Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-13-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Landmark Legal Foundation attorney Mike Oneil discuss the Trump conviction, and where it goes with Tik Tok up against a shutdown order. Later, Oregon OSHA has new ruled making it tough on farmers to hire migrant workers. A farm board spokesperson explains

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. And it's pretty chilly, about freezing here by the Road Valley International Airport, seven minutes after seven. Hope you are doing well this morning. By the way, Dr. Carol Lieberman, who was on just a few minutes ago, we were talking about some of the reports that she's been hearing about the fires, and there was that talk about a firefighter not picking someone up i think that got conflated

with this particular story and it had to do with la fire district or fire department's assistant chief christine larson and uh one of the questions that was opposed to her you know being a female firefighter you know can you lift, could you lift my husband? And this was something that was making the rounds over the weekend, the comment that she made. See if I can get this going. You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency, whether it's a

medical call or a fire call, that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit more ease. Okay. So does it give you more ease to see a firefighter that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit more ease. Okay, so does it give you more ease to see a firefighter that looks like you coming up? I want to hear that again. I just think that just astounds me that she actually put this out. You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency, whether it's a medical call or a fire call, that looks like you. It gives that person more ease.

You know, I'm just liking a good, strong human to show up. Good, strong human would be a good start. All right. But of course, where this is coming from, the rubric that is being done in Los Angeles, though, is that you have to be from the island of misfit humans, the LGBTQ. How many boxes, how many DEI boxes are you checking? And of course, she's one of the box checkers. Okay, so anyways, hear a little bit more of it. It gets worse, though. You want to see somebody that

responds to your house, your emergency, whether it's a medical call or a fire call that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit more ease knowing that somebody might understand their situation better. Is she strong enough to do this? Or you couldn't carry my husband out of a fire, which my response is he got himself in the wrong place if i have to carry him out of a fire okay is she strong enough to carry my husband out of a fire but am i able to carry your husband out of a fire well if i do he he got himself in to the wrong, okay. So we now have the box checkers, the DEI box checkers that are all about victim shaming now. Victim shaming, right? If you got yourself into a fire, you, evil male, were in the right place. Stupid male in the right place.

And if I can't lift you up, isn't that too bad? Could you imagine if a doctor were to look at someone that came in there, well, let's just say that you're overweight and you're looking for help. I'm sorry, you know, if you just haven't eaten so much, I wouldn't have to try to help you. I'm sorry, I'm not going to help you because you ate too much. Or, oh, I'm sorry, oh, you smoked? Oh, you drank. That's going to be the next one, right? You drink occasionally. I'm sorry, no medical help for you. L.A. Fire Department is filled with people like Assistant Chief Christine Larson

because that's what this has been all about. It's been about getting the department filled with people who look like her. Yikes. It's 10 minutes after 7, all right? We're going to talk about the legal stuff here landmark legal joins me here in just a moment okay health insurance doesn't have to break the bank 770 kmed here's bill meyer landmark legal foundations mike o'neill rejoins the program because my gosh in today's uh lawfare filled world there's always so much lawfare going around

and someone's gonna tell us how to make sense of this. Hey, Mike, welcome back. It's always good hearing from you. How are you doing, sir? Oh, it's great to be with you, Bill. Thanks for having me on. Mike, why don't we take on the first example, since I mentioned lawfare, and arguably what happened on Friday with President Trump was certainly an example of lawfare, fair enough. And explain what really happened. And I know it was just a real quick, and yes, an unconditional discharge that has happened. And now what? Where does President Trump go on this one? Right.

So this is the final resolution before Judge Marchand at the trial court level in New York. Now we have a final decision. We have a final sentencing. Donald Trump is free to appeal this decision on a merits level up through the New York appellate system. And then ultimately, if he so chooses, if the appeals are not overturned, up to the United States Supreme Court, he can exhaust his merit-based appeals through the appeal process in New York. And then ultimately, if circumstances dictate, appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Now, there are a number, I mean, we could have hour-long discussions about all the problems, trial court, and all the reasons for appeal, and all the need and the necessity

for this conviction to be overturned on appeal. But the bottom line is here is, yes, unfortunately, Donald Trump does have a felony conviction on the books. And that's exactly what the left was looking for. They have been waging this unceasing warfare for years and years on Donald Trump. This is the culmination of this. This is kind of their last gasp. And they were flailing for something, for some takeaway here. And ultimately, their fault, their goal was clearly was to have this felony conviction before the inauguration. Obviously, there's no penalties that the court can impose. Judge Marchand did not have the power, does not have any kind of constitutional authority to impose penalties.

