During a panel discussion about President Donald Trump’s embarrassing switcheroo to avoid Iranian attacks (while leaving aides and reporters to take the blow), Bulwark Editor Sam Stein could not subdue a tirade on the president’s consummate lying.

Stein’s explosion preceded a clip of Trump unleashing yet another legion of lies before a Tuesday night press gaggle.

“The country is doing well,” Trump said, ignoring bad job reports and consumer and voter polls. “Iran is going fine — going just absolutely fine. We totally control the Strait of Hormuz. We have control over it. Nobody else, only us. Our Navy is unbelievable and things are going great for our country.”

“I mean, the only true statement there, Sam, is that the Navy is unbelievable,” said “Deadline: White House guest host Alicia Menendez on Wednesday. “Everything else — Iran is not going great. The Strait of Hormuz is not going great. And nothing is as the president described, being smuggled in a catering truck with your Diet Coke valet. Is that supposed to express confidence to the American people, from an administration that purports to be the most transparent administration in American history?”

“This is the underlying thread that ties all this together, which is dishonesty,” said Stein “I mean, I couldn't agree more with … [panelist] Carol [Leonnig]. Like, obviously it was a serious enough threat that the president should have been moved, that a decoy flight was totally acceptable. The Secret Service made a determination. No one should begrudge the president for getting on the catering truck, as silly as that is, and going to this other military aircraft, you can even make the case that a bit of sort of deception was probably necessary in order to make sure that nothing leaked.”

“However,” raged Stein, “there is a widespread lack of honesty and transparency and outright lying that is accompanying the administration throughout this. And Carol is too kind to say it because she's a good person. But when she initially reported that they had to switch from the Qatari jet to the Air Force One … the White House was very public in saying that she was a liar. They did. They went out there and said, ‘she's a liar.’ And it turns out she was right and they were wrong.”

“And that's just the M.O. for this administration,” said Stein. “And you saw with President Trump last night where he's saying,’ oh, we control the state of Strait of Hormuz. We do not. There's nothing going through the Strait of Hormuz. Eight ships, when there used to be 130! Things in Iran are fine? They are not. We are a couple of days before the 60-day target for the MOU, when we're supposed to have a negotiated a settlement. No one's acting like that's going to happen. Things are not going well, but they're asking you to believe that the sky is green, that two-plus-two is five. And there was no security threat to air force One.”

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Sam Stein, chatting with Will Sommer, spoke on The Bulwark podcast Monday about Sommer's bombshell report that the Pentagon is using taxpayer dollars to pay far-right influencers to promote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth online and in various articles.

Sommer, who reports on the far right, had his previous report last Monday, and the Washington Post followed up with its own piece Sunday, exposing several other influencers who were being paid as special government employees. One included

Among the details they found, however, is that Rob Maness was among those making money at the Pentagon when he wrote a story for the Daily Caller. Stein pointed out that the site still hasn't posted a disclaimer on Maness' report attacking "disloyal careerists" at the Pentagon, saying that he was being paid by the Department of Defense at the time he wrote the piece.

Another mentioned by Sommer and the Post was "Data Republican," who has been tracking people they believe to be "Antifa," which stands for anti-fascist.

"The anonymity here, a bunch of these people, if you were just perusing online and you had no clue or the wherewithal to investigate who these people were, you know, 'Cynical Publius,' 'Infantry Dort,' I guess he lists his name there. But, 'Data Republican.' They operate with anonymity. And I have a proposition to you," Stein posed to Sommer. "Was the — was Elon Musk basically scraping any sort of verification requirements on Twitter. Was that not one of the most consequential social media maneuvers ever? We live in a world where people can do this now."

Sommer pointed to "Data Republican," who is able to be "verified" on Musk's X and poses as an expert online, is actually just "a random lady with, I guess, Excel? Maybe not even that."

In the case of "Infentry Dort," Sommer said that anyone looking at him doesn't "realize this guy is, like, essentially a Pete Hegseth spokesperson."

They're people, he continued, who don't indicate that they have been paid to post many of the things they're doing online. In the case of Kurt Schlichter, Sommer said that the man has spent time writing short stories about another U.S. Civil War and that the red states would destroy the blue states.

"So, is this a guy we really want working for the Pentagon? I don't know," Sommer asked.

