How factory farming built America

Future Perfect, Vox’s section dedicated to solving the world’s most important yet neglected problems, obsessively covers how the way we eat affects our lives and our planet. For the last year, we’ve been working hard on a special series of ambitious, deeply reported feature stories and investigations on the history of the meat and dairy industries, their political and cultural influence, and their sweeping impacts on American life, particularly in the Midwest, where factory farms are disproportionately concentrated. 

The stories in this series are supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from Builders Initiative. To read more work supported by this grant, check out Vox’s series How Factory Farming Ends.

How beef colonized the Americas

They spoke up about factory farming. Now, they’re being threatened by their neighbors.

Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure

Big Oil and Big Ag are teaming up to turn cow poop into energy — and profits. The math doesn’t add up.

How public universities hooked America on meat

Big Milk has taken over American schools

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Dramatic new polling results have revealed that Americans want Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem fired and a majority oppose ICE's actions, according to CNN's data guru Thursday.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten described the attitude among voters towards ICE's harsh immigration tactics and specifically the high dissatisfaction against the Trump administration, namely Noem, who has led and carried out Trump's harsh immigration policies — and now 58% of Americans want her out of the job.

"The numbers absolutely tell a story," Enten said. "It has been a bad political situation for the president of the United States. And more than that, it is only getting worse. Just take a look at ICE's approval rating. I mean, look at this. And unfortunately immigration. Look, it was already low in early January, right? It was -17 points. But look, after the events of the last month, we are now talking about -29 points, the worst it has ever been. You look among independents, it is even worse than that. We are talking about a negative 40, -40 net approval rating for ICE on enforcing immigration laws. No wonder the president of United States, the president of United States, is changing his tone. And that is because you just look here. You see, the American people aren't just not with him — they are on a totally other planet."

The results have also pointed to a serious problem for President Donald Trump.

"Yeah, there's a reason why John [Berman] stuttered over that and couldn't figure out exactly, because the bottom line is this Kristi Noem has turned into an absolute political albatross," Enten said.

"Look at this. Take a look here. Voters on Noem job performance disapproved in early January 50th 2% and now want her fired. Fired is up to 58%, 58% want her removed," Enten added. "We're not just talking about the fact that her disapproval rating is through the roof. We're now talking about nearly 3 in 5 Americans who believe that Kristi Noem should be removed from her job as DHS secretary. No wonder Tom Homan is in there. And that is because Kristi Noem is a big reason why this has turned into such a deepening political problem for the president."

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