassius Spears preserve their Indigenous knowledge of agriculture through the cultivation and keeping of three Narragansett heritage crops: white corn, succotash beans and crookneck squash.
They would like to expand their farm's reach beyond their farm stand, but it's challenging. Like many small food producers, the Spears have sought financial assistance through federal programs. Some have been cut or significantly scaled back under the Trump Administration, including U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that helped tribal farmers.
Tribes relied on these programs to grow and distribute culturally-significant foods locally.
“When we go into these federal programs, we’re hoping that they’ll last long enough,” Cassius Spears said. “They usually start out with a good song and dance. And they’re going to last a long time. And then something happens where they get cut.”
Programs help state and tribal governments purchase local food
The Biden administration started two programs during the pandemic to help states and tribes purchase local food from nearby farmers for food banks and schools: the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS). These programs offered farmers, including tribal farmers, reliable markets for their products. Tribal governments received assistance to purchase food from local producers to distribute to tribal members.
This allowed tribes to get federal dollars directly to small-scale producers, said Carly Griffith Hotvedt, executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative and a member of Cherokee Nation. The Spears' farm provided food for a tribal farm in nearby Connecticut that used LFPA funds, after an agreement was signed in August 2022.
In some instances, tribes used those dollars to source culturally-significant foods for tribal members such as bison meat, certain types of berries and wild rice that were included as part of a food box distribution. For some low-income tribal members, it was the best way to access these types of foods, Hotvedt said.
“It wasn’t just commodity foods in that box. It was highly local, traditionally relevant, culturally relevant foods that were included,” Hotvedt said.
In March 2025, under the Trump administration, the Agriculture Department ended the two programs that provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks, saying that they no longer aligned with the agency's goals.
Congress considers new funding for farmers
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Sen. Jim Justice, a West Virginia Republican, introduced a bill they say takes the best from the two programs and creates a permanent grant program. It would allow state and tribal governments to buy local foods from local and regional producers to distribute to nearby hunger relief programs and schools.
Reed said he feared that when the USDA programs were cut, families across the country would have a more difficult time getting access to food. And, he said, the access wouldn't be to nutritious, freshly grown produce.
Reed said he’s hoping to get the legislation passed as part of the Farm Bill, the massive, multi-year law that governs agricultural and food programs. The House passed its version of the bill in April, and a Senate committee released its draft in late June. The House version also includes a bipartisan proposal for a permanent program modeled after the Local Food Purchase Assistance program. It would allow states, through the USDA, to establish cooperative agreements connecting local farmers and producers with local food distribution organizations.
Both proposals would set aside 10% of the program’s funding for tribes.
For a new program to succeed, Congress must include mandatory funding in order to help farmers better plan, purchase supplies and hire staff because they know they’re going to sell products through those programs, said Hannah Quigley, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The House version would require Congress to agree on funding annually, she added.
Reed said he's advocating for mandatory funding in the Senate because without it very little is funded these days, and because farms are under so much pressure economically. An optional program wouldn't help them as much, he said.
“We really want to punch through the existing obstacles for small farmers and Native American farmers,” he said.
Teaching the next generation about where food comes from
Dawn and Cassius Spears would like to see Indigenous producers prioritized when tribal entities purchase food. And they said they think having dedicated programs that Indigenous producers can access outside of their tribal government would help more Indigenous producers.
Under the canopy of one of her farm’s high tunnels at the start of this year's planting season, Dawn Spears carefully organized her tomato crop, separating the tiny plants before moving them to a field outside. The name of the 6-acre farm is an homage to the Narragansett name of the river that flows through town. It started as a small community garden and food sovereignty project.
One of her grandsons, 9-year-old Giizhig, walked in to ask if she needed help.
“Only if you want to,” Spears replied. “It’s always good to know how to do it, right?”
Teaching the next generation about where food comes from and how to grow responsibly is key for her. But her culture isn’t just about cultivating crops. It’s also about gathering foods they eat from the wild and being able to preserve and access land where those foods are.
She's working to protect the land around their farm as development grows with the hope of introducing native plants into that area that can be foraged for food. Federal funding programs can also help with securing access to land, she said.
“If you take a person away from the land that they come from, then it’s like they’re not whole,” she said. “We have to eat the food that’s naturally from that space that we come from.”
