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Donald Trump welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage at a Turning Point Action campaign rally at the Gas South Arena on October 23, 2024, in Duluth, Georgia. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images In several swing states, the 2024 election polls are practically tied. The slightest factor could impact the results either way — including the presence of a third-party candidate on the ballot.  Third-party candidates don’t tend to get much traction: Without a major party behind them, every step of the electoral process is decidedly more difficult, including building name recognition, earning endorsements, getting on the ballot or a debate stage, and fundraising.  But third-party candidates don’t need much support to disrupt a race. In the last two election cycles, the average number of votes that decided the results in the seven swing states was less than 125,000 votes. In Wisconsin, for example, the election went Trump’s way by 22,748 votes in 2016 and Biden’s by 20,682 in 2020 — an average margin of victory of less than 21,715 votes. And while any one third-party candidate is unlikely to crack that threshold alone, votes for all third-party candidates combined have well surpassed that threshold in some states.  Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that this year, the third-party vote share is likely to be closer to what it was in 2020 (about 2 percent) than what it was in 2016 (about 6 percent). That might be in part because 2016 saw an unusually large share of Americans dissatisfied with their options for president, and Harris’s entry into the race to replace President Joe Biden this year appears to have given most Democratic-leaning voters a candidate they can get behind.  Still, Kondik said it’s “possible, if not likely, that the total third-party share will be bigger than the margin between Trump and Harris in one or more states.”  That means that third-party voters, notoriously unpredictable and difficult to persuade, could play a decisive role in a very close election, swinging it in either Trump’s or Harris’s direction.  Who are the third-party candidates on the ballot?  There are a few key third-party candidates to know. None of them is very popular, but together, the top four are polling at about 3 percent nationally. (Notably, most polling averages and models have Harris and Trump within 2 percentage points of each other). Chief among the third-party candidates who made it on swing-state ballots this year is the Green Party’s Jill Stein, a progressive who drew Democratic-leaning voters in her previous two presidential bids. Stein is on the ballot in every swing state except Nevada, and she’s been backed by a Muslim American group called “Abandon Harris” in Michigan. The vice president is struggling among Arab-American voters there who helped power Biden’s 2020 victory in the state and who oppose the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza. Both Stein and the Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver each claim about 1 percent support nationally, according to recent New York Times polling. That’s less than Stein’s vote share in 2016, when she last ran for president.  Still, it could be enough to upset the results in the same states where she’s previously earned significant numbers of voters: In 2016, she earned more votes in the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan and Wisconsin than Trump’s margins of victory in those states. Another potential wild card in those states is independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump in August. Given his embrace of the anti-establishment views held by certain segments of the GOP and his status as a member of the Democratic Kennedy dynasty, he was once seen as a potential spoiler for both Trump and President Joe Biden. Kennedy was polling around 10 percent nationally for the better part of 2024, and even higher in some swing-state polls. But his support cratered to less than 5 percent in August after Harris assumed the Democratic nomination, suggesting that many Democrats saw him as the only alternative to Biden and were not particularly invested in his candidacy. Now, he has more potential to be a spoiler for Trump. He’s recently polled at about half a percentage point, on par with independent Cornel West, according to the New York Times. Though he managed to take himself off the ballot in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, he’s still on the ballot in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled to keep him on the ballot there, but he has appealed that decision. It’s unclear how the court could render a decision in his favor from a practical standpoint; nearly 100,000 people have already received absentee ballots printed with his name. A federal judge also ruled that Kennedy must remain on Michigan’s ballot, where the race has narrowed and Harris now holds less than a 1 percentage point lead in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.  Other third-party candidates include the Socialism and Liberation Party’s Claudia De la Cruz, the Independent American Party’s Joel Skousen, the Constitution Party’s Randall Terry, and the Socialist Equality Party’s Joseph Kishore. None of them have the support the above four have managed to eke out, however. Together, these third-party candidates have some potential to cut into both Harris and Trump’s vote margins in states that they need to win. Still, as much as third-party candidates may often appear to siphon away votes from the two major party candidates, the results of the election might not be any different if they were not on the ballot. “Third-party voters can be quirky and may not be all that gettable by either campaign — perhaps some of them wouldn’t have voted major-party even if those were the only options,” Kondik said. 

