Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

President Donald Trump and DOGE top gun Elon Musk have been in power for a month. How have they changed life in Greene County?

Probably not much—yet.

Musk has ordered the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees, particularly those on “probationary” status who were hired in recent months. Greene County has precious few federal workers. Probably most of them here are concentrated in the USDA and related agencies. I’m not aware that anyone here in that category has been let go, but I may be wrong.

Trump ordered a halt to federal grants immediately upon taking office. That order was rescinded shortly thereafter, pending a review. But even without the rescission, the order would apparently have had little immediate effect on Greene County.

A check with Region XII Council of Governments, which handles many grants to area local governments here, turned up none in jeopardy in Greene County.

Nor are there any pending for the city of Jefferson. The 90 percent federal share of the Jefferson airport improvement project comes from the city’s regular Federal Aviation Administration allocation, not from a special grant.

The local Head Start education program, funded with federal money, is not affected by the recent federal granting changes.

And the $97,000 one-year federal grant to Greene County Development Corporation for the Multicultural Family Resource Center is already in the bank here and is being used to operate the effort. After this first year, local contributions already pledged will fund the resource center for the subsequent several years.

Tariffs are close to Trump’s heart, and they could raise consumer prices, the cost of metals and other materials for the county’s manufacturers, and the cost of farm inputs for the county’s corn and soybean producers. And particularly in the case of soybeans, they could induce retaliatory tariffs against Greene County soybean exports to China and result in a continued shift of Chinese soybean purchases from South American sources.

But it takes a little while for tariffs to affect the economy directly, as suppliers and wholesalers work through their current stocks. In addition, although most potash applied by Greene County farmers comes from Canada, the application takes place in the fall, so any effect of Trump’s 25 percent tariff increase on imports from Canada is months away when it comes to imported potash.

The $11.3 million new county jail will of course require steel, and Canada supplies a large share of the steel used in United States construction and manufacturing. Bids for the new jail were awarded a few weeks ago, before the Canadian steel and aluminum tariff increase was announced. But a representative for DCI Group of Des Moines, the construction management company that handled the bid process for the county board of supervisors, said he didn’t know at this time if the successful bidders for the jail project would plan to use Canadian steel.

“Check back with me in 60 or 90 days,” the DCI Group representative said.

The Trump administration has been skittish about the soybean tariff and export situation generally, and it may carve out an exception for that product that is so important to the Greene County economy.

In another area, the administration has issued new guidelines for the Transportation Department, prioritizing spending and infrastructure projects for “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

I don’t know Greene County’s ranking in those categories compared to national figures, but I suspect we don’t rank as high as we would have 25 years ago. National statistics show that marriage rates in that period have fallen much faster for rural females than for urban women and girls. And a higher share of rural children (54 percent) than urban children (45 percent) are now born outside marriage. Those facts may threaten Greene County’s share of federal transportation moneys in time to come.

Trump and Musk’s deep cuts to foreign aid administered through USAID have been much in the news this month. The initial termination of all such aid grants was rescinded a few days later, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio now says the cuts will be selective. But even though the official position is that much of the aid pipeline is now officially open again, many foreign recipient agencies and governments claim they are still not receiving shipments.

Soybeans and soybean oil compose an important share of USAID shipments, and are supposedly not to be included in the aid termination. But the whole aid situation is on shaky ground, and the question remains of whether the aid cuts will eventually include foodstuffs like soybeans. Termination or reduction of USAID soybean aid would affect Greene County farmers whose incomes have already suffered over the past year.

Then there’s the potential trickle-down damage to Greene County’s economy and quality of life, and family members elsewhere, from federal reductions of many kinds:

• Relatives elsewhere who have lost their federal jobs in the terminations.
• Thousands of IRS tax collection employees who were auditing tax returns of wealthy individuals. Their absence will increase the tax-paying unfairness between the nation’s well-to-do and the overwhelming share of Greene County residents.
• An 80 percent reduction in the number of federal fair housing employees who were working against discrimination in housing.
• Thousands of terminations at the National Institutes of Health, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists.
• Plan to visit a national park this summer? Thousands of park employees are on their way out.
• Think student aid was already in trouble, and your son or daughter has trouble navigating the application? Dozens of workers in that office have received termination letters.

None of the above touches on the issues of morality, and legality, that the new dispensation brings. The callousness of the entire enterprise is frankly appalling.

Next year at this time, how will Greene County residents answer the question: “Are you better off now than you were a year ago?”

Trump appointed Musk to head a new congressionally-unauthorized cohort: the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. The title is unwittingly appropriate.

For 1,000 years, from about 700 to 1700, the Republic of Venice was governed by the Doge, the republic’s highest authority. The title derives from the same Latin word as does “duke.” As a noted historian says it, “The Doge of Venice acted as both the head of state and the head of the Venetian oligarchy.”

Doge is the appropriate title for Elon Musk.

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Top image is a screenshot from C-SPAN’s video of the joint press conference President Donald Trump and Elon Musk gave in the Oval Office on February 11, 2025.