However, what he was able to do was have this unconditional discharge. But as of right now, this felony conviction is technically on the books. All right. I was always told up to this point by other people that until you actually get through the appeals process, it's not an official conviction. But that's not true. You're telling me, right? You could say he is a convicted. Yeah, he's convicted felon right now. But but again, it's it's lawfare. I think the American people see through see it through what it's worth. I mean, everybody, you know, we saw what happened in November. Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected.

There was a rejection of this. And I do think, again, I think there's a very strong probability that this is overturned at some point, either through the New York level, which I'm not very I'm not I'm not very confident with. But ultimately, the Supreme Court might have another shot at this. And again, there's there's there's just oodles of opportunities, of reasons for this conviction to be overturned on appeal. Yeah, I don't I don't see how this was election interference, but oh well. We'll set this aside for right now. Now, can President Trump actually do these appeals while he is president, or does he have to wait until he's left office?

Yeah, no, he can, and we expect him to appeal this conviction shortly. And I think the criminal rules of appellate procedure dictate within 30 days or something like this. So you can expect an appeal shortly. And that'll go on. Again, these are paper appeals. These will be done by his private attorneys. This will be separate and apart from his presidency. And certainly won't serve as any kind of distraction for him operating his presidency.

Yeah, so he's not going to be going on Zoom calls with the judges and everything like that. None of that stuff's going to happen. No, no. These are private attorneys handling the appellant process. This won't be any kind of trial or anything like what we saw on Friday where he even had to appeal via Zoom. Well, what can I tell you, Mike? I was still happy to have voted for the convicted felon, the now convicted felon. Okay, we'll just leave it.

I think, and again, most of the people saw this for what it was, this lawfare. There was wholesale rejection at the political process, which was very heartening. All right. Mike O'Neill once again and Landmark Legal Foundation, landmarklegal.org. Keep up on a lot of these sort of legal issues that we've been talking about, including the latest, though, and that is TikTok v. Garland. There were oral arguments on Friday. And this is the law that Congress passed, or the law that was passed, which would require the TikTok owners to sell away from China, no longer be controlled by China in any way, right? Isn't that the story?

Essentially what this law will do is prohibit the operation of TikTok on new devices and really effectively ban the social media application TikTok from all our devices. And this law is scheduled to go into effect, I mean, in six days, January 19th. So there is some urgency that the court issue a decision in this case. And as I said, because you just said there were oral arguments of two and a half, two hours and 45 minutes of oral arguments last week. What we're talking about here is there's a. Hold on just a second here. Isn't that a pretty long oral argument for the Supreme Court? Absolutely. That is a considerable time. And that just shows the importance and the urgency of it. Oftentimes, you can say, look, if it's a really, really... And this is a tough... These are tough

arguments. These are tough. There's good arguments on both sides of the aisle here. And that is indicative. And when you see these long oral arguments, you know, number one, it's a case of incredible national importance. And number two, you have a lot of tough arguments. And the court has to grapple with a lot of separate issues in this case. And what the court is grappling here is a couple of things. Number one is really, what does the law do? Does the law implicate free speech? Does the law implicate your free speech rights to use TikTok or the TikTok users' free speech rights to communicate with it? Again, we have 170 million Americans who use TikTok. It's widely utilized, particularly amongst younger people, of course.

But they use it to communicate. They use it to express ideas, et cetera. This is their main method of communication. So the question here is whether the law implicates the first amendment the other government the individual the government defending the law simply said look all where all the law does is order the divestiture of tiktok by a foreign corporation it doesn't interfere it doesn't try to dictate the content of what people put up on tiktok all we're saying is that bite dance the chinese corporation that owns tiktok has to divest its ownership interest into tiktok and i can understand that to an extent because everything that you do on tiktok then is sent to uh by dance and and there are no real private companies in

china everything is a state-run enterprise essentially it is the it is a chinese government operated app in a way at least through the back door is it not absolutely and that was the national security interest that we're talking about here and that that's why we ask why for the laws, of course, because to protect the national security interest, essentially, you can say that there is spyware that's placed on every person's use when you use TikTok. And they can gather this data and they can manipulate the data. Interestingly, Judge Kavanaugh posited an interesting hypothetical oral argument. And I thought this kind of illustrates the national security interest in a nutshell. He said, say you're 20 years old or 19, 20 years old, and you put a lot of kind of interesting things, maybe controversial things on TikTok,

