Breaking news often plays havoc with deadline writing. During the course of writing this column, I have treaded water among multiple updates concerning the status of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
First, President Donald Trump announced the SNAP program that helps 42 million Usanians put food on the table would not be funded. Then, displaying his generosity, he announced that only half of the funds would be denied.
We could call this the Trump Diet: lose weight by eating every other day – while the president stuffs his orange face. Next the Trump Administration modified this to two-thirds funding.
Meanwhile, states and people [mainly of a Democratic persuasion] who do not consider 42 million of their neighbors [one in six children faces food insecurity] to be pawns to be sacrificed for political ends filed court cases demanding the government use available funds – as in funds that are available – to put food on those tables.
So, Friday, a federal court ruled against Trump and ordered full funding. Trump somehow promised to comply – a strange development for someone who considers himself above the law. [Say, on imposing tariffs – the purview of Congress – or bombing nations and small boats around the globe or destroying half of the White House on a whim.]
But, later that day, Biden-appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a temporary stay on the final third of the funding in question in order for an appeals court to hear the administration’s appeal.
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the stay by emphasizing on X what is at stake: “Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”
So, I do not know whether SNAP funding [or how much of it] will be available to 42 million Usanians by the time you read this.
What we do know is that Trump lobbied the first week of November to advance his agenda to deny 42 million Usanians the money they depend upon to buy “groceries” – still a new and mysterious word to the guy born with a golden [he’d never settle for silver] spoon in his mouth.
Funds for the food ran out Nov. 1, as part of the GOP-led shutdown of the government. While intending to eliminate all of the funding, our president celebrated the impending hardships he wished on others with a lavish Halloween party at Mar-al-Lago.
Marco Margaritoff of HuffPost said the party’s theme was “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” with allusions to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which she noted, “quite famously explores the empty materialism and destructive carelessness of America’s wealthy, among other themes.”
Well, some might suggest that one party [the Republican] is trying to kill many somebodies by colluding with Trump to starve poor people. And this is the party where many politicians make publicly professed Christianity a plank in the political platforms.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom observed: “Donald Trump hosted a Great Gatsby party while SNAP benefits were about to disappear for 42 million Americans. He does not give a damn about you.”
Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who initiated the GOP’s ongoing campaign to hamstring the federal government’s citizen-protective regulations at every opportunity, was taken aback by the optics. On Wednesday, he told NBC News: “Somebody wasn’t thinking very clearly when they scheduled the Mar-a-Lago party.”
I beg to differ. I think Trump and company knew exactly what they were doing – and just did not care.
How much does Trump not care if people starve?
On Nov. 2, Common Dreams reported that his Agriculture Department sent an email to “grocery stores around the country, telling them they were prohibited from offering special discounts to those at greater risk of food insecurity due to the cuts.”
The email, first exposed by MSNBC anchor Catherine Rampell, continued, “You must offer eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions to SNAP-EBT customers as other customers, except that sales tax cannot be charged on SNAP purchases. You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently from any other customer.”
The Common Dreams account cited a labor movement lawyer who “summed up the administration’s position on social media: ‘Can’t follow the law when a judge says fund the program, but have to follow the rules exactly when they say don’t help poor people afford food.’”
That is the agenda Trump and his minions are fighting for.
And after I thought I had finished this column, Trump’s Ag Department on Saturday threatened to retaliate against states that are trying to make up the difference in SNAP payments. He truly does not want poor people to eat.
