(WIFR) – Medical students become farmers for a day at University of Illinois College of Medicine-Rockford’s “No Harm on the Farm.”

The event is meant to show the health and safety risks associated with modern agriculture.

Taylor Main-White is one of 23 students who toured Scheidairy and Mark Bakers farms Friday.

She has spent most of her life on a farm and that encouraged her to join UIC Medicine-Rockford’s Rural Medical Education Program.

“I saw at a very young age kind of how the disparities in rural health community’s work. They can’t get access to doctors or specialists’ things like that,” said Main-White.

“No Harm on the Farm” has been around for 19 years. At the Scheidairy farm students went through barns to learn about the day-to-day risks of being a farmer.

“Everything from hearing loss to exposure to chemicals and pesticides to working with livestock that may weigh 1,500 to 1,800 pounds to working with equipment that has a lot of moving parts,” said Mark Meurer, associate Director of Recruitment for RMED.

Between 2021-2022, there were 21,020 injuries in agricultural production that required employees to take days away from work according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scheidairy has been a part of the initiative since the beginning. Farmer Dan Scheider says it’s beyond important for students to experience a day on the farm to understand the profession and injuries that can occur.

“We work hard to provide relevant information about health and farming and how the two intersect,” said Scheider.

Experts say knowing how to prevent and treat injury and disease on the farm means a safer and more productive rural America.

One of the exercises students experienced included a grain bin entrapment/rescue demonstrations led by Mark Baker, founder of Stateline Farm Rescue Simulations and Demonstrations.

Meurer says no other program teaches students like RMED.

“Students love to do things with their hands. They love to do clinical things they love to do things where they are actually hands on in a learning environment,” said Meurer.

Main-White agrees and says everyone, no matter their profession, should experience a day like this.

“Usually everybody interacts with agriculture in one way or another, and so learning these safety things can really save someone’s life,” said Main-White.

Copyright 2025 WIFR. All rights reserved.

A Chicago judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Thursday to prevent the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois.

Judge April Perry, district judge for the Northern District of Illinois, enjoined the defendants (excepting President Trump) from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.” In an oral ruling, Perry said that there is “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois” or that the president cannot “execute the laws of the United States.” The TRO expires on October 23. A hearing will be held on October 22 to determine whether the TRO should be extended for a further 14 days.

The state of Illinois filed a complaint for emergency, declaratory, and injunctive relief against the Trump administration on October 6. The complaint was filed in response to Secretary of Defense (“Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth’s attempt to federalize the Illinois and Texas National Guards on October 4 and 5. The complaint described Secretary Hegseth’s actions as “illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional” and stated that federal use of the National Guard “infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance.” It stated that his actions do not satisfy the three prerequisites for federalization under 10 U.S.C. 12406: 1) invasion by a foreign nation, 2) rebellion against the government, or 3) inability to execute the laws of the US with regular forces. It further claimed that the defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and provisions of the Constitution. The Trump administration has filed a notice of appeal.

The National Guard is a part of the armed forces, and has been used to respond to domestic crises. It can operate on both state and federal levels, but is usually directed by a state’s governor.

Trump has signaled many times that he intends to use the National Guard to address violence in cities across the US. He has deployed forces in Los Angeles, DC, and Portland, citing the threats of crime, homelessness, domestic terrorism and protests against mass deportation. Numerous legal challenges have been mounted by states. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently reviewing a TRO issued by a district judge in Oregon against deployment of the National Guard in Portland, which will have broader implications for the President’s power to deploy federal forces against states’ wishes.

The state of Illinois urged a judge Thursday to order the National Guard to stand down in the Chicago area, calling the deployment a constitutional crisis and suggesting the Trump administration gave no heed to the pending legal challenge when it sent troops overnight to an immigration enforcement building.

The government “plowed ahead anyway,” attorney Christopher Wells said. “Now, troops are here.”

Wells’ arguments opened an extraordinary hearing in federal court in Chicago. The city and the state, run by Democratic elected leaders, say President Donald Trump has exceeded his authority and ignored their pleas to keep the Guard off the streets.

Heavy public turnout at the downtown courthouse caused officials to open an overflow room with a video feed of the hearing.

Department of Justice lawyer Eric Hamilton said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness.” He noted an incident last weekend in which a Border Patrol vehicle was boxed in and an agent shot a woman in response.

“Chicago is seeing a brazen new form of hostility from rioters targeting federal law enforcement,” Hamilton said. “They’re not protesters. There is enough that there is a danger of a rebellion here, which there is.”

Guard members from Texas and Illinois arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 are under the U.S. Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.

Some Guard troops could be seen behind portable fences at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Broadview, outside Chicago. It has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents, but the scene was peaceful, with few people present.

Police noticed troops apparently sleeping “undisturbed” in vans Wednesday night, Broadview said in a statement.

“We hope that they will extend the same courtesy in the coming days to Broadview residents who deserve a good night’s sleep, too,” the village said.

Chicago and Illinois filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the deployments, calling them unnecessary and illegal. Trump has portrayed Chicago as a lawless “hellhole” of crime, though statistics show a significant recent drop in crime.

In a court filing, the city and state say protests at the ICE building in Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement.”

“The President is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions the President dislikes.”

The Republican president said Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.

Also Thursday, a federal appeals court was scheduled to hear arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building. Like in Illinois, state and city leaders insist troops are neither wanted nor needed there.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Sunday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment of Guard troops to Portland. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after the judge first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.

Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed an appeals court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon.

The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.

Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington. In Memphis, Tennessee, Mayor Paul Young said Guard members would begin patrolling Friday. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee supports using the Guard.

___

Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle, Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia contributed to this report.