100s of cars in line for emergency Non-profits prepare for SNAP cessation
SNAP’s Crackle Popped
“Because if you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games with people’s paychecks, their livelihoods. If you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it”
House Speaker, Mike Johnson (R/LA), on why Republicans oppose release of SNAP emergency funds.
“Get off your fat, ghetto a——… Get a job. Stop reproducing. Change your s—— culture.”
Mike Davis, former Supreme Court Clerk & Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R/Iowa)
Notwithstanding the fact that it’s been done before, and despite Trump’s overuse of an overbroad definition of “emergency” to launch troops to invade US cities, eliminate constitutional protections in immigration enforcement and attack small boats purported to be “narco-terrorists,” Trump’s Department of Agriculture has taken the absurd legal position that a government shutdown is not an “emergency” under law such that significant funding reserves under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can be released.
Part of their hate-hate relationship with the 1935 Social Security program, Medicare/Medicaid the Voting and Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, the 1939 Food Stamps enabling legislation (the precursor to SNAP) as well the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), the GOP majority in Congress smells the blood in the water with unsubtle support from the President to cut or eliminate these social benefits. As the above quote clearly illustrates, the GOP majority is clearly using the 42 million Americans, who rely on SNAP food support, as sacrificial political pawns.
It seems that the GOP was equally unpersuasive with federal judges, although we cannot be sure how far these decisions will extend to other federal circuits: “Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to pay for SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using emergency reserve funds during the government shutdown… The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November. That also brings uncertainty about how things will unfold and will delay payments for many beneficiaries whose cards would normally be recharged early in the month.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs about $8 billion per month nationally.” Michael Casey, Geoff Mulvihill and Kimberlee Kruesi, writing for the October 31st Associated Press.
Because of Donald Trump’s obsession with rewarding winners (basically the rich) and punish the losers (most of the rest of America and anyone who opposes him or his policies), his “Big Beautiful Bill” eliminated close to a trillion dollars in Medicaid coverage (including a $186 million cut to SNAP) while creating a mega-trillion dollar tax cut that effectively only provides substantial benefits to multimillionaires and billionaires… and tanks the deficit just as the United States has been forced to pay significantly higher interest to attract mostly international buyers to buy our deficit funding debt.
OMB hatchet man, Russell “I was one of the principal authors of Project 2025” Vought, has ignored statutes requiring retroactive post-shutdown salary to federal employees to go even further to fire those employees associated with agencies and programs favored by Democrats. While Trump mumbles about not wanting Americans to go hungry, his unwillingness to pull the strings on his marionette Republicans in Congress, says it all.
Republicans continue their proclivity to substitute anecdotal evidence for statistics and even completely to fabricate “facts” to suite their agenda. As noted by Adam Lynch in the November 1st Newsbreak.com, “Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) ranted about ‘a lot of young men on SNAP that should be working,’ despite data showing ‘39% of SNAP participants were children, 20% were elderly, and 10% were nonelderly individuals with a disability,’ in 2023. Additional federal data confirming that millions of SNAP recipients are already working full time.
“U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, (R-La.) posted on X that SNAP beneficiaries should have been stocking up for the shutdown in advance — so it’s on them… ‘Any American who has been receiving $4,200 per year of free groceries and does NOT have at least 1 month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack,’ Higgins said… Politifact debunked the argument, promoted by people like Davis [quoted above], falsely claiming the bulk of SNAP benefits go to non-white people and immigrants, but that doesn’t stop MAGA types like Conservative podcaster Adam Carolla from blithely suggesting that ‘nobody could benefit from a nice fast more than the SNAP recipients.’
“While some conservatives want to use the potential of SNAP recipients going hungry as a cudgel to force Democrats to give up their demands and end the government shutdown, that messaging is being clouded by more vocal conservatives who seem perfectly fine with — if not giddy about — the suffering of SNAP recipients… [Skeptics have] added that, so far, the public does not appear to be buying Trump’s sympathetic act over the braying of his fellow Republicans. Recent polling data shows that a plurality of the country blames Republicans, not Democrats, for the shutdown.”
I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as the Republican majority in Congress quiver in fear at Trump and his mesmerized MAGA minions blindly accepting the unending litany of Trump administration lies, Democracy itself seems to be at risk for fatal termination.
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