Writing for Esquire, @RyanLizza goes to Sibley, Iowa, where he finds Devin Nunes's family running a dairy farm reliant on illegal immigrant labor. https://t.co/QMlldBaRPA
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) October 1, 2018
Devin Nunes and Steve King, putting the poo in poujadism!
I’d save this for a more reader-friendly timeslot, if only there weren’t liable to be so many more breaking news stories this Monday…
Devin Nunes has a secret. Nunes is the California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who has become famous in the Trump era for using his position as a battering ram to discredit the Russia investigation and protect Donald Trump at all costs, even if it means shredding his own reputation and the independence of the historically nonpartisan committee in the process.
First elected to Congress in 2002, Nunes wasn’t always like this. At one time he was known for his independent streak. When a new class of radical House Republicans pushed its leadership to shut down the government in 2013, Nunes attacked them as “lemmings with suicide vests.” In 2015, during another tumultuous period of House GOP infighting, I interviewed a broad cross section of the chamber’s Republican leadership, and Nunes stood out for comments he made about how his colleagues and constituents were siloed in right-wing echo chambers and increasingly reliant on this or that “conspiracy theory” rather than “something that is mostly true.” In hindsight, he was prescient about the direction of his party: A few years later, a bona fide conspiracy theorist, one who credited Alex Jones with his victory, was elected president.
Instead of continuing the fight, Nunes served on the president’s transition team and became Trump’s most important defender in Congress. He has used the Intelligence Committee to spin a baroque theory about alleged surveillance of the Trump campaign that began with a made-up Trump tweet about how “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower.” Indeed, Nunes has worked closely with the White House to investigate the FBI rather than the FSB (the KGB’s successor), most famously by attempting to undermine the Russia investigation by releasing a partisan report—the so-called “Nunes memo”—that cherry-picked evidence to accuse the FBI of bias in its effort to obtain a warrant to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a Trump foreign-policy advisor…
So here’s the secret: The Nunes family dairy of political lore—the one where his brother and parents work—isn’t in California. It’s in Iowa. Devin; his brother, Anthony III; and his parents, Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, sold their California farmland in 2006. Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, who has also been the treasurer of every one of Devin’s campaigns since 2001, used their cash from the sale to buy a dairy eighteen hundred miles away in Sibley, a small town in northwest Iowa where they—as well as Anthony III, Devin’s only sibling, and his wife, Lori—have lived since 2007. Devin’s uncle Gerald still owns a dairy back in Tulare, which is presumably where The Wall Street Journal’s reporter talked to Devin, and Devin is an investor in a Napa Valley winery, Alpha Omega, but his immediate family’s farm—as well as his family—is long gone…
And the ‘new’ farm is in Steve “Pigmuck” King’s district!
… [I]n 2010 Nunes traveled to northwest Iowa to campaign for Steve King, the most anti-immigrant member of Congress, who now represents Nunes’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law in Sibley. It was an unusual place to find Devin Nunes, given that at the time he wasn’t known to be hostile to immigrants in the way that has made King, who has called illegal immigration a “slow-motion terrorist attack,” so infamous…
Why would the Nuneses, Steve King, and an obscure dairy publication all conspire to hide the fact that the congressman’s family sold its farm and moved to Iowa? I went to Sibley to find out. Things got a little strange…
***********
The Nunes family dairy, NuStar Farms LLC, sits on forty-three acres surrounded by corn on the southern outskirts of Sibley, off Highway 60, a main route between Sioux City and Minneapolis. According to Dairy Star, they have about two thousand Jersey cows. A source told me that NuStar sells almost all of its milk to Wells, an ice cream company in Le Mars, which makes the Blue Bunny brand. The NuStar cows are housed in two seven-hundred-foot, white aluminum barns that are the most prominent feature of the farm. The western sides of the barns are outfitted with dozens of steel ventilation fans that look like rocket engines from a distance, almost as if a pair of space-shuttle boosters had dropped in the middle of a cornfield…