maybe things you later regret at some point in your later life. What happens if you're 18, 19, put something crazy on TikTok, you decide you're going to become an FBI agent. And then all of a sudden, 10 years later, you're an FBI agent. China has the data. And then they can somehow turn you by saying, look, they have leverage over you saying, look, we've amassed this data. We've got these videos of you on TikTok when you were a teenager. We're going to use this unless you do dot, dot, dot. So I thought that was kind of an interesting hypothetical of how China could manipulate this data and how they could use it against our national security interests. Of course, what we're talking about here, if we do get into the free speech, the question is, right, it's a balancing thing.

Okay, are we going to be able to violate or implicate the First Amendment rights of 170 million users based on this hypothetical or potential problem down the road? Of course, grappling with this, we'll see where it comes out. And again, I do think, Bill, that the court's going to rule fairly quickly on this because, as I said, January 19th, TikTok is poised to go dark. If you were a betting man on this one, now betting on the Supreme Court decision is always a fool's bet, but that's okay. We can be fools here. I am going to say that they're going to err on the side of national security on this. What do you think is going to happen here? Wow, that's a great question. And I think any prognostication is a good prognostication, because during all arguments, they were really split. You saw them all over the place. But I got to say, I'm going to differ from

it. I think there might be five justices, and I'll tell you why, who conclude that there is a less restrictive means available to protect the interest. Somehow there was a lot of discussion on Friday about a disclosure. Well, can't TikTok just put up a disclosure on their website saying, hey, if you use this, if you decide Americans, if you decide to use this, you have to know that the potential usage that, number one, China could obtain this data, has this data. And number two, they could potentially use it against you. And I know I know you're asking an 18 year old, 19 year old this data, has this data. And number two, they could potentially use it against you. And I know you're asking an 18-year-old, 19-year-old to say, oh, hey. Yeah, I don't know if an 18, 19-year-old would even care. They'd probably have to ask, where's China?

They probably don't know where China is. Exactly. I see your point. And I think you see Roberts and Kavanaugh probably. Maybe Thomas agree with that position. Maybe Alito. But I thought you saw Gorsuch. And again, I'm counting the votes here. Gorsuch, maybe ACBC. Gorsuch and ACB are kind of swings on this one. I think Kagan and Jackson and Sotomayor seem to be leaning on

the side of the TikTok. Maybe. So this isn't interesting. This necessarily isn't a fall to the conservative kind of liberal justice. This is this is a really this isn't interesting. This necessarily isn't a fall for the conservative kind of liberal justice. This isn't really a partisan. If you want to parse the court into conservative or liberal, for example, if you want to go down that road, I really think this kind of bifurcates that. It really crosses the aisle. So it's not easily categorized into this. I think, look, the advocates advocating for TikTok, the advocates for the government were both really effective, really got their message across, really strong arguments for both sides. So I think no matter what, it's going to be close. But there's a lot of discussion about this disclosure and whether this is narrowly tailored. Remember when we're talking about free speech rights? If you can get to that free speech, again, if you can characterize that this actually implicates the free speech rights of Americans, as opposed to just saying we're ordering

the divestiture by a foreign corporation. If you get into that, then there's no First Amendment, then the law will be upheld. But if you get into that realm where you're talking about the First Amendment, you have to say, look, is there a compelling national interest? And is this law narrowly tailored to advance that compelling interest? That's a very, very high bar to clear. And so the narrowly tailored is kind of where we get into the kind of get into a little bit of a problem here. So, again, this is just my my read maybe from the justices. Maybe there's five to say that this law is not narrowly tailored to advance the compelling interest,

assuming that they accept the fact that the national security interest is a compelling interest. Whether this law is narrowly tailored. In other words, can a disclosure, in other words, satisfy that national security interest? Can't we do something rather than just this wholesale ban on 170 million users? I think that might give the court a little bit of a pause. We will see. Yeah, you could be right about that, Ben, now that I hear maybe your point of view is more sound on this one. Now, me being a cynical talk show type when you know, when I hear these kind of things,