Cynical Publius does include his real name on his account, but Stein doesn't think anyone on the right would ever have taken him seriously if he had used his own photo as a regular, "glasses-wearing nerd," rather than hiding behind the image of a Greek statue.

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Just a few weeks ago, Democrats in Maine joined forces to pressure Democratic primary winner Graham Platner off the state party’s ticket after accusations of abuse.But Bulwark Editor Sam Stein said that’s not the Republican way, which instead involves defending and doubling down on controversial candidates. That is, if they don’t bolt when asked their take.

“There is like a real thing going on here, which is that there's a number of Republican candidates for office who have been caught saying depraved things, committing alleged acts of violence, doing the type of stuff after a few weeks ago, the entire political universe … said Graham Platner was unacceptable for public office because he was alleged to have done similar things.

At that point, Stein introduced Republican candidate Brandon Herrera, who is running in the 23rd District of Texas.

“So, yeah, Trump has endorsed this guy. It's kind of, it's a, toss-up district in Texas, so it's not like this is a safe seat. It's kind of crazy that he's not being thrown or being pushed out by Republicans,” said Stein to False Flag Newsletter writer and co-host Will Sommer.

Among some of Herrera’s most notable statements included a claim that he counts as “an honorary veteran” because “I often think about putting a gun in my mouth.”

Another of Herrera’s hits include a rant to gun reform advocate Shannon Watts, a mother of five, in which the YouTuber described Watts' kids as body fluid trophies, along with other sexually explicit references.

Referring to mothers’ kids as body fluid trophies was too much for the Bulwark staff, who responded by confronting GOP lawmakers with Hererra’s quotes and asking their reaction.

“Congressman, quick Texas question,” called the reporter catching U.S. Rep Chip Roy (R-Texas) on the Hill.

“Real quick,” said Roy.

“Representative Brandon Herrera, who's a Republican nominee for House seat in Texas, has called babies [explicit] trophies. I was wondering if you agree with that?”

“I—I gotta go. I don’t want to talk about it,” said Roy, dodging away quickly.

“Just in your home state, Brandon Herrera has referred to babies as [explicit] trophies. I was wondering if you shared that assessment,” said the Bulwark reporter to another Texas Republican lawmaker who was fleeing too fast to easily recognize.

“Congressman, in your home state, there's a Republican, Brandon Herrera, running for the House who's referred to babies as [explicit] trophies. I was just wondering if you—,” the reporter asked U.S. Rep. Roy Nehls.

“I got nothing for you,” Nehls appeared to have responded, while puffing a cigar.

This appears to be a trend, said Stein. Sitting Congressmen Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Max Miller (R-Ohio.) continue to face domestic abuse allegations. And what does Mike Johnson say when he's asked directly about it? He dodges.

“Well, the key word there is allegation,” said Johnson when asked about Republican hypocrisy after Platner’s removal. “We have a process here. The House Ethics Committee works on those things. If allegations are made, they work through a process. So, I'm not in the business of commenting on investigations as they're in process. And we'll see how that shakes out. That's how this always works.”

“It’s a dodge,” confirmed Sommer.

President Donald Trump is trying to push through acting attorney general Todd Blanche to be his actual attorney general — but, as some conservatives are mocking, Blanche’s cause was undermined on Wednesday by a member of his own Republican Party.

“[Sen. John] Kennedy [R-LA], in his weird kind of goofy way, as you say, caused much more trouble for Blanche then these Democratic lawyers asking their fine-tuned legal challenges,” conservative commentator William Kristol explained during a podcast for The Bulwark. Kristol was referring to how Kennedy asked Blanche if he considered himself to be Trump’s friend, only for Blanche to reply that he considered himself to be “Trump’s lawyer.” Legally, the attorney general represents the American people, not the president himself.

“Of course, he does think of himself as Trump's lawyer, and that is a core point which underlies ... a lot of the particularities of the decisions he's made in terms of prosecutions and pardons and ... Obviously the slush fund, right? So Kennedy, in his weird kind of goofy way, as you say, caused much more trouble for Blanche, these Democratic lawyers asking their fine-tuned legal challenges,” said Kristol.

Sam Stein, Kristol’s co-host, then broke down whether Blanche has enough support to get confirmed.