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is James Parker, a staff writer who addresses readers’ existential worries in his “Dear James” newsletter. He has also written about why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants, how Game Change foretold the current state of American politics, and whether Theo Von is the next Joe Rogan.James is currently in the mood to rewatch Logan, a superhero movie that he calls “grungy, nasty, expertly done.” He also enjoys attending local pro-wrestling events, reading any of John Sandford’s tense thrillers, and tapping along to Kacey Musgraves’s “Slow Burn.”The Culture Survey: James ParkerThe last thing that made me cry: How many times can I watch Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s 2004 Metallica documentary, the Don’t Look Back of heavy metal? We’ll find out, I suppose. Anyway, I watched it again the other night (always at night, always alone), and James Hetfield’s wobbly speech at San Quentin State Prison, before Metallica plays a set there—and the grateful, encouraging roar he gets from the gathered inmates—made me (as always) cry. “Everyone is born good, everyone’s got the same-size soul, and we’re here to connect with that,” Hetfield tells his wary, hyper-attentive audience. “So we’re very proud to be here in your house and play some music for you.”My favorite blockbuster: Right now I’m in a Logan mood. Does that count as a blockbuster? It’s a superhero movie—an X-Men movie, to be precise, a Wolverine movie, to be even more precise. It’s grungy, nasty, expertly done. Professor Xavier is demented, his telepathy warped, suffering grand mal seizures that frazzle the brain of anybody who happens to be nearby; Wolverine, always fascinating, is an alcoholic limo driver. [Related: Logan is a fitting farewell to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.]My favorite art movie: Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire. Berlin is full of angels, beautiful, ministering angels in long coats who float unseen among the people, loaded with compassion and consolation but made slightly forlorn by their own immateriality. The scene where Peter Falk, sensing the presence of an especially wistful angel, describes for him the pleasures of a hot cup of coffee in cold weather … magic. (Here’s an uneasy thought, though, prompted by my writing this: If I saw Wings of Desire now, for the first time, would I still be open to it? Or am I too old and coarsened and impatient and Netflix’d-out?)The last thing that made me snort with laughter: At a local pro-wrestling event (Chaotic Wrestling: guaranteed entertainment!), I saw the amazing Cody Fluffman—a gorgeous, curvy presence amid all that wrestler’s gristle, as light on his feet as a dancer—do his signature move. It’s called the Steamroller: Having rendered his opponent prone in the ring, Fluffman then lies down and rolls his splendid bulk vertically over their body, from the toes upward, at a stately pace, making chuffing engine noises. [Related: A close encounter with wrestling’s most authentic madman]Best novel I’ve recently read: Anything by John Sandford. I love this guy. King of the airport thrillers, in my opinion; Holy Ghost is the one I’m halfway through right now. His plotting is very rambly and relaxed, but by a strange trick, he keeps the tension twanging, and his descriptions of landscapes, buildings, and weather are extraordinary—lucid and compact to the point of poetry, sometimes.Best work of nonfiction: I’m really enjoying Dream-Child: A Life of Charles Lamb, by Eric G. Wilson. Lamb, a 19th-century London essayist whose BFF was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a wit and a weirdo, and he celebrated—as Wilson writes—“the transience, variety and crowdedness of metropolitan life, thus challenging his friend Wordsworth’s nature worship.” Sold! For 33 years, Lamb held down a day job as a clerk at the East India Company. “I always arrive late at the office,” he wrote. “But I make up for it by leaving early.”A quiet song that I love: “Slow Burn,” by Kacey Musgraves. I play the drums, and tapping along to this one inflates me emotionally in ways I dare not express.A loud song that I love: “Rhino Ket,” by Kneecap: Irish rappers enjoying their ketamine. Which I’ve never taken, but I appreciate a good ravey drug anthem. “I’m k-holed out my head, this shit puts rhinos to bed.” Isn’t that good? Puts rhinos not to sleep, but to bed. Nightlight on, door cracked open, see you in the morning. (And they’re very good live, this lot.)A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “Have a Nice Day,” by Spike Milligan: So the man who was drowning, drowndedAnd the man with the disease passed away.But apart from that,And a fire in my flat,It’s been a very nice day. Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The most opinionated man in America This influencer says you can’t parent too gently. Trump: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The Week Ahead Here, a drama film starring Tom Hanks about the families and couples who inhabit the same house over generations (in theaters Friday) Season 2 of The Diplomat, a thriller series about a U.S. diplomat handling international crises and her marriage to a high-profile politician (streaming Thursday on Netflix) Dangerous Fictions, a book by Lyta Gold about the influence of fictional stories and the moral panic they can induce (out Tuesday) Essay Illustration by Ben Hickey Americans Are Hoarding Their FriendsBy Faith Hill Hypothetically, introducing friends from different social circles shouldn’t be that hard. Two people you like—and who like you—probably have some