I think the court's going to come out and say, hey, listen, if you're going to be on social media, we don't want communists trying to listen to your stuff. Our intelligence agencies are supposed to be listening to your stuff, okay? All right, that's what we want. Right, right. I do think, again, going back to that hypothetical or that possibility raised by Justice Kavanaugh, it kind of drove home the point to me. And I really had trouble kind of just thinking about this case and reading the brief and understanding and kind of thinking

about how this will play out. How do they manipulate data? How do they use data against you? And when you think about it, and I think it's good for all of us to understand this, everything we put online, no matter what it is, is available somewhere to somebody. And so, you know, just as an attorney, it just, it comes into my mind. I always want to say to everybody, always be prepared to defend everything you put online in front of a judge, you know, no matter what you're going to have, just be prepared. Yeah. Always, always think about it that way. You know, I, uh, you know, I'm thinking, you know, if, had I had TikTok or social media like that when i was a kid i don't know if i could have survived i think some of the stupid stuff that you that you

say you know to think that that would end up being your official record as the uh as the case might be terrifying yeah yeah what a way to uh to get a a thumb on a whole bunch of people this time goes on i mean to be judged by what you uh blurt out there at 15 and 16 not a um not a whole bunch of people as time goes on. I mean, to be judged by what you blurt out there at 15 and 16, not a good thing for sure. And the thing is, though, is that we know even our own government is guilty of doing strong-arming. You know, you had Zuckerberg the other day going out there and talking about how, yeah, they came and the Biden administration wanted us to shut this stuff down. So it's a very real risk out there. It's not a hypothetical.

No, no, it's not. And I think it's terrifying. And I think it's I mean, I appreciate the fact that Zuckerberg came out and talked about this. The first thing I said when I was listening to that interview, Bill, was, well, where were you three years ago? Where were you when the when the federal government comes into your office? Here you have one of the wealthiest people in the country who has access to the most premier white shoe law firms in the country. I mean, if it were me and the FBI came in and started to tell me how to moderate content on my social media platform, I would saddle up with every lawyer I had and challenge them. And I said and instead there was this, you know, this kind of abrogation and this go along, get along kind of thing.

And I just I hope and I think we're seeing it now. I think there's this and this is why I do kind of I want to err on the side of the First Amendment. Obviously, I am I am completely understanding of the national security interests here. But when you have domestic American corporations being strong armed by our federal law enforcement agencies, that is terrifying to me. And I think it's and I think we should fight that with every fiber of our being. And again, just to wrap this into the lawfare, you saw how this was weaponized and you saw how this was used by one political side against the other political side.

And the manipulation of data, it really is a very brave new world we're in now. And I think we all have to contend with this, particularly the Supreme Court. And we're going to see how, again, this is all going to shake out in the next couple of days here. Mike O'Neill, Landmark Legal, landmarklegal.org. Great having you on again here, Mike. I really appreciate it. And I guess, so TikTok is supposed to go down or be shut down by the 19th. That's only six days from now, right?

Sunday, right? Yep, yep. I mean, I'm thinking now, again, I don't know the interrupt workings of the Supreme Court. I would not be surprised if we saw a decision, and we're talking a week, but that's really fast for the court. We're talking a week for the court to issue a decision, maybe by the end of this week. I think they're probably working on it right now as we speak. Could they issue an order to belay implementing the law until they go through it more? What do you think? Yeah, that was an issue that they talked about on at oral arguments. What could they do? What remedy? And I think they could stay. It's a

preliminary injunction. So they could grant the injunction, which actually wouldn't overturn the law. It would just stay enforcement of the law until they could decide it on a marriage basis. So technically, they could stay the law without actually overturning the law. However, the state would basically be saying, hey, look, we find this law unconstitutional, so you have to rescind it. And anyway, yeah, exactly. All right. Mike, thanks so much. We'll definitely have you back. Landmarklegal.org. Always a pleasure. Take care. Take care. Take care. This is KMED and 99.3 KBXG. It's the Bill Myers Show, 729. Your smile is the key to your health and confidence.

Do you know that it is possible in a single day to replace a mouth full of bad teeth or ill-fitting dentures with a... ...7.2 sold. That's 541-772-7653. Jared Hokanson of Hokanson Realty. This is the Bill Myers Show show on 1063 km ed got something on your mind give bill a shout at 541-770-5633 770 km ed 731 we'll check news here in just a moment i want to do a couple of emails of the day might do some more a little bit later on too always enjoy the good thinking that comes in.