“Let's talk about math here,” Stein wrote. “So Mitch McConnell's out, which means there's 52 senators. The late Senator Lindsey Graham's sister is in, so it stays at 52, which means that it would take three Republicans to vote against Blanche to torpedo his nomination. I guess also the committee is at 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats. So if they can't get a majority in the committee, he doesn't get out of the committee.”

Yet even though Republicans may have enough votes to bring Blanche to the floor, they do not have the 65 votes to break a Democratic filibuster against Blanche’s permanent appointment.

“I don't know the particularities of this,” Stein concluded. “So anyways, there are ways to defeat him.”

Later in the same broadcast, Stein and Bulwark contributor Will Saletan laughed at footage of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) interrogating Blanche.

“Who rejected the 25 defenses the IRS had to this sham lawsuit?” Schiff asked Saletan. “Who rejected them? Who said that these defenses, we're not going to accept, we're just going to go with the president's agreement and the slush fund, and this immunity?”

When Blanche tried to deflect by saying there was a lot of internal conversation, Schiff pointed out that Blanche “made the decision to not defend the IRS and the Justice Department. You made the decision instead to sign this slush fund agreement.”

Blanche confirmed, “We made the decision to settle the case, correct, yeah.”

Schiff replied, “And in doing that, you basically decided that you were going to be the lawyer for the president and the lawyer for the IRS and the Justice Department.As the court found in this case, there was no adversarial relationship. The court found it was a sham. It was a collusive relationship.”

At this point, Saletan and Stein both snickered.

“What I don't understand, Todd Blanche, [is] what happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York?” Schiff asked in the hearing. “What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for? What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law? What happened to the prosecutor who said that there wouldn't be a whiff of political partisanship and then prosecutes the president's enemies over seashells, over making a video stating the plain law and constitution?”

Schiff is referring to the $1.8 billion slush fund that Trump and Blanche created — and which they claimed was dead, although they have not proven this — to settle the president’s lawsuit against the IRS. Trump accused the IRS of violating his rights when an independent contractor leaked that he had not paid taxes for many years and had a number of previously undisclosed business failures. Even though no one has ever received monetary compensation for having their tax returns leaked, and it was unclear whether Trump even had the standing to sue the IRS he controls, Blanche controversially refused to defend the IRS and instead settled with Trump for the $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump supporters and Trump-affiliated agencies, as well as to never audit the president or his family again.

Earlier this week U..S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams voided the settlement in a 56-page order in which she characterized the settlement as self-dealing on the basis of the fact that a sitting president sued an agency he controls, then settled with himself.

Throughout his second presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that his top priority isn't experience — it's loyalty. Trump his filled his second administration with ultra-MAGA loyalists who, unlike many of the traditional conservatives he appointed during his first presidency, aren't going to challenge him or clash with him. And according to the Washington Post, that standard is very much at work with Trump's team of personal lawyers.

In the Post, reporters Isaac Arnsdorf and Perry Stein detail the U.S. president's search for personal lawyers who aren't afraid to make his most audacious arguments.

"After burning through a list of big-name attorneys whose advice he often rejected," Arnsdorf and Stein explain, "President Donald Trump has turned to a group of less-known civil litigators as his personal lawyers. In Trump's eyes, they're a team with a crucial strength — the willingness to make arguments other lawyers might balk at, according to a Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about internal discussions. The lawyers have taken unusual steps for a sitting president, including suing journalists and litigating against the government he leads."

The Post journalists continue, "At the same time, Trump has asserted greater control over the Justice Department than previous presidents. That has led to highly unusual situations in which proceedings that would typically be adversarial have had lawyers on both sides who are answerable to Trump, many of whom have previously worked together on his behalf."

Trump's current team of personal attorneys, according to Arnsdorf and Stein, "range in experience, temperament and politics." But experience, the journalists emphasize, takes a back seat to loyalty when Trump is searching for attorneys.

"The central figure in the group, according to the Trump adviser and lawyers who have been involved in litigation with them, is Boris Epshteyn, a pugnacious longtime adviser to Trump," Arnsdorf and Stein report. "During the 2024 transition, incoming White House counsel David Warrington recommended the president cut ties with Epshteyn because of allegations that Epshteyn tried to use his closeness to Trump to enrich himself, according to his report, which was reviewed by the Washington Post…. Epshteyn can be at turns charming or bombastic, (a) lawyer who has litigated against him said, and his role is less as a legal expert than as the person who has the direct relationship with the client."