things in common. If they like each other, you’ll have done them a service by connecting them. And then you can all hang out together. Fun! Or, if you’re like me, you’ve heard a little voice in your head whispering: not fun. What if you’re sweet with one friend and sardonic with another, and you don’t know who to be when you’re all in the same room? Or what if they don’t get along? Worst of all: What if they do—but better than they do with you? Read the full article.More in Culture Six political memoirs worth reading The chronically online have stolen Halloween. Welcome to the trolligarchy. Why Randy Newman is least loved for his best work “Dear James”: The worst insult I ever heard as an opera singer Michael Keaton’s simple trick on SNL Catch Up on The Atlantic “There’s people that are absolutely ready to take on a civil war.” The Democrats’ Hail Mary Election officials are under siege. Photo Album Replicas of a woolly mammoth and a giant octopus are displayed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. (The Field Museum Library) Check out these photos of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where visitors were introduced to new (and relatively new) products, including Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit gum, and the Ferris wheel.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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If lawmakers are serious about lifting people out of poverty, clearing unnecessary obstacles out of the way of existing welfare programs would be a good start. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images When I began planning this newsletter, I thought through what kind of antipoverty solutions I’d want to dig into, from expanding programs like the child tax credit to proposing new, ambitious policies like baby bonds. But then I thought about how the United States already has a lot of antipoverty programs in place. So before focusing on what more the country ought to try, I wanted to ask a simple question: Could the US significantly reduce poverty even if lawmakers don’t create a single new program?  The answer, it turns out, is yes — and by a lot.  One of the biggest problems with many of America’s antipoverty programs — like Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and housing vouchers — has nothing to do with the programs themselves but with how state and federal governments choose to administer them.  Put another way, there are millions of Americans who are eligible for existing welfare programs but still don’t receive all the benefits they are entitled to. “We have a huge array of different programs with the primary goal of reducing poverty and increasing income and economic security among [people], especially among families with children,” said Pamela Herd, a social policy professor at the University of Michigan. “But the way we’ve implemented those programs is fundamentally undermining that goal.” Herd is alluding to the administrative burden that’s attached to many welfare programs — obstacles that make it hard to receive benefits. (She’s written a book about this.) These barriers often look like lengthy and confusing applications that require troves of documents to prove that an applicant is indeed eligible, seemingly never-ending waitlists, work requirements, interviews, and a whole learning process to figure out which programs you ought to apply for and how. There are some programs that many would-be recipients don’t even know exist.  “Are you even aware that there’s a program out there, for example, to help you pay for your heating in the winter and your cooling in the summer so that your electricity isn’t shut off or your heating and cooling isn’t shut off?” Herd said. Politicians often justify these administrative burdens by saying they root out fraud, although sometimes they’re designed with the explicit purpose of reducing the number of people who receive benefits. But if lawmakers are serious about lifting people out of poverty, clearing unnecessary obstacles out of the way of existing welfare programs would be a good start. How removing administrative burdens would reduce poverty As the journalist Annie Lowrey put it in 2021, administrative burdens are a “time tax … a public-policy cancer, mediating every American’s relationship with the government and wasting countless precious hours of people’s time.” And the poorer and more marginalized you are, the more likely you are to spend many days, weeks, and months jumping through hoops to get the federal assistance you’re already entitled to. For instance, “Most people with employer-based [health] coverage don’t actually even realize that their coverage is subsidized by the government because we don’t have to do anything to access that subsidy,” Herd said. By contrast, people eligible for Medicaid — the primary means through which the federal government gives health coverage to low-income populations — have to face many hurdles before they get insured.  “Look at how difficult it is to access the Medicaid program … tons of documentation, enrollment processes — people get kicked off all the time because they don’t do one of those 100 steps they’re supposed to do,” Herd said. “And then you have to do it pretty much every year.” (For reference, 21 percent of federal health insurance subsidies go to employer-based coverage, and Medicaid gets about 25 percent.) Fixing administrative burdens and streamlining the process of distributing subsidies would significantly reduce poverty. A report by the Urban Institute, which looked at a hypothetical situation in which everyone eligible for certain assistance programs actually received benefits, found that overall poverty would fall by 31 percent and child poverty would drop by 44 percent. Of course, if the federal government figures out a way to make its social programs perfectly efficient, it will have to address another problem: Many programs that already exist aren’t properly funded. Housing vouchers, for example, are severely underfunded, serving fewer households than they did two decades ago despite the fact that the number of eligible households has grown. (Funding is a problem we’ll address in a future issue.) How lawmakers could remove administrative burdens It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to picture a world in which Americans can receive the benefits they’re eligible for without much of a hassle. For starters, a model already exists: Social Security, the country’s most successful antipoverty program, is extremely efficient in delivering benefits to retirees, in part because it’s much easier to apply for those benefits than for other programs. “The really interesting thing about that [retirement] program is that basically everyone who’s eligible receives those benefits, and there’s almost no fraud in the program,” Herd said. “We’ve designed that program in such a way so that it is not burdensome for participants.” Just a few years ago, during the Covid-19 public health emergency, the federal government made it easier to enroll in Medicaid mostly by keeping people in the program instead of requiring them to apply every year. Part of the reason many people lose Medicaid insurance is not because they’re no longer eligible, but because they may have gotten something wrong or incomplete on the forms. “Seventy percent of people losing coverage are losing coverage for what they deem procedural reasons, which are like paperwork problems, basically,” Herd said. But since the public emergency ended and states started requiring recipients to recertify each year, millions of people have lost their insurance. It might not seem like fixing this is politically feasible, even though the majority of Americans support easing administrative burdens. That’s because Republicans often deride public programs, intentionally make it harder to receive benefits, and put rules in place that are proven to fail, like work requirements. Still, some Democrat-controlled states have just as, if not more, difficult application processes for welfare recipients. California’s food stamp program, for example, has one of the lowest participation rates in the country. What’s their excuse?  This story was featured in the Within Our Means newsletter. Sign up here.

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Livestock auctions, a way station between the farm and the meat factory, are the scenes of horrific abuses in US agriculture. | Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals In large barns across the US, packed with gates, crates, and hollering farmhands, animals are unloaded, pushed around, reloaded, and hauled away. Those who survive the chaos are sold to the highest bidder, to be killed for their meat. Those unable to cope with the hectic pace, intense heat, and harsh treatment are injured and sometimes die before they ever leave the grounds. Livestock auctions — the stop between the farm and slaughterhouse — are a key cog in the machinery of animal agriculture. Formal livestock auctions date back to the 19th century, when they became not only a way station for animals but also an important meeting place for farmers and others in the farm business. Today, there are approximately 1,000 livestock auction markets across the US, mostly located in the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Southeast. Many small farms depend on auctions to acquire animals, which they raise before either selling them off to other farms or to sending them to slaughter. Factory farms buy young animals at auctions to mature in overcrowded mazes of outdoor pens before they are eventually killed, while corporate slaughterhouses purchase animals to be killed immediately. A 2017 market analysis estimates that “cattle sold in conventional auction markets account for 69 percent of the receipts.” The USDA told Vox that “it’s not uncommon for the same feeder calf to go through two or three auction markets in the same week.” The auctions employ locals, support local businesses, and provide opportunities for youth through programs like 4-H. In these spaces, a lifestyle that was forged during America’s westward expansion endures: “Get ‘em in, get ‘em out,” says Renee King-Sonnen, a former cattle rancher turned animal sanctuary operator. “It’s cowboy culture.” But behind the scenes, beyond the ramblings of the auctioneer and the bustle of the buyers, exists a “wild west,” says Pete Paxton, an undercover investigator with the group Strategies for Ethical and Environmental Development, or SEED, who shared his findings from a sprawling, multistate investigation into the auction system (Vox has agreed to use an pseudonym due to the undercover nature of Paxton’s work).  Between late 2022 and early 2024, Paxton said he investigated 17 auctions and markets, working undercover as an employee at 15, and attending two others as a member of the public. The auctions took place in 10 states: California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. He found he could get hired by auctions with minimal effort. He would work for a day — during which he said he would witness multiple instances of abuse — before moving on to the next market. According to Paxton, these markets are dark places where confused animals are kicked, shocked, and thrown. His findings also expose a stark lack of legal protections for animals at auctions, which are dominated by an industry culture that ignores animal suffering. Paxton, who for decades has investigated animal cruelty at factory farms and puppy mills, says he wanted to expose these hidden venues where corporate slaughterhouses and family farms meet — and where rampant abuses are usually shielded from public view.  