Every single day brings contemporary horrors from the Trump administration, and nothing comforts just like the data that Donald Trump’s supporters are paying the worth. In my Jan. 26 article, “Nebraska went big for Trump—and that may kill its economy,” I warned that Nebraska’s reliance on federal applications and its immigrant labor pressure made it uniquely susceptible below Trump’s insurance policies.
Seems, I used to be proper. 1 / 4 later, Nebraska’s gross home product has shrunken greater than 6% in early 2025, tying it with equally Trumpy Iowa for the worst drop within the nation. That statistic hit the headlines over a month in the past, however what’s new is that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins simply needed to face Nebraskans residing by way of the fallout.
Farmers’ grievances have been precisely what you’d count on: Their farms have been short-staffed because of immigration raids, tariffs raised prices and shrank export markets, and pricing controls made it more durable to promote crops.
The state’s all-Republican congressional delegation had a well-known answer: extra federal {dollars} to bail out the identical pull-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps crowd that spent years railing in opposition to “socialism.” As Sen. Deb Fischer defined, “There’s a lot of risk involved in agriculture. … You can’t control the weather. … That’s why these safety nets are so important.”
Bear in mind when “safety nets” have been alleged to be a scourge?
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, proven in June.
Rep. Don Bacon, who will retire quickly and provides Democrats a first-rate pickup alternative within the Home, had his personal repair: Develop authorities mandates for biofuels.
“It’s the only way you’re going to move enough corn and soybeans,” he stated. “Otherwise you’re going to have a depression.”
If there have been a viable market case for ethanol with out mandates, it will exist already.
As an alternative, Trump’s insurance policies could also be steering Nebraska straight right into a melancholy. Farm bankruptcies are spiking—259 filings in simply the primary quarter, surpassing all of final 12 months, in keeping with Ryan Loy, an agricultural economist on the College of Arkansas. He says the monetary pressures farmers face now mirror these from 2018 and 2019.
And who was president in 2018 and 2019? Precisely.
Think about voting for financial devastation—and getting precisely that.
However in the course of this wreckage lies a exceptional opening for Dan Osborn, a populist unbiased whose rebel marketing campaign almost toppled a Republican Senate seat final 12 months, at the same time as Trump carried the state by greater than 20 share factors. Osborn overperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by 13 factors in deep-red Nebraska, shedding by just below 7 factors.
Unbiased Dan Osborn, proven in July 2024, is mounting a second marketing campaign for Senate in Nebraska, looking for besides incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts this time.
Osborn’s platform—help for small-business tax reduction, union rights, legalized marijuana, defending Social Safety, strengthening public colleges, securing the border, and guaranteeing the fitting to restore—has centered relentlessly on financial livelihood whereas sidestepping divisive social points. (Yeah, yeah, the border stuff is a part of the rationale Nebraska is struggling, however you seemingly can’t win the state with out it, at the least not but.)
Now he’s working once more—this time in opposition to Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, one of many richest individuals in Congress. It’s the populist versus the privileged, the mechanic versus the moneyed elite.
Making breadbasket populism breathe once more is not any small factor. But when it could possibly take root in Nebraska (and Iowa), it may radiate outward in future cycles. Let these states be the proving floor for a brand new prairie populism that may construct a Senate majority on financial widespread floor.
Whereas Trump’s insurance policies hammer Nebraska’s farms, Osborn’s rise provides one thing uncommon: a beacon of populist hope in a state teetering below financial collapse.
