Back last September, before All This Happened, the administration*’s deregulation eye fell with its usual heedless abandon on the pork-producing industry. The customary recklessness ensued. From NBC News:

The new rule will let factory workers, rather than USDA inspectors, remove unsuitable carcasses and trim defects in plants that opt into the new inspection system. USDA inspectors will still examine the carcasses, but they will be stationed farther down the line, and off-line inspectors will be roaming the factory to conduct other kinds of safety checks...Debbie Berkowitz, a former Labor Department official under the Obama administration, says the change will harm workers who are already laboring under dangerous conditions in traditional plants, which are currently allowed to process up to 1,106 hogs per hour.

The rule “will lead to an increase in serious and often crippling injuries to tens of thousands of slaughterhouse workers, who already endure exceedingly harsh conditions to provide cheap pork to American consumers,” said Berkowitz, a program director at the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group...Advocates also criticized the USDA for moving forward with the rule amid a probe by the agency’s inspector general, who is examining whether the USDA used faulty data and hid information about the new rule’s impact on worker safety.

Working in the meat-processing industry always has been perilous; hell, that’s how Upton Sinclair got famous in 1906, when he published The Jungle. Now, though, meat plants have become serious vectors for the pandemic. Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls was the center of South Dakota’s principal outbreak. Slaughterhouses, large and small, all across the country have been closing down. Animals are being euthanized en masse and turned to compost, or buried in the fields, for all that implies eventually for the groundwater.

If ever there was a project for Mitch McConnell. SAUL LOEB Getty Images

And, on Monday, Tyson Foods took out full-page ads in a number of newspapers warning the country that its food chain was breaking. Apparently, this was enough to scare the president* into the kind of calm, reasoned response to which the country has become accustomed. From Bloomberg:

Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open as critical infrastructure, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.

The order sets the stage for a showdown between America’s meat giants, which have been pressing to reopen plants, and some local officials and labor unions who’ve called for closures in a bid to prevent the virus from spreading. The president himself has long agitated for Americans to return to work and restore an economy crippled by social distancing measures. Trump signaled the executive action at the White House on Tuesday, saying he planned to sign an order aimed at Tyson Foods Inc.’s liability, which had become “a road block” for the company. He didn’t elaborate.

Ah, and there we have the joker in the deck. Indemnifying corporations in advance for what might happen to their employees if the country is opened up prematurely, and the corporations force their employees to choose between work and epidemic disease. It’s now an obviously concerted project for the entire Republican Party. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell is using corporate immunization to hold the next stimulus bill hostage. From Bloomberg:

As some states begin gradually lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, McConnell said that without protection from lawsuits, business owners could end up with years of legal claims over their efforts to restart the economy. “Our response must not be slowed, weakened or exploited to set up the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in history,” he said in a statement.

Is this reckless? Absolutely. Cynical? Vastly. Many of the employees that the president* seeks to put back to work, pandemic be damned, are undocumented workers who he otherwise would be hustling back to their countries of origin. And anyone who relies on the fanciful notion that the industry is going to abide by the regulations in that executive order is...well, dead meat. Social distancing on a speeded-up chicken dismemberment line? How does that work exactly?

A break in the food chain is serious business. It requires something more substantial than a knee-jerk executive order. (It took weeks for the president* to invoke the DPA at all, and longer than that to employ it to produce vital medical supplies. It took less than a day for him to use it to reopen the meat plants.) It also requires more reflection than an attempt in Congress to protect the donor class from the families of employees who sicken and die for pork chops.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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