Attorney Ty Cobb, who represented Trump during the Russia probe in 2016 but is now a vehement critic of him, told the Post, "Boris was a nobody when I was there."

President Donald Trump has lost legal battles, even with courts dominated by his judges, on issues from his tariffs and attempts to control mail-in ballots to his attempt to overturn a civil verdict which found he sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll. According to a pair of conservative commentators at The Bulwark, these failures can be explained by a simple fact:

Trump and his advisers keep bungling American law.

“The government has always had the legal authority to subpoena journalists when there's classified national security information that gets leaked,” The Bulwark’s Ben Parker said on Thursday. “And traditionally, they don't. There are a few reasons for this. One of them is, it's got some First Amendment implications. The other one is the government would, honestly, most of the time, rather have a good relationship with the press than constantly be hounding them with subpoenas and maybe criminal investigations and stuff. And so usually it's the people who are leaking the information, rather than the journalists, who are at the end of the criminal investigation process.”

Parker added, “The Trump administration decided, ‘Nope, we're gonna subpoena not only these journalists, but also apparently their family members.’ And so the court said, like, ‘Hey, why don't you slow down, take a beat, and try saying please first?’ It's not illegal for them to bring these subpoenas. They could try again after they go through some other process, but it is like, ‘Hey, guys, slow your roll here a little bit.’”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein added that Trump was “supposed to exhaust other processes to try to investigate the leak of that information before going to the subpoena. They did not.” Parker added that the Trump administration could have done more damage if they had merely been a little more careful. As another example, they turned to the Trump administration’s failed attempt to get information about Jewish students at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The other one was — again, another thing the administration was forced, after a long legal battle, to quietly retract,” Parker told Stein. “You may remember this from the deluge of 2025 Trump administration craziness. They had asked the University of Pennsylvania for a list of all of its Jews, basically. They said — ‘I'm not gonna do the voice. I'm not gonna do a German accent, I promise’ — they said, ‘We're investigating antisemitism. Would you please give us a list of all of your Jewish faculty in the Jewish studies program, all of your Jewish cultural, religious, whatever organizations, and all of the people who belong to those organizations? Please give the government a list of your Jews.’ And the school, to its credit, said, ‘No.’”

After both men laughed, Parker continued that “after a long fight, the administration has said, ‘Okay, we are no longer requesting a list of your Jews. Thank you very much.’”

Stein commented that "it's a remarkable string of losses" and Parker added that Trump’s administration would have anticipated this if they understood how conservatives — even those he appointed — tend to view the law.

“A lot of these Trump-appointed judges from his first term are the ones smacking down what he's doing now, because they're sort of pre-Trump ... Federalist Society types,” Parker explained. “And they're saying, ‘No, you can't just take a state's voter rolls. What the hell are you talking about?’”

MAGA is getting more and more weird, says the Bulwark crew of Tim Miller, Sam Stein and Will Sommer. But MAGA’s talent for blaming others for their personal depravities remains unchanged.

MAGA social media influencer Gian Rachtelli, 54, was charged with lewd, indecent and obscene acts on the National Mall, allegedly while dressed as Uncle Sam during an acrobatic performance at President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair, according to police documents.

Three separate witnesses reported seeing Rachtelli, known to his thousands of followers as “Manny,” engage in lewd acts, according to U.S. Park Police documents. But earlier this week Rachtelli said in an interview that Antifa was probably behind it.

At the time, of course, he was talking to a puppet.

“Is it just a misunderstanding, or were you set up?” asked Puppet Edgar on his YouTube show earlier this week.

“I've seen Antifa do crazier things than that. So, I’m not saying I was set up, but I would not say that maybe a phone call was made to somebody,” Rachtelli told Edgar.

“This is actually a pretty important job for [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and [Attorney General] Todd Blanche and [FBI head] Kash Patel,” announced Miller, between laughter. “They've been very concerned about Antifa and cracking down. And to think that they might have someone on the inside [of the park police].”

“I think it goes further than that,” said Stein. “These are the performers that he was watching on stage when he was [committing lewd acts] from a distance. And I think what he's saying is they infiltrated the [stage act] and they were just too tempting.”