By the way, my email is Bill at BillMeyersShow.com. Emails of the day, and those are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. CentralPointFamilyDentistry.com. And, by the way, if you need things like water picks, special toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwashes, medical, you know, in other words, specialty dental equipment. You know, Dr. Steve is so big on making sure that people have access to having this good equipment that he has a kiosk inside the dental office in which you can buy that kind of gear at his cost. I ended up buying a water pick there the other day. I was getting my teeth cleaned and then finding out that I have a tooth that if I don't start working really hard, I think I have a pocket. Now, if you're a dental

hygienist, you're going to sit there and go, I have a dental pocket in the back on one of my teeth that says it's like a seven. It's like seven. And it's in danger of having to be pulled. And I'm trying to save it with extra cleaning and the water pick will help. So I got the water pick from Dr. Nelson and then I'm going to go back and get they're going to put me out, not put me out, they're going to numb the area and really get in there and clean it. It's just, eh.

I'm just glad he's there to help out. I've been struggling with that tooth there for a while. Got to save the tooth, right? So anyway, one email a day. We're going to give one to Tom from Talent. Tom, we were talking about Providence last hour, a little bit here. And I have, like I said, I have mixed emotions.

I am sympathetic to both sides. I'm sympathetic to Providence because essentially it's been losing money 10 out of 12 quarters. And then you have the nurses that are saying, well, we don't want just $20,000 and everything else in a raise. We want more of us hired, and we want cheaper health insurance. Hey, don't we all? As far as I'm concerned, get in line.

Get in line, Prov nurses. Get right there with you. But Tom says, Bill, I had a friend who had a blood pressure infection crisis, over 200, went to Prov ER. He waited four hours, finally had to leave. He said he saw Mexicans with flu symptoms being given first priority he went to asante next morning got immediate care i think sanctuary status has to be factored into what is going on with prov i'll say it again wokeism is more than just stupid and inconvenient and wokeism kills tom and talent

you know tom what your friend may have been dealing with is Providence is actually a considerably smaller hospital than Asante, and Asante may have just had more of the capacity. Not that I'm defending Prov, but of course I've taken my mom in there several times over the years into the ER and always got

good care, but yes, sometimes it is pretty tough on the, you know, getting you in there right away. A blood pressure infection crisis over 200. Well, I don't know. Maybe the flu was more immediately important. You know, they do that triage part anytime you go into an emergency room. I'm just saying.

Always that possibility. Paul Princeton writes me, hey, Bill, in the West, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. But as we witnessed in California, it's not for firefighting. That precious commodity was diverted for smelt and insignificant fish instead. Priorities, don't you know, in climate? Well, climate is for blaming. And by extension, it's all your fault because of your insistence on driving a gas-powered car or because of your gas-fired water heater or whatever no politician is to blame for mismanagement misplaced priorities dei anyone made this disaster wake up the politically obtuse voters

paul that is an interesting thing may it wake up the voters can it i don't know i mean you you think about how california has continued to be on this uh you know this low expectations olympics you know winning the low expectation olympics here from public officials they keep re-electing gavin even through all the fires burning and the power prices soaring they elected a rank marxist for la mayor all that mattered if you were going to be on the fire department is if you checked the boxes not if you were actually competent at doing your job i don't know this is kind of systemic and there may be a certain number of people who are willing to change their way of thinking politically, but I don't know. Do you think it's going to be the majority? It's like all of a sudden that the majority be Marxists, and if they're competent, well, we can get lucky with that. I don't know, because I could say the same thing about Oregon.

Look at what Oregon has done. I mean, yeah, you and I might be conservatives. Other listeners might be conservatives. Maybe not everybody who listens to me is conservative, but most probably are. And yet, look at who gets voted in time after time after time, even as Portland burns and declines. Eugene, everywhere else, they keep doing the same thing. I don't know if that's enough to wake them up. What do you think?

Maybe we talk about that, too. This is the Bill Myers Show. At Fontana Roofing, their roof replacement teams give homeowners honest advice every day. Let's check in and see what's new. Did you see Heating and Air? And I'm on KMED. 741.

Jenny Drexler joins me. She's a spokesperson from the Oregon Farm Bureau. Jenny, when OSHA ends up showing up, wonderful things usually end up happening to industries. Can we agree? I know. In an ironic way, yes. Yeah, yeah. I'm having fun with you this morning out of a serious situation.