I found the Nunes home on the far north edge of town, where the leafy neighborhood bumps up against the surrounding farmland. In the driveway was another white Yukon—the fancier Denali version. Anthony Jr. was pulling out of the driveway in a farm truck. I waved at him, and he abruptly stopped the truck in the street and walked over to my car. He was wearing jeans and a work shirt. I told him my name and asked him if I could talk to him for an article about his dairy. “I’m taking your license plate down and reporting you to the sheriff,” he said. “I don’t want to be bothered.” I asked him again if I could interview him and he repeated himself, but this time a lot louder. “I don’t want to be bothered anymore.” As he walked to his truck, he looked back and warned me: “If I see you again, I’m gonna get upset.” Apparently Sibley’s First Amendment training hadn’t filtered down to all its residents.Other dairy farmers in the area helped me understand why the Nunes family might be so secretive about the farm: Midwestern dairies tend to run on undocumented labor. The northwest-Iowa dairy community is small. Most of the farmers know one another, and most belong to a regional trade group called the Western Iowa Dairy Alliance (though WIDA told me NuStar is not a member). One dairy farmer said that the threat of raids from ICE is so acute that WIDA members have discussed forming a NATO-like pact that would treat a raid on one dairy as a raid on all of them. The other pact members would provide labor to the raided dairy until it got back on its feet…
***********
… There is massive political hypocrisy at the center of this: Trump’s and King’s rural-farm supporters embrace anti-immigrant politicians while employing undocumented immigrants. The greatest threat to Iowa dairy farmers, of course, is not the press. It’s Donald Trump.But that’s not how the Nunes family apparently saw it. On my third day in Sibley, I became used to the cars tailing me. In the morning, I was followed by the redhead in the muddy white Yukon. In the afternoon, there was a shift change and I was followed by a different, later-model white Yukon. I stuck a GoPro on my dashboard and left it running whenever I parked my car. When I reviewed the videos, one of the two Yukons could always be seen slowly circling as I ate lunch or interviewed someone.
There was no doubt about why I was being followed. According to two sources with firsthand knowledge, NuStar did indeed rely, at least in part, on undocumented labor. One source, who was deeply connected in the local Hispanic community, had personally sent undocumented workers to Anthony Nunes Jr.’s farm for jobs. “I’ve been there and bring illegal people,” the source said, asserting that the farm was aware of their status. “People come here and ask for work, so I send them over there.” When I asked how many people working at dairies in the area are documented citizens, the source laughed. “To be honest? None. One percent, maybe.”
The source added, “Who is going to go work in the dairy? Who? Tell me who? If people have papers, they are going to go to a good company where you can get benefits, you can get Social Security, you can get all the stuff. Who is going to go [work in the dairy] to make fourteen dollars an hour doing that thing without vacation time, without 401(k), without everything?”…
On the way back to Sibley, I stopped at Hawkeye Point, the highest elevation (1,670 feet) in Iowa, and flipped through my GoPro videos and pictures, zooming in on the drivers and cars. I clicked over to Facebook and searched for any Nuneses in Sibley, Iowa. I saw some familiar faces. It all started to click. There was the redheaded woman from the muddy white Yukon; she was Devin’s sister-in-law, Lori Nunes. There was the chubby guy with curly hair from the Lantern who had also waved at me from the same Yukon; he was Devin’s brother and Lori’s husband, Anthony Nunes III. There was the woman from the newer Yukon. I zoomed in on a picture of the car’s license plate: nustar. Not very subtle. The driver was Devin’s mother and campaign treasurer, Toni Dian Nunes. The guy in the pickup truck with California plates was, of course, Devin’s dad, Anthony Jr…
Of course, if this were a foreign-affairs focused story, here it would be stressed that running a very profitable family-corporation farm on the labor of “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS” is the sort of kompromat with which an unscrupulous foreign power could blackmail a rising Republican Congressman on a committee to investigate that foreign power’s interference in U.S. elections. But this is America! I’m no expert, but I doubt anyone had to threaten Devin Nunes to get him scrambling after whatever stratagems might protect his family’s and his party’s dirty little profits.
Major Major Major Major
I’m not trying to belittle the story or anything, but: I just always assumed every politician, like every other American, relies directly on undocumented labor for something or other. Probably knowingly.
Of course, it’s only ever a scandal when it’s a Democrat having a babysitter, not a republican’s family business.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
What disturbs me, besides the potential for foreign blackmail and the hypocrisy, is the fact that the family stalked the reporter, apparently
Mike E
He’s a fcuking plantation owner, oh shock!
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: you should write a scene this week. Any scene.
