Residents of Lexington, Nebraska, are panicking after the town’s largest employer announced it would shut down operations early next year.

MS NOW reported Friday from Lexington — the seat of Dawson County, Nebraska, which Trump easily carried with more than 74 percent of the vote last year. Meatpacking company Tyson employs 3,200 people in Lexington, though they will all be out of a job come Jan. 20, when the plant is shutting down.

“Have you ever been in a place where you can just feel the pain and the anxiety? That’s what it feels like being here in Lexington, Nebraska,” MS NOW reporter Rosa Flores said. “… People have described to me what’s happening here by using the words ‘catastrophe,’ ‘crisis,’ the feeling of being ‘collateral damage,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘anxiety,’ ‘agony.’”

Local business owners told Flores that sales started to plummet the moment Tyson announced it was closing the plant. Many business owners are immigrants who made the money to launch their businesses by working at the Tyson plant.

Lexington, Nebraska resident Rev. Elmer Armijo on December 12, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via MS NOW / YouTube)

“There’s another business here to my left, down the street. That woman says that people have gone into her store sobbing,” Flores said. “Her sales immediately dropped 10 to 20 percent right after the announcement.”

Reuters reported earlier this month that Tyson was closing the Lexington plant due to cattle supplies hitting a 75-year low in 2025. A small supply of cattle increases production costs for hamburgers and steaks. Cattle ranchers have seen dwindling herds due to drought reducing the supply of land capable of feeding cattle.

Nebraska U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn, who is running against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) next year as an independent, accused Tyson of manipulating the market by shuttering the plant. He asserted that Tyson was “destroying five percent of America’s beef processing capacity” given how much cattle gets processed annually at the Lexington plant.