I ended up getting a note from you folks the other day that OSHA ended up adopting updates to the agriculture labor housing rules. Because one of the big concerns has been, first off, trying to get people to work in the agricultural world so that crops get grown, crops get picked and processed, et cetera, et cetera. But the state of Oregon has tended to get in the way of a lot of that. And one of this is, does this have to do with migrant housing rules or or something else what happened because you said that it took six years and there's like hundreds of pages of regulations about this right yes yes that that that is right so what what happened is in 2018 uh oregon osha embarked on a rulemaking process

to update its ag labor housing standards. Those are specific to seasonal migrant labor housing. And in Oregon, I think we've got, you know, just about roughly about 400 or just over 400 registered housing operations specific to that workforce. And those are registered with Oregon OSHA. And so we embarked on this process. Obviously, during that time, you know, we saw the pandemic come and go, and smoke rules passed during that time. And also heat rules too, right?

You can't be out and work. If it gets too hot, you can't be outside. If it's too cold, you can't get outside. If it's too sunny, you can't go outside. I don't know if it's that or not, or too smoky, too. It's everywhere, right? Those rules essentially forced farms to shut down around 10 a.m., yeah, in order to protect their workforce and to control their costs. So over the course of that process, the U.S. Department of Labor actually updated its own set of rules in 2022. And so instead of just aligning with the U.S. Department of Labor federal OSHA's rules, our agency, Oregon OSHA, went very, very far beyond.

Why does that not surprise me? Why does that not surprise me that we have the federal housing rules for the migrants and then Oregon decides that, what, do we have to put them up in Beverly Hills? Beverly Hills Hotel? Or what? I might be a little sarcastic when I say that. I'm sorry. Apologize for my sarcasm. Yeah, Oregon determines that Oregon farmers and housing operators would need to go so far above and beyond that they're looking at a really steep bill for operation, one that they actually cannot afford. So farms are actually talking about shutting down because of OSHA's rules for the migrant farm worker housing that have been put in place now? Really? Yeah, I mean, we have actually had quite a few shut down even prior to this due to other costs that they could not control.

But yeah, farms are, there are farms right now, you know, five and six generation farms, fifth and sixth generation that are talking about reducing their workforce because they can't house the same number of people. And some are looking at the reality that they may very well have to sell because they can't make it. Are these rules from OSHA like there has to be like one room per migrant or is it something like that? Is it that granular? I know trying to distill 400 pages plus of regulations into a talk show segment could be a challenge. But could you help us understand what kind of micromanaging this state of Oregon's OSHA has done here? Absolutely. So, yeah, I will give you one example.

These rules are incredibly prescriptive. One example is that, you know, Oregon OSHA has said that there should be either a small dresser or a bookcase placed somewhere in the house. Just a bookcase placed somewhere in the house per occupant so that they can store their personal belongings. There are already regulations around suitable storage at the federal level. They've already applied to Oregon Farms. But finding the wall space or the shelf space per occupant, that's... But there has to be a bookcase, you said, right?

A bookcase or a dresser, some sort of storage option. We're having a hard time deciphering how that regulation is grounded in health and safety versus just OSHA's desire to have us invest in more infrastructure. All right. So what's wrong with having just, let's say, a trunk underneath the bed or something like that? Does that not satisfy the rules from OSHA? That does not satisfy the rules. That already exists for most of these operations. Oh.

That's already, yeah. Okay, so they already have trunks, but trunks are bad. Why are trunks bad? Do we know? Does OSHA say why? I think, you know, that's the theme of these rules. What we are doing, what is already considered legal, literally, and under Oregon law, is not currently enough. And so the agency has essentially mandated a ton of more construction, a ton of new construction and investment to bring housing up to a standard that they consider to be enough. And that, per operation, comes at the tune of between about $400,000 and $1.5 million per farm. $400,000 to $1.5 million extra dollars per farm that uses migrant labor. Yeah, and houses, those workers, yeah. Okay. Wow. Are there any ways to perhaps get around these kind of rules in which you have them perhaps stay off farm?

Is that possible or does that cost extra too? I don't know. You know, just how about just an RV park for crying out loud? Well, I will tell you, you know, farm housing is one of the incentives that family farms in Oregon use to recruit workers. We're a specialty crop state. And so without it, it's going to be very, very challenging to recruit workers to come work during our harvest season. These workers are probably living in this housing for a period of four to eight weeks a year. And so it is not occupied year round. And there's not really, at least in southern Oregon, in the Gorge area, there is not community based housing that is available to this particular population. So we don't know where they are going to live if they decide to come to Oregon to harvest. But it's a real challenge, particularly because the construction costs are really out of reach for most families.

