Edward Lotterman

The Trump administration seems to be preparing large payments to farmers, particularly those growing soybeans, similar to the ones offered in 2018-2020 during his first administration.

That such payments could come from the money collected from President Donald Trump’s tariff seems ironic at best, considering that the tariffs are the reason the payments are needed in the first place.

But looking deeper, that such payments are seen as an entitlement by many farmers, impatient because the cash has not yet flowed, shows how moribund sound policymaking has become in our nation. That most of the general population will raise no objections further ratifies that dismal conclusion.

Consider several problems with such bailouts.

One is that payments to a narrow group of those affected by unwise trade policies are economically inefficient. In other words, the human and natural resources our society has will meet fewer needs and wants of Americans than if we were more sensible.

A second is that such payments are unjust. As noted, they benefit a small fraction of 1% of the households in our nation. This disregards their income or net worth. On balance, they will transfer money from poorer households to wealthier ones. The “opportunity cost” of these outlays again means more pressing needs of more people will be ignored.

Third, notwithstanding the above, it is inevitable that such payments will be made. There is not a chance in Hades that Trump will renege on often-implied promises to a set of people who always have voted for him by overwhelming majorities. These enjoy special status in our cultural mythologies. Few citizens will raise objections.

Finally, regardless of the scope of payments made, U.S. agriculture is on the road to the most wrenching financial shakeout in over 40 years. The dynamics of the farm economy over the past 20 years are such that we soon will see the highest rates of farm bankruptcy filings in this century. This has to do with land values, as explained below, and Trump’s payments will have little effect on this.

To understand all this, one must understand a few economic principles:

First, farmers want government cash because the current and prospective prices for soybeans and corn “do not cover the cost of production.” However, a month into intro university microeconomics courses, 19-year-old students learn that it is meaningless to talk about “production costs” if you do not distinguish between variable and fixed costs.

For farmers, variable costs include things like seeds, fertilizer, diesel fuel, herbicides and hired labor. Such costs change with the level of output. When output is zero, they are zero.

Fixed costs are ones like mortgage interest, interest and principal on machinery and facilities, general business insurance and other “overhead.” They have to be paid unless you restructure or liquidate the business. Right now commodity prices more than cover variable production costs. The problem is they won’t pay all mortgages.

Second, micro students later learn that imposing a tax on a product, whether collected from producer or consumer, affects not only both, but also employees and suppliers of inputs. The same is true for subsidies like the one Trump is proposing. Make payments to producers to bail them out of a bad situation and some of the benefits will end up benefiting product buyers and suppliers of inputs such as fertilizer.

If the product in question is exported, a substantial part of payments may be diffused into the global economy. At the margin, some fraction of the new tranche of “Trump payments” will flow to tofu eaters in Japan, chicken farmers in Belgium, John Deere factory workers in Mexico, shipowners like Maersk and herbicide manufacturers like Monsanto. These fractions may be small, but they are real. And yes, some will show up as lower meat and egg prices here.

Third, as British economist David Ricardo noted 204 years ago, when an activity becomes more profitable, producers bid up the price of the most fixed resource. Tariffs on imported wheat didn’t necessarily raise disposable incomes of English farmers in Ricardo’s day, but it did raise rents that tenants had to pay and the market price of land itself.

U.S. farmland prices substantiate Ricardo’s insights with a vengeance. Following President Richard Nixon’s devaluation of the dollar in 1972, Iowa land prices rose from $480 an acre to $2,066 an acre by 1980. They then fell by 60% in the first five years of the 1980s farm crisis.

Soybeans had averaged $5.73 a bushel with little variation in the decade ending in 2007. But then a “global commodity supercycle,” driven by demand from China, lifted them to $14.40 a bushel six years later. In response, Iowa land prices more than doubled, from $3,908 an acre to $8,716. They then sagged a bit and were essentially flat through 2020, not falling at all with Trump’s first trade war with China. Then, a record $50 billion in ag subsidies in fiscal year 2021 propelled land prices higher. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 lit the fuse on a rocket. Combining the two factors, land prices increased another 57% in three years.

A fourth consideration is that farmers are victims of a “prisoner’s dilemma” in land markets. Because of advances in technology, especially in machinery, weed control, and “precision farming” technology, optimal farm sizes have crept upwards. To stay in business and remain competitive in variable production costs, farmers have had to acquire more land as the number of farms has shrunk. Proximity to a central farmstead and contiguity with existing fields is important. Yet desirable tracts may only come up for sale once in 30 or 40 years.