Paxton reports witnessing “sadistic abuse” and other disturbing but common practices, documenting his experiences in undercover video footage, photos, and thoroughly written firsthand accounts. Experts say the materials highlight a hole in US animal welfare law. “The US has no federal laws or regulations protecting farm animals from physical abuse,” Dr. James Reynolds, a veterinarian and professor of large animal medicine at Western University of Health Sciences, said. The treatment of animals at auctions revealed by Paxton’s investigations “speak loudly for [the need for] federal regulations to protect these animals.” Horrific abuses documented at livestock auctions across the country Auctions typically walk animals — including cows, sheep, goats, and donkeys — through to be sold, Paxton said. (Smaller animals, such as birds or rabbits, are sold in cages.) Auction workers have to keep the animals moving, but many animals resist, or are too injured or ill to move. That often leads to violence.   In Paxton’s videos and photos, cows at various auctions who are unable to stand (also known as downed cows) are shocked with electric prods in efforts to make them move. Older animals like cull cows — cows who no longer produce enough milk for the dairy industry — are often brought to auction injured, sick, or otherwise immobile. Animals young and old alike can endure great stress while being transported, inside cramped trailers, enduring extreme weather, transport times up to 28 hours (or more), where some fall and get injured.  At Buffalo Livestock Market in Texas, Paxton witnessed a downed cow being dragged by a forklift with a chain around her neck. The forklift operator can be seen in the video and heard laughing. Reynolds, after reviewing the footage, called the treatment “definite animal cruelty.”  At the same auction, footage shows a worker throwing a calf with a broken leg into a transport truck for a buyer, who remarks, with a laugh, “He can’t get no more fucked up than he is.” Reynolds told Vox he believed the auction employee handled the calf “without regard for the pain being inflicted on the animal,” adding that he thought the animal “needed to receive either medical care or to be euthanized.”  At Athens Commission Company, another auction in Texas, Paxton documented a goat being dragged by the horns and thrown to the ground before being chased. He recorded similar abuse of goats at Central Livestock in Kansas, and of sheep at Pawnee Sale Barn in Oklahoma.   At Emory Livestock in Texas (owned by the same family as Athens Commission Company), a donkey from whom a worker is attempting to draw blood is intentionally squeezed between two gates to hold the animal still. The worker repeatedly kicks the animal while screaming at it “for no clear reason,” Paxton said. Workers also violently push goats from transport trucks, and force collapsing cows to keep moving.  Dogs attack a sheep in another video from Colby Livestock Auction Company in Kansas. And a calf is shocked with an electric prod to the face at Empire Livestock Auction in New York to keep the animal moving.  Reynolds told Vox he was particularly “appalled” by footage from Waverly Sales Company in Iowa, in which a worker squeezes a goat’s head between a wall and a gate while “the poor animal scream[s] in pain,” he said. One worker then grabbed the goat by the scrotum and threw the animal several feet. The abuse was severe enough that Paxton sent photos and video to local law enforcement; the individual was charged with a misdemeanor. These acts of violence may seem extreme to outsiders, but Paxton says they are the norm at auctions in order to keep the animals moving and maximize sales. “Workers are often ordered by management to move downed or slow animals by any means necessary,” Paxton said.   The compiled footage shows people acting with “appalling cruelty and lack of care about animals,” Reynolds says.  Vox reached out to each auction company mentioned for comment, but did not receive any replies.  State and federal laws don’t protect animals at auctions Animal agriculture generally operates under regulatory exemptions or relatively lax rules — a doctrine known as agricultural exceptionalism. As a result, livestock auctions are governed by norms often set by the industry rather than animal welfare laws. There are no federal laws in the US that protect farm animals at auctions from mistreatment, says Delcianna Winders, associate professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. (Disclosure: I attended a media fellowship at VLGS in 2021.) While most states do require licensing for livestock auctions, this is generally regulated by state agriculture departments, Winders says, “and their priorities are not animal welfare.”  