What did Donald Trump do today?
He decided to use Americans going without food as a political bargaining chip.
Today, the current government shutdown became the longest ever, beating Trump's previous record in his first term. One of the most urgent needs not currently being met by the federal government is food assistance programs. Trump is legally required to use a special contingency fund to keep sending out SNAP payments, and at the start of this week had grudgingly agreed to partially comply with a judge's ruling enforcing that obligation.
Today, though, he decided that families going without food—many of whom are struggling precisely because of the shutdown—would be more useful as leverage.
(Trump is lying about food assistance eligibility: it remains capped at 130% of the federal poverty level. For example, a family of four with an income of $42,000 per year would be too "wealthy" to qualify.)
Trump's announcement that he would openly defy a court order to continue helping hungry Americans buy food caught his own staff off guard. Press secretary Karolina Leavitt flatly contradicted him, insisting that "the administration is fully complying with the court order." This is a common tactic used by Trump's staff to box him out of sudden swerves in policy—simply insisting that they never happened and "defending" him from people who'd noticed what he'd said.
The main point of contention that has led to the shutdown is that Trump—whose party controls both houses of Congress—refuses to fund the Affordable Care Act. That means that Trump is now holding Americans living near or below the poverty line hostage until Democrats agree to provide him with political cover for taking away health insurance from those same Americans (and millions of others).
Why does this matter?
- Every American is entitled to enough food to eat and health care, whether or not it's politically convenient for Donald Trump.