Just as one arrested bank robber feels pressure to sing in return for a light sentence if they fear accomplices might do so first, a land-short farmer faces similar pressure. If favorable land comes up for sale just as an episodic feeding frenzy prevails, the land-short farmer feels they must plunge in themselves regardless. If they have substantial acreages already paid for or with low mortgage service costs, they may weather any eventual shake out. If they are less well-established, they are at risk of bankruptcy for years if not decades.

Fifth, field crops like corn, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, barley and, to a slightly lesser extent, cotton, are “fungible commodities,” very closely alike. Minor differences like protein content of wheat cause minor differences in price. They are so nearly identical that a soybean processing plant producing soy oil and meal does not care if a particular load came from the U.S., Brazil or Argentina. The upshot is that how many U.S. soybeans get sold to China is of little importance. What matters is how many get sold to the world as a whole. The same is true for wheat, corn or other U.S. exports.

Prices and exports of soybeans in the first Trump war with China fell from three prior years but not below levels in the decade before that. U.S. prices fell slightly compared with Brazil’s but in general, smaller exports to China were mostly offset by sales to countries displaced from Brazil by Chinese buying.

The situation today is more complex because Trump is battling with every important country in the world. Yet there still are markets for U.S. beans.

Our situation is similar to Russia’s oil sector. Russian oil exports are not insignificant in world oil markets. Eliminate them entirely and prices will rise everywhere. The U.S. and Europe are pressuring all other countries to observe an embargo over the war in Ukraine. Yet countries with no dog in that fight are loath to make their industries and households pay more for fuel when it is available cheaply from Russia.

Similarly, myriad countries may vow they will boycott U.S. exports, but as China buys soy from Brazil and world prices rise, other nations less conflicted with us see cheaper beans from the U.S. Most will get sold. There is a kicker in that grains and oilseeds are perishable and storage is short. We don’t have space to store the entire soy crop while waiting for third-party nations to recognize we are a bargain outlet. This is especially acute in North Dakota and soybeans are less suitable for temporary storage on the ground than corn. But most of the U.S. crop will move eventually at some price.

The old but true adage that “farmers live poor but die rich,” raises questions of justice. Because of stepwise increases in land prices, many established farmers have enormous equity in land. An all-tillable square mile of land in southern Minnesota counties can easily be worth $10 million. Moreover, the amount of that held free or debt would surprise many urbanites.

The per-acre payouts in the peak year of the first Trump payments averaged $165 an acre summing to $105,000 a square mile. Thus a family, however hard working and modest in lifestyle, that falls in the richest one half of one percent of U.S. households, could get a large payment as we cut medical coverage for equally hard-working people in the poorest 30% and as we continue to cut taxes on the super rich. This is not right.

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St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

By KELVIN CHAN, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — iPhone users have a new tool to combat the scourge of nuisance phone calls: a virtual gatekeeper that can screen incoming calls from unknown numbers.

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It’s among the bevy of new features that Apple rolled out with last month’s release of iOS 26. The screening feature has been getting attention because of the ever-increasing amount of robocalls and spam calls that leave many phone users feeling harassed.

Here’s a run-through of the new function:

How to activate call screening

First, you’ll need to update your iPhone’s operating system to iOS 26, which is available to the iPhone 11 and newer models.

To switch call screening on, go into Settings–Apps—Phone. Scroll down and you’ll find a new option: Screen Unknown Callers.

You’ll be presented with three choices. The Never option lets any unknown call ring through, while Silence sends all unidentified numbers directly to voicemail. What you want to tap is the middle option: Ask Reason for Calling.

If the option isn’t there, try restarting your phone.

I still couldn’t find it after updating to iOS 26, but, after some online sleuthing, I checked my region and language settings because I saw some online commenters reporting they had to match. It turns out my region was still set to Hong Kong, where I lived years ago. I switched it to the United Kingdom, which seemed to do the trick and gave me the updated menu.

How it works

Call screening introduces a layer between you and new callers.

When someone who’s not in your contacts list dials your number, a Siri-style voice will ask them to give their name and the purpose of their call.

At the same time, you’ll get a notification that the call is being screened. When the caller responds, the answers will be transcribed and the conversation will pop up in speech bubbles.

You can then answer the call.

Don’t want to answer? Send a reply by tapping one of the pre-written messages, such as “I’ll call you later” or “Send more information,” which the AI voice will read out to the caller.

Or you can type out your own message for the computer-generated voice to read out.