Rather, Winders continues, the objective for state agencies is to support the agriculture industry. She points to Nebraska, where the stated purpose of the state’s Livestock Auction Market Act is “to encourage, stimulate, and stabilize the agricultural economy of the state in general, and the livestock economy in particular” — not to regulate animal welfare. Some states, including California, Maryland, Michigan, and Oregon do have limited welfare requirements for animals at auctions. They may require that downed animals be humanely euthanized or that the sale of animals unable to move on their own is prohibited. But Winders describes such laws as “not robust,” and she doubts whether they are enforced. California law, for example, requires that “no slaughterhouse, stockyard, auction, market agency, or dealer shall buy, sell, or receive a nonambulatory animal.” Yet the evidence Paxton gathered at a California auction shows a downed Holstein cow being shocked with an electric prod and then dragged by machinery when unable to move. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) said in a statement to Vox it “does not condone inhumane treatment of livestock but does not have authority for enforcement” and added that “suspected abuse should be referred to local agencies as soon as possible for investigation.” Auctions are part of a distinctly American way of life Livestock auctions, insider accounts suggest, are insular, male-dominated spaces that, while technically open to the public, remain removed from the mainstream gaze. They are a world where animals are moved with ruthless efficiency, and their commodification is handed down over generations as a way of life. The auction environment is a “frenzy of consumption,” said Kathryn Gillespie, the author of The Cow With Ear Tag #1389, who has visited dozens of auctions while researching that book and a forthcoming book focused on auctions. Sales happen in “under a minute,” she says; calves with umbilical cords still attached can sell for around $15. She said some of those calves die. Some of the auctions Gillespie visited were populated “almost entirely [by] men,” she says. She often felt uncomfortable as a woman who was not native to the culture. “I didn’t always feel safe,” she recounts. One time, she was asked to leave.  Other auctions were more fun and family-friendly, even entertaining. “It’s very engaging to watch an auction. The auctioneer is very dynamic,” she says. “It’s a sort of performance.” These auctions function as a gathering space for the community. “It’s a very communal, social space.”  Tommy Sonnen, a former cattle rancher, agrees. “It’s a place that the locals go; they spend a lot of time there. … They have their lunch there.” Sonnen comes from a long line of ranchers, but says he “always felt uncomfortable” when he saw injured animals at auctions. About a decade ago, he became a vegan and an animal rights activist. He has since co-founded, with his wife Renee King-Sonnen, Rowdy Girl Sanctuary in Texas, which cares for animals rescued from the meat industry.  Treating animals inhumanely has always been normalized at auctions, King-Sonnen says, as a necessary means to get the job done.  It’s also a culture that protects its own. Paxton recalls witnessing auction workers beating animals in the open, while people attending with their kids watched.   Animals need legal protections at auctions The broader fight to protect animals farmed for food in the US faces many obstacles: powerful agricultural lobbies, economic concerns about the impact of raising animal welfare standards, and a lack of widespread public awareness of the industry’s cruelty that might create empathy for these animals. Auctions, which are usually only a brief stop on the way to the farms and slaughterhouses where other well-documented abuses are systematized, have not been a priority for reform given the larger struggle to get the government to do anything to stop the abuses of factory farming.  Nonetheless, Reynolds said,“it is apparent that livestock auctions in the US need regulations that protect animals from abuse.”  For Winders, the first step would be to take the responsibility of animal welfare away from state agriculture departments “whose focus is on promoting agriculture and trying to protect industry.” She points to Vermont, which recently created an animal welfare division within the Department of Public Safety tasked with enforcing animal welfare laws. Humane handling requirements, inspections, and meaningful enforcement including the loss of auction licenses could all have an impact, Winders said. She is not aware of any such efforts, however, by state lawmakers or regulators. Some animal advocacy groups are working to create better federal regulations for the transportation of livestock, which could help improve the condition in which animals arrive at the auctions.  The Animal Welfare Institute has petitioned the federal government to create new protections for livestock in transport. They are lobbying for mandatory fitness checks and veterinary inspections for any vulnerable animals sent across state lines directly to slaughter. “Our petition would tangentially help the most vulnerable animals that go through auctions,” said Adrienne Craig, policy associate and staff attorney for the AWI’s Farmed Animal Program.  But merely creating these new rules would not mean they’re followed.  “The problem with focusing on transportation regulation is always enforcement,” says Chris Green, executive director of Animal Legal Defense Fund. The USDA, which is in charge of regulating and overseeing the transport of farm animals, does not have a record of “much, if any, meaningful enforcement,” he says. Paxton says that while he supports efforts to improve regulations for transport, including decreasing travel time, “that won’t do anything for 99 percent of animals that go to an auction” because most come relatively short distances from local farms.  It also wouldn’t stop the abuses at the auctions themselves. It’s there, Paxton says, where change will have to happen.

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