Peter H Desmond
that’s very interesting, and a delightfully bad twist for Nunes.
i just have a quibble with the news announcers on radio and tv, half of whom pronounce his last name as NOON-yes. they’re thinking of the Spanish last name Nuñez, but that has a different spelling and pronunciation — Nunes is of Portuguese ancestry, and his name is Portuguese and should correctly be pronounced as NOON-es. (in Brazil, where i learned Portuguese, it would even be pronounced NOON-esh.) but never NOON-yes.
to indicate the “ny” sound, Portuguese uses the letter combination “nh.” so if his name was spelled Nunhes, it would be pronounced like the Spanish name Nuñez.
sowwy!
Suzanne
Yanno, if they’re having a hard time hiring Americans and documented immigrants, they could, like, raise the pay. Like free-market Jeebus intended.
You know, as someone who truly does believe in the free market (albeit with a strong welfare state to go with it), I’m beginning to think that these conservatives aren’t really that conservative.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ll try to. I have exam next Monday, however. That takes priority. Do I have to start at the beginning of the plot or can it just be a random scene of anything just to practice?
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: whatever’s clearest in your head.
Pete Downunder
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: A goatherd learns his trade by goat
A writer learns his trade by wrote.
Mnemosyne
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I was thinking, Jesus, these assholes are so cheap they can’t hire a couple of thugs to do their following for them?
Write a scene. It doesn’t matter where it happens in the story. There’s no law that says you have to write a story in order.
Peter H Desmond
i lived for three years in Brazil, the first two months in Rio (for language training) and the rest of the time in São Paulo. since no one’s interested in the correct pronunciation of Nunes’s name, i guess i won’t get into the pronunciation of São Paulo.
khead
@Suzanne:
And you would be correct. It’s about a system totally dependent upon cheap labor. Pretty sure several crab houses are still closed because there’s no amount of money they can pay to get ‘Muricans to take those jobs. Andy Harris fought for 15K more visas to “help” the crab folks and the crab houses only got around 40 of them. Craptacular. The rest probably went to Trump properties.
Peter H Desmond
good night.
Ladyraxterinok
@Mnemosyne: I discovered in school when I had trouble starting a paper (which frequently happened) it worked if I started with the part I found most important or interesting. That got me started, and I was able to complete the paper.
Gvg
I don’t trust this reporting. Nunes was always a conspirousy theorist, from the beginning, Bemghazi etc, and never a realist. It also seems perfectly logical to me for a dairy family to move to Iowa from drought plagued California. I also would expect they and most dairies in both states have employed illegals for decades. So the facts quoted don’t seem to lead where the writer wants to imply.
With ICE threatening I am not surprised they were suspicious about the reporter. And this article might actually lead to ICE raids too. OF course they could try not to break the laws.
A financial investigation might turn something up though.
NotMax
@Peter H Desmond
Most people assume Rio is the most populous city in Brazil. But it’s São Paulo, with approximately double the population of Rio de Janeiro (and more populous than New York City).
NotMax
@Ladyraxterinok
The writer’s conundrum: There is nothing more intimidating than a blank sheet of paper, there is nothing more inviting than a blank sheet of paper.
Bailey
@Suzanne:
They aren’t really all that conservative, but then again, there’s only so much you can do to raise the wages in the current structure since none of us are willing to buy $15 heads of lettuce.
Sister Golden Bear
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: There’s a good exercise where you commit to writing 500 words per day (about one page, single spaced) for a week or two.
Regardless of whether what you write is good, bad, or really sucky, you write 500 words a day. Clean it up later. The point is to get past “blank sheet of paper paralysis” and get something started. So pick something — whether it’s a scene you think is the most interesting, or the easiest to write — and just do it.
dollared
@Bailey: paying well would add about 10%. Been researched and documented. Sometimes its the liberals who believe conservative talking points without fact checking…..https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/03/31/can-we-afford-to-pay-u-s-farmworkers-more/
Tony Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
It’s very good advice. There’s no sight quite as shrivelling to the writer’s urge than looking up from Base Camp ‘Page One’ at the blizzard-whipped heights of Peak Finis and thinking “How the hell am I going to get up that?”