If you don’t respond right away, the phone will continue to ring while you decide what to do.

Teething troubles

In theory, call screening is a handy third way between the nuclear option of silencing all unknown callers — including legitimate ones — or letting them all through.

But it doesn’t always work perfectly, according to Associated Press colleagues and anecdotal reports from social media users.

One AP colleague said she was impressed with how seamlessly it worked. Another said it’s handy for screening out cold callers who found his number from marketing databases.

“However, it’s not great when delivery drivers try to call me and then just hang up,” he added.

Some internet users have similar complaints, complaining that important calls that they were expecting from their auto mechanic or plumber didn’t make it through. Perhaps the callers assumed it was an answering machine and didn’t seem to realize they had to stay on the line and interact with it.

I encountered a different issue the first time it kicked in for me, when an unknown caller — whether mistakenly or not — threw me off by giving my name instead of theirs. So I answered because I assumed it was someone I knew, forgetting that I could tap out a reply asking them again for their name.

The caller turned out to be someone who had obtained my name and number and was trying to get me to do a survey. I had to make my excuses and hang up.

If you don’t like call screening, you can turn it off at any time.

As for Android

Apple is catching up with Google, which introduced a similar automatic call screening feature years ago for Pixel users in the United States.

Last month, the company announced the feature is rolling out to users in three more countries: Australia, Canada and Ireland.

If it’s not already on, go to your Phone app’s Settings and look for Call Screen.

Google’s version is even more automated. When someone you don’t know calls, the phone will ask who it is and why they’re calling. It will hang up if it determines that it’s a junk call, but let calls it deems to be legit ring through.

Google warns that not all spam calls and robocalls can be detected, nor will it always fully understand and transcribe what a caller says.

Samsung, too, lets users of its Galaxy Android phones screen calls by using its AI assistant Bixby’s text call function, which works in a similar way.

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

By Miriam Fauzia, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Ever wonder what your dog is trying to say? Well, a University of Texas at Arlington researcher is aiming to turn barks, howls and whimpers of man’s best friend into intelligible speech — a kind of Rosetta Stone of woof.

Computer scientist Kenny Zhu has built what he says is the world’s largest video and audio catalog of canine vocalizations. In papers published this year, Zhu and his colleagues at the university report potential phonemes — the smallest units of sound — and word-like patterns that could one day be turned into full sentences understandable to humans.

“The ultimate goal is to make a translator where you can talk freely with your pet,” said Zhu, a professor of computer science and engineering at UT Arlington. “We can already do instantaneous communication between human languages. Perhaps in the future we can do the same with animals.”

AI interprets dog

Humans have long wanted to talk to animals, and in the last century, scientists have tried: from teaching great apes sign language and English to bottlenose dolphins.

Zhu’s fascination with animal communication began in Nanjing, China, where he spent his childhood surrounded by dogs, ducks, chickens and the occasional hedgehog. He often wondered what the animals were saying to each other, though his curiosity cooled over time.

It wasn’t until decades later, when he was watching a BBC documentary on whale and dolphin communication, that questions from his childhood reemerged. The documentary showed how long and hard it was to record and decode whale and dolphin exchanges. But with artificial intelligence, Zhu thought, there had to be an easier way to translate animal speech. With his background in natural language processing and AI development, he felt up to the task.

For his first project, Zhu wanted to see if a language model could hear a difference between Shiba Inus in Japan and in the United States. He and his colleagues mined dog videos posted on YouTube for the test. After it didn’t reveal any doggy dialect split, Zhu and his colleagues compiled hundreds of hours of synced audio and video to train an AI model to separate canine vocalizations into discrete phonemes.

Deciphering the vocalizations involves both sound and context, as a dog’s bark or whine may be tied to its situation, Zhu said. If a term aligns with the dog’s activity, that correlation signals potential meaning.

So far, the researchers have transcribed about 50 hours of barks into syllables. They have identified some possible words, like cat, cage and leash, and how these words seem to sound different based on the dog breed. They have also identified how a dog’s linguistic capability appears to change as it ages. In one study, Zhu and his colleagues found that as a husky grows older, its bark lasts longer and potentially becomes more sophisticated.

Dr. Doolittle at your fingertips

This effort isn’t just about chatting with Fido like your next-door neighbor: It could also help flag early clues about your dog’s health, Zhu said. If a dog experiences any mental or physical changes, a smartphone app or other device outfitted with a dog translator could inform the owner.