Jenny Drexler is with me. She's a spokesperson for the Oregon Farm Bureau. OSHA has updated its regulations about migrant farm worker housing, and it sounds like it's adding a lot of extra cost to this. And meanwhile, what is happening to the financial condition of your typical, let's say, family farm right now? What's happening with their income or other things? I mean, do they have that money coming in to be able to make it happen? They do not. It's been a very devastating couple of years for most farms in Oregon.

Crop prices have been very low, have been down. The market has not been predictable. You know, I want to hang on there just a second, Jenny. At the same time that I went and bought 18 eggs for $9.78 yesterday, right? 18 eggs. And at the same time that I've never seen my grocery prices higher, the crop prices have never been lower right yeah it's um it's it's a it's a real challenge for for most farms uh they are price takers so they are only able to secure whatever the market's able to provide and um so outside of the egg space you know yeah

yeah now i i understand the egg thing is you know bird flu and everything else but still but still i just they they are unable to demand a higher price for the higher cost of production in oregon okay is this going to lead to perhaps more massive corporate takeovers of smaller farms or medium-sized farms what how do you think this plays out in the real world over time in in the real world i think that that's the very likely consequence is that the small and mid-sized farms, the mom-and-pop operations, they can't make a go of it. And they're going to sell out to more corporate farms, those who are vertically integrated and can. We're just pricing people out of agriculture in Oregon. Is there a way for these small farms to automate more services so they would need less of the migrant labor?

I don't know how that works out economically for the farms, but I at least have to ask. You know, it depends on the crop. In blueberries, we've seen quite a bit of mechanization and automated pickers. It just depends on the crop and what technologies are available. You know, there's a lot of work happening in robotics and AI. And I do think that that's likely the future here as family farms try to control costs. But I don't know, you know, where that technology is in terms of rollout. Is there anything that could be done to stop these regulations or get them rolled back?

And did the legislature, I mean, it's a two-part question, did the legislature actually grant such massive authority to Oregon OSHA to make these kind of decisions? Yes, that Oregon OSHA has really broad statutory authority to make these sort of decisions. Wow. What can be done? You know, the legislature has an oversight role over executive agencies, and it is our sincere hope that they look at the cost, they look at how unfeasible these rules are, they look at the economic reality,

and that it's going to displace workers at the end of the day and that they step in and weigh in and make their opinion known here. But, you know, the session starts officially next week, and that'll be our job as an agricultural community to communicate the real world impact of this rulemaking. Yeah, I'm hoping that they could actually do a little bit of oversight. Now, I know that it's a super majority in both parts of the legislature, the House and the Senate of Democrats. And have Democrats been more friendly or less friendly to agricultural interests than, let's say, the Republican side that doesn't have as much power? You know, I think that what you have between Republicans and Democrats is you have Republicans who represent more rural areas,

and so they understand a lot of the needs of the agricultural community because that that is their community right and so we just have uh more education that needs to be done with a lot of democratic legislators some do represent more rural areas and uh but it's really going to be case by case and what does your district look like and you know a lot of folks were you raised on a farm well you know you may have to remind you know it a lot of folks were raised on a farm. Well, you know, you may have to, you know, it may be one of those times to remind some of the big city legislator representatives, you know, that represent, let's say, Portland, Multnomah County, those sort of areas that, you know, you folks eat too. The food has to come from someplace. I'm just concerned that we're getting more and more in the way of letting farms actually grow what we need to live as a society. It just is bizarre to me here. Nope, that is our concern as well.

And we see it play out in real time. Family farms are closing every day or seeking an out because this state has made production so unaffordable. Yeah, that's a tough one. I'm going to share the information that you shared with me to listeners, too, on my show blog today here, too. And is there any way that we can get involved somehow? But there's no legislation planned at the moment, nothing like that, nobody to light up a phone on?

Or is it just kind of informational say hang here this is what they've done we just want you to know i i think it's probably more informational i mean those those listeners who have concerns feel free to pick up the phone and call your representative and let them know what what happened here um and right now we're kind of at the beginning of an information campaign trying to distill again about, about hundreds of pages of rulemaking and fiscal impact analysis into something that can be digested by the legislature. So that would be really helpful. All right. Very good. Jenny Drexler, once again, a spokesperson for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

We appreciate your time this morning. You take care, Jenny. Be well. Thanks. Thank you.