The answer? Cheat. Jump on board a convenient helicopter and get a lift up to the exciting parts you wanted to write about in the first place. Put your characters into those situations, get to know them a little bit better than when they’re just names and a few necessary traits, and see how they react when you pull something out of your arse and wallop them with it. Enjoy yourself, it doesn’t have to be mile after mile of frostbitten slog.
And remember, until someone pays you and prints it none of it is set in stone. Don’t worry about making ‘mistakes’. The delete key is your friend.
PST
@Peter H Desmond: Regarding the name Nunes, I’m a little surprised it isn’t pronounced here in the U.S. in one syllable as Noons. I’ve known people named Lopes and Gomes who pronounced their names in one syllable, and there are some well known people who do (or did) so, like Davy Lopes and Peter Gomes. Maybe it’s a Cape Verdean thing. Anyway, I’ll bet lots of us would like to hear about pronouncing São Paulo.
NotMax
@PST
Pronunciation guide. Pronounced almost as if it is all one word. Brazilian Portuguese has quirks all its own.
(Hm. Just realized it’s fast coming up on 60 years since I was there.)
Balconesfault
I doubt you need Russian involved kompramat here. ICE has been functioning as Trump’s little private army, and I’m sure that the moment Nunes quit doing the Administration’s bidding the financially ruinous raids could begin.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Then make an appointment with yourself to start writing your 500 words/day on a date when your exams are over.
gene108
The dairy farmers rabidly support politicians, whose policies, if fully enforced, would ruin them.
I don’t think there is a way to get through to large sections of the population, with better policy proposals. Therefore, Republicans will always have enough of a dedicated base that they will never feel the need to moderate their ways.
Jack the Second
@dollared: Honestly I thought the quoted $14 didn’t sound terrible, but they’re not paying benefits.
Benefits would add considerably to the labor costs, but the fact they’re paying $14 and not $5 makes it seem like they’re simply refusing to pay into SS, Welfare, Medicare and the ACA.
They’re all goddamn sovereign citizens.
danielx
@Suzanne:
You noticed! Yeah, they’re generally in favor of free markets, the invisible hand, etc etc, for every field of endeavor except their own.
debbie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
How about just writing? Anything at all. It doesn’t need to be related; it just needs to the spark to get you writing. Have you ever done morning pages?
rikyrah
Nunes’ business partners are Russians with ties to PUTIN!
AnonPhenom
So, I did what I frequently do with stories like this, and Google Mapped ‘Sibley IA’. ‘Cause I’m the curious type, you know?
Looking for @ large, white building along 60…Ah, there are a couple of …***ZAP*** my safari browser going haywire, closes and the computer starts rebooting (4 times).
“That’s never done that, before.”
Maybe it just getting old.
Maybe the family of congesscritters get special treatment.
Maybe I should reboot my router again.
AnonPhenom
I’m getting mine now and avoiding the rush….
Berner-Lee’s new Interwebs thingy also.
piratedan
totally surprised that they haven’t designated the Nunes family farm as an ICE holding facility and then they could request the government to pay them for housing their workers…. they seem like those kinds of people….
Scamp Dog
@danielx: You don’t properly understand the concept of free markets: they are the ones with no government interference. And no unions. Tax breaks for the people with the best lobbyists are just money earned in the free market being put to good use, of course.
//
cain
BTW, it’s nice to have just the link and a tl;dr and not copy paste the article. I’m sure the magazine probably needs the clicks. Just sayin.
opiejeanne
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: For God’s sake just write. Anything.
If you want to start at the beginning of your story and you don’t know how, you can start by describing the scene, the scenery, the smells, the sounds, what your character sees and then have something happen, have him do or say something or have someone do or say something to him, and then you might be able to turn him loose.
If you hate what you wrote, after writing several pages, go back and fix what’s wrong. Or put it aside for a day and then figure out what you hate about it.
Whatever else you do, WRITE!
opiejeanne
@Peter H Desmond: Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t realize he was Portuguese.
C Stars
@Peter H Desmond: I was interested! I always wondered how his name was pronounced. I’ve been going with NOON -ezz
TenguPhule
@Bailey:
Grow stuff that tastes better then lettuce. problem solved.
Tehanu
@Suzanne: Oh, they’re conservative, all right. What they want to “conserve” is their right to treat the serfs any way they want.
Dice
Nunes and King are to politics what scours is to cattle.