Happy Holidays! The Trump Administration Is Cutting Food Assistance Programs Again!

2 min readHappy holiday! Happy holidays! May the merry bells be ringing happy holidays to YOOOOOOOOOOOOU! From The Hill:A new proposal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would kick millions of people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by tightening eligibility requirements. The proposal moves to raise the threshold families must meet to qualify for the government assistance program in order to “preserve benefits for the truly needy.” According to the proposal, it would end “broad-based categorical eligibility” for SNAP, which allowed for families to qualify for the program if they qualified for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) without needing to show proof they met federal income thresholds. Generally, TANF eligibility is 130 to 200 percent higher than the federal poverty level, while SNAP qualification is 130 percent. The USDA estimated that approximately 17.6 percent of SNAP participants would lose their benefits—representing 3.2 million households or 6.3 million individuals—in the proposed rule’s first year in effect. This is only the cruelist manifestation (for now) of the Trumpist scramble to do as much damage as they can before the new Congress comes to town. You could see it in the defeat of the Hegseth impeachment. You can see it in how the Senate Judiciary Committee is hustling to confirm the president's judicial nominees before the nominees all have to go back to chasing ambulances in January.The committee is still in the nonagenarian hands of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Smoot Hawley) so "hustling" is a bit ironic. But Grassley's staff on Tuesday kept things whistling along.From nominationnotes:Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Semafor yesterday that the Senate’s “priority is going to be getting the judges across the finish line” this year before Republicans lose their majority in January. At the moment, 24 lifetime nominees are pending in the Senate. And last night, Trump mysteriously posted on Truth Social that he wants “25 Federal Judges” confirmed this year. The White House has not responded to an inquiry requesting a list of those 25 judges, though Trump did finally announce the nominations of Grayson Lambert, James Sullivan, and Elliot Gaiser on Truth Social.Gaiser, who works at the Justice Department, and is the administration's choice for a federal district judgeship in Texas, became a nominee a few days ago. Sullivan was nominated for a federal judgeship almost immediately after losing his campaign for reelection to the Texas Supreme Court. Nice safety job there.