To a similar end, Zhu is working on decoding cats. He’s drafting a proposal to the Morris Animal Foundation for a study investigating whether a cat’s vocalizations can provide insight into its mental state or behavior.

Another one of Zhu’s projects, with Texas A&M University, is tackling the sounds of cattle. Dozens of cows in monitored pens at the university have been recorded 24/7 for audio and video for over two months. The data will be compared to the animals’ veterinary records to see how it correlates with their health.

Zhu and his collaborators hypothesize that herd small talk may carry cues about bovine well-being. By analyzing those vocal patterns for linguistic structure, they hope to spot illness before a human sees a sick cow.

They aren’t the only ones using AI to decipher animal speech. At the University of Michigan, researchers have processed dog barks using AI models originally trained on human speech, and at Virginia Tech, scientists are building an AI system to decode cow vocalizations. Meanwhile, a cottage industry of AI-powered dog collars and “cat translator” apps has sprung up, promising users the ability to better understand the needs of their pets.

Miriam Fauzia is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.

©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

On Oct. 11, 1925, FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan and two Chicago police officers set a trap for a trigger-happy car thief. Shanahan had received a tip that Martin Durkin was driving a stolen car from New Mexico to a garage at 6231 S. Princeton Ave. in Chicago.

But when Durkin showed up, the police weren’t in position. The Tribune reported at the time that one was in the back of the garage and the other was on the phone in the garage office, asking the station for reinforcements.

A garage employee had warned the officer that Durkin wouldn’t go quietly. The fugitive was already being sought for shooting several police officers in Chicago and California.

Edwin Shanahan was fatally shot on Oct. 11, 1925, while trying to arrest Martin Durkin at a Chicago garage. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

The FBI, on its website, says the two officers had stepped out to seek their replacements after hours on duty. Regardless, Shanahan was left to confront Durkin alone.

“When Durkin drove in, in a large blue Packard car, Shanahan drew his revolver and approached him. ‘Get out; I want you,’ he said,” according to the Tribune story.

“Durkin, still seated, drew his revolver and fired five times. One bullet struck Shanahan in the abdomen and another near the heart. He fired several times, but is believed to have missed the driver. Then, without delay, Durkin backed out of the garage and drove away.”

Shanahan was rushed to St. Bernard’s Hospital, where he died shortly afterward. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty.

Pallbearers carry the body of Edwin Shanahan out of St. Leo’s Roman Catholic Church at 78th Street and Emerald Avenue on Oct. 14, 1925. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director, reportedly thought Shanahan’s killing posed an existential threat to the agency — that if the killer of a federal agent got away with it, other agents would never be safe. The agency launched a national manhunt.

Durkin’s mother, Hattie, told the Tribune she would send him away if he turned up at her front door asking: “Ma, can I stay here all night?”

She was tortured by the thought that officers, with shoot-to-kill orders, were tailing him. On Oct. 14, a Tribune headline announced: “2 Rifle Squads Hunt Durkin in Indiana Towns.”

“Six men were in each car and so were six rifles,” the accompanying story noted. “A plentiful supply of car bombs were taken by the detectives as they left.”

Radio stations were broadcasting appeals to northwest Indiana residents who might have seen Durkin, as he had lived there for many years.

At 21, the Tribune reported, Durkin “took up burglary as a side line.” But he had since refined his skills. Another thief might furtively steal a parked car. Durkin would boldly walk into a car dealer’s showroom, ask a salesperson about the virtues of various luxury models, pick one and say he would pay cash for it the following morning. He’d request that the car have a full gas tank and be appropriately lubricated.

Martin Durkin, left, appears in court with his lawyer, Eugene McGarry, in the summer of 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
Lee Porter, who owned the garage where Edwin Shanahan was slain, shows bullet holes to Judge Harry B. Miller and jurors during Martin Durkin’s trial in June 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

That night, he’d break into the dealership and steal the car. Then Durkin would sell it in a distant city, reaping a handsome profit for zero financial investment. It was the reason the FBI was created: to connect the dots when a crime began in one locality and finished in another.

As the authorities continued to search for Durkin, his mother told reporters she attributed his problems to physical causes.

“He’s always been a wonderful son to me,” she said. “He was a fine little boy.” But during World War I, he enlisted at age 16, saying “he’d rather get shot than be a slacker.”

He served in the Army and saw action in France. “All the cannons roaring in his ears must have done something to him,” she said. “He has been so funny lately.”

