Oh SNAP!
At least Marie Antoinette had an alternative for hungry peasants. The Trump regime prefers to let people starve.
As the government shutdown drags on it becomes clearer the Trump regime and its Republican fellow travelers aren’t on a starvation diet. They’ve found a private donor to pay military salaries and funding to prepare for an undeclared war against Venezuela.
Not to mention a slew of wealthy individuals and corporations to pay for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago North palace.
The same can’t be said for millions of Americans who are pawns in the standoff between Republicans who trimmed more than a trillion dollars in funding for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to pay for tax cuts for many of those donors to the Trump Palace fund.
Whereas in the past the federal government, which pays 100 percent of the cost of SNAP, would use contingency funds to pay the food assistance benefits, the Department of Agriculture has instructed states not to process benefits starting in November, according to a letter from Democratic senators this week.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey didn’t mince words in describing the tactic:
“Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to cut off SNAP benefits to people in America. As of the end of next week, SNAP benefits are going to be frozen. They go away.”
That includes not just 49 other states but the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and other American colonies.
This game of high stakes, um, chicken, is a GOP counter to Democrats’ insistence that ending the shutdown requires restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies to approximately 24 million Americans who receive federal help in paying for health insurance.
Rates for that coverage are expected to rise by an average of 30 percent when the private insurance marketplace reopens next weekend. A result of ending those “Obamacare” subsidies that keep millions off the Medicaid rolls.
None of this seems to matter to our let ‘em eat Argentinian beef leader as he continues to lower the boom, not on his reviled “radical left lunatic” foes, but on solid MAGA supporters like farmers and ranchers who are struggling to find markets for soybeans that used to be sold to China or American-raised beef:
“ It feels like a slap in the face to rural America. It makes you feel invisible and overlooked.”
No less a figure than MAGA Dark Lord Steve Bannon recognizes the political headache that could upend their plans to create a Trump Empire:
“Medicaid, you got to be careful, because a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong,” Bannon said. “Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”
A look at states issuing warnings about the SNAP benefit cutoff is, er, liberally sprinkled with red state redoubts like Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana Texas and West Virginia.
The Republicans who crafted Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” thought they outsmarted those radical lefties by delaying the impact of the Medicaid cuts until after the 2026 midterms.
And by insisting that they were simply tightening work requirements for SNAP eligibility. Ignoring that nearly four-in-10 people receiving food assistance are children.
Meanwhile Trump pulled out all the stops for the assorted crypto and tech bro billionaires who joined fossil fuel, banking and military contracting chieftains in a White House dinner to shake them down for the ballroom build-out, which has already risen in price from $200 million to $300 million:
“So many of you have been really, really generous. I mean, a couple of you, I was sitting here and saying, ‘Sir, would $25 million be appropriate?’ They said, ‘I’ll take it.’”
It’s not merely capitalist generosity as some of the well-paid corporate types would insist. Many have businesses that require government approval or, at a minimum, a lack of government opposition.
Take it from Richard W. Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush. He says the invitation is all about pay to play.
“Getting an invitation to the White House to a dinner because they’re contributing to the construction of this project. This is payment for access, not just to the grounds of the White House but access to the president of the United States.”
If only the rules were the same for the millions of families who are approaching overwhelmed food banks and other agencies designed to promote health and proper nutrition, especially for the children targeted by Health and Human Services Bobby Brainworm.
Instead we can expect to hear an infamous line uttered by Oliver Twist in a Charles Dickens novel:
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
Yes, life all too often imitates art.