Last Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell returned to Congress after a three-month absence and promptly cast a deciding vote in the Republican-led Agriculture Committee. Back in August, Democrats on the committee blocked the Senate’s version of the farm bill from progressing to a full vote. But even after McConnell’s vote, the way things are going, it’s unlikely that Congress will pass a farm…
Source
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins bragged on Tuesday that the Trump administration has now “moved 5 million people off food stamps,” an outcome that she hailed as a significant victory even amid mounting reports of families with children struggling to afford groceries after losing federal assistance. “For those of us that love work and celebrate work and want people to work and not be…
Source
At least 1.5 million children have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since US President Donald Trump signed the Republican budget package into law last summer, enacting the largest cuts to federal food aid in the nation’s history. The new estimate of food aid loss among children comes from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which said Tuesday that SNAP…
Source
One year after President Donald Trump signed legislation that slashed federal health care and food assistance to pay for tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy, officials on the front lines of the nation’s affordability crisis say the costs to state and local governments of filling holes left by Congress in the safety net are unsustainable. Demand for food assistance is rising as children and…
Source
Senate Republicans unveiled annual farm legislation this week that would do nothing to address the worsening nationwide hunger crisis spurred by President Donald Trump and the GOP’s unprecedented assault on federal food aid. The draft bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, omits a Democratic proposal to delay a provision of the…
Source
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked an attempt by the US Department of Agriculture to force state governments to comply with President Donald Trump’s positions on gender and immigration or lose out on billions of dollars in funding, including for food assistance. The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and 20 Democrat-led states sued the department and Secretary of…
Source