On Oct. 28, police Sgt. Harry Gray and three officers went to Lloyd Ervin Austin’s apartment, having been advised that Durkin and his girlfriend, Austin’s niece, would come there. They asked if they could wait inside for Durkin.

Hattie Durkin kisses her son, Martin, around the time he was on trial in the shooting death of FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

When Durkin arrived with the girlfriend — Elizabeth “Betty” Andrews Werner — Gray tried to arrest him, and a gun battle ensued.

Sgt. Michael Naughton fired a shotgun at Durkin, but the blast killed Austin, who was hiding in a closet.

The girlfriend then fired a revolver, fatally wounding Gray. His wife would sit beside his hospital bed until he died five days later. His last words were, reportedly: “Oh, if Naughton had only known how to use a shotgun, or if he had let me take it.”

Durkin was wounded but again escaped. Between these two bloody episodes, frustrated law enforcement agencies launched umpteen raids and searched every which way.

Durkin became a celebrity, a desperado folk hero like Jesse James or Al Capone, Durkin’s contemporary. The Tribune dubbed him a “dapper sheik,” a reference to his movie star looks and suave manner.

Some of his female admirers became accomplices. Werner, whom the Tribune pronounced “just about the prettiest girl who ever protested innocence from behind the bars,” told reporters at the West Chicago Avenue police station: “Why, Marty wouldn’t kill a dog.”

The remark, the Oct. 13 story noted, echoed “all those statements which lovely ladies, for many a year, have been making in defense of their man when he gets in a jam.”

The Tribune described Martin Durkin’s wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, shown in 1926, as someone who Durkin “wooed hurriedly, wed hastily and promised, at the time of his arrest, to love long.” He also had a “sweetheart” named Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Andrews Werner. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

In November, the Tribune reported that “a man resembling Durkin” visited a barbershop at 1443 Fullerton Ave. Ora F. Croucher, the barber, said the man carried a newspaper, held it over his face during the haircut and occasionally glanced at the front door. When the barber brushed against the customer’s right side, he felt a pistol.

By December, there were rumors that Durkin was negotiating his return from a distant location. He planned to plead self-defense, claiming the FBI agent had fired first.

The following month, the FBI got a critical break. On Jan. 17, 1926, a sheriff in Pecos, Texas, had noticed a green Cadillac and asked the driver to see the ownership papers. The sheriff observed the man had a pistol and there was a .44-caliber Winchester rifle in the back seat.

The driver said he was a sheriff and the papers were in his hotel room. His looks and dignified manner were convincing, so the Texas sheriff allowed him to leave to fetch them.

When he didn’t return, the sheriff went to the hotel and was told that a “Mr. Conley” and a female companion had hastily departed. When he reported the incident, the FBI agent in El Paso recognized the man’s resemblance to Durkin’s image on a wanted poster.

After a three-month manhunt, Martin Durkin, center, was in the custody of detectives in early 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

The car, with a broken wheel, was found abandoned near Girvin, Texas. A ticket agent said a strange man and woman had boarded a Southern Pacific train for San Antonio. The conductor of that train was interviewed at his home in El Paso and verified that the man seemed to be Durkin and had inquired about a connecting train to St. Louis.

The St. Louis police stopped the train in an open field near that city. Durkin was dragged from the train and clapped in irons.

As Durkin awaited trial, his girlfriend, Betty Werner, and his wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, announced they’d joined forces to save him from the death penalty.

“I’m awfully glad Betty’s going to stick to Mart,” the wife said of the girlfriend’s fidelity. “But why shouldn’t she stick? I don’t see how any woman could try to send a man to the gallows, no matter what she thought of him.”

“Gee, this love business is something funny,” Durkin said.

By the time of the trial, Werner had a change of heart and told a prosecutor she would tell “the whole truth,” the Tribune reported in April 1926.

“And if I tell the truth I surely can’t testify for Marty,” she said.

She added: “I’m going to work hard after it’s all over.” Some people, the Tribune noted, thought she meant working in the movies.

Martin Durkin leaves for state prison in 1926, having been convicted of killing FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. At the time, such an act was not a federal crime. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

Because it wasn’t a federal offense to kill an FBI agent, Durkin was tried in a state court. A jury didn’t buy Durkin’s self-defense argument, and he was sentenced to serve 35 years in the Joliet penitentiary.

He was subsequently transferred to the federal prison in Leavenworth to serve time for transporting stolen vehicles across state lines.

Durkin was released on July 28, 1954, when he was 53. He died in 1981.

Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of “Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.”

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at grossmanron34@gmail.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com