Supreme Court rejects Republican effort to outlaw mail-in ballot procedure
By JULIE CARR SMYTH
Associated Press
States that allow mail ballots to be counted after Election Day reacted with relief Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican effort to outlaw the practice.
A decision favoring the state of Mississippi over the Republican National Committee delivered an immediate reprieve to the 14 states with grace periods for regular mail ballots, as well as heading off what was expected to be a scrambleto alter the practice and inform voters just months ahead of the midterm elections.
At least one state, Ohio, had preemptively changed its law in anticipation of a different result from the high court, and 15 other states have such grace periods specifically for military and overseas voters.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said the ruling means "the thousands of voters whose ballots are postmarked on time but received after Election Day still have their voices heard.”
Mail ballots, also called absentee ballots, have been the source of conspiracy theories from President Donald Trump, who groundlessly blames them for his loss in the 2020 election. The RNC and Libertarian Party had sued to overturn a Mississippi law that permits the counting of mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and arrive up to five days later, on grounds that it violated federal law.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority that the practice is legal.
"Nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by Election Day,” she wrote, adding that the court considered that very narrow question without wading into more sweeping declarations about absentee voting in general or the authority of Congress versus states over election law.
In Illinois, where mail-in ballots accounted for up to a quarter of this year's primary vote, the state elections board had budgeted $300,000 for a television and radio ad campaign to educate voters about potential changes to the mail ballot deadline. Spokesman Matt Dietrich said that campaign will be called off after the court's ruling. Illinois allows mail ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and received within 14 days.
“Anytime you have a change in the administration of elections that affects voters, it is a big challenge to us to make sure that voters understand what that change is,” he said.
California, which has a seven-day grace period, has been a regular target of Trump and other Republicans who criticize the state's slow-counting of late-arriving ballots and have used the gap to spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber called Monday's ruling "a win for voters, for the rule of law, and for the future of our democracy.”
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson called the decision a victory for states' rights, including the ability to set election rules as long as they don't conflict with federal law.
In addition to California, Illinois and Mississippi, the other states that count regular mail ballots received after Election Day are Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
Data shows that mail ballots are popular options across all 50 states for both Republican and Democratic voters.
Although the RNC was party to the case and not the Trump administration itself, national party committees of a sitting president’s party typically operate in concert with the president’s political strategies. Trump also has effectively taken over operations of the RNC, the GOP's main fundraising and political operation.
Calling Monday's ruling “a tremendous loss,” Trump used it as a way to push his sweeping election law bill that has stalled on Capitol Hill despite Republican control in both chambers of Congress.
In a Truth Social post, the president declared it “more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” his name for legislation that would require voters nationally to document their U.S. citizenship to register to vote, show certain photo identification to cast ballots and limit who can vote with a mail ballot. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters issued a statement aligning with Trump, saying Monday's ruling was justification to pass the congressional proposal.
Lower federal courts have issued rulings blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to impose new restrictions on mail ballots and to create a national voter list, among other proposed changes. Judges in those cases have consistently said the Constitution vests authority for setting election rules with Congress and the states, not the president.
While Barrett framed Monday’s opinion on the narrower question of the mail ballot deadline, the decision could bolster hopes among Democrats that the high court will look skeptically on the president’s assertion of power over elections if other cases land before it.
Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin said he was relieved because the ruling was a potential sign that other cases could go Democrats' way. But he accused the president and RNC of trying to disenfranchise voters and said he was alarmed by the narrow 5-4 decision in the case.
“What’s troubling was that so many of the other justices were willing to sacrifice the rights of voters,” said Galvin, a Democrat.
Perhaps nowhere was the case being watched more closely than Alaska, where Native and rural communities dotted across a vast landscape rely on the state's grace period to ensure their ballots get counted. Planes are often the only way ballots can get from polling locations to counting locations.
Jacqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, was among the attorneys who filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of Alaska Native and Native American groups. The brief highlighted the challenges they face, in particular where many communities are accessible only by air or water and rely on air service for mail.
“For many Native communities, voting by mail is shaped by long distances to election offices, no home mail delivery, unreliable postal service, lack of access to transportation, and the realities of living in rural and remote areas,” she said. “Ballots cast by election deadlines should not be discarded simply because substandard service or weather delays cause them to arrive after Election Day.”
Associated Press writers Bill Barrow and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, Josh Kelety in Phoenix, Ali Swenson in New York and graphic artist Kevin Vineys in Washington contributed to this report.