“This is a guy named Edgar the Puppet,” said Sommer, who makes a career of monitoring MAGA shows and intra-party battles. “It truly alarms me to learn that this guy has a big audience. I mean he has like 190,000 followers. He's like a conservative puppet.”

“Like a Newsmax Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog,” said Miller.

“You might think this kind of comes off like a Triumph routine, but he's on Manny's side,” said Sommer. “He supports him. And so, Manny says ‘I'm out of jail. I've avoided violating my release conditions by not quite getting back on the mall. And now I'm giving an exclusive interview to a puppet. I'm not a sicko.’”

“I don't know why he didn't come to the Bulwark podcast. I was available,” quipped Miller, praising his talent for laundering flawed personalities in a public forum.

Throughout the show, Rachtelli insisted on his innocence to his lilac-colored host.

“I just went past my pockets to get something out of them,” Rachtelli told Edgar, while calling witness accounts of his behavior “shoddy at best” and “total hearsay.”

“What is up with that tongue,” complained Stein, watching the video and referring to Rachtelli’s disturbing habit of punctuating statements with a flicking tongue.

“Okay, everybody. It's a weird world out there,” concluded Miller.

Describing MAGA’s revolt over goofy culture war issues like non-white people playing roles in historical dramas and Christopher Nolan’s the Odessey, former GOP lawmaker and conservative MS NOW host Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are destined to misunderstand the true nature of America.

“The Odyssey, it was an extraordinary movie, and there's nothing I love reading more than MAGA Tears,” Scarborough told Bulwark editor Sam Stein.

“Have you been reading all of it? It's unbelievable,” said Stein, describing MAGA outcry at the movie for depicting Helen of Troy as a Black woman and hiring trans man actor Elliot Page to play the Greek soldier Sinon.

“Oh, my God, it is unbelievable,” confirmed Scarborough. “You have Ben Shapiro and other people, they're saying, ‘no, this is a great movie.’ And people are like, ‘you're a traitor to the cause out there. How dare you?’ Which goes back, … to where we began with Pat Buchanan. You know, Pat looked at America, I think, as a white America and an America of the 1950s. You can even say the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was first elected, I think 86 percent of Americans were white. It was still a pretty big number. And what I always thought Pat didn't get, and I told him this, what Donald Trump has never gotten, what [Trump advisor] Stephen Miller will never get, is America is not about blood and soil. America is not about race. America is about a creed: America at its best.”

“My family's lived in this country across the Deep South for about 400 years,” Scarborough continued. “We go back a long, long way, from being poor in Georgia to being poor in South Carolina. What I love about this country is that my family's been here for 400 years, and yet today, somewhere in America, somebody will raise their hand, they will take that oath, they will agree with that creed, and they will become every bit as much of an American as me and members of my family. I think that is something not only to celebrate, but to thank God for, that we live in that country.”

MAGA, however, appears happy to demonize the movie, even though a growing sector of social media appears to be reluctantly admitting Nolan’s blockbuster is actually good and features great pacing and solid acting and story.

“Just saw The Odyssey. Despite what you may have heard, literally all of the criticisms by conservatives were entirely correct,” ranted right-wing political podcaster and anti-democracy pundit Martt Walsh on X. The movie is just as woke as you fear, if not more so. The DEI casting is atrocious. Completely takes you out of the story right from the beginning.

Critics, however, blasted Walsh and others for “dying” on a dumb hill -- as well as encouraging movie viewership by adopting a public stance in the first place.

“Every ‘conservative’ is sharing their lengthy dissents … after giving their money to see it,” said one critic on X under Walsh’s post. “This is why we lose.”

Guardian writer Chris Stein says do not expect the lock-step Republican Party to find it’s spine and wholly disown it’s MAGA king in time for the November midterms — but you can expect a smattering of GOP adherents to break away as a matter of political survival.

“The wrath of Donald Trump has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus far,” said Stein. “But as the November midterm elections draw closer, the president’s allies in the Senate and House of Representatives appear increasingly willing to defy a president who appears to have asked lawmakers for too much in some areas and too little in others, all while the public sours on his administration.”

Stein points out that in both chambers, tiny enclaves of Republicans have joined with Democrats to advance resolutions requiring that Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing hostilities against Iran. Republican dissidents in the House, he said, have helped Democrats pass another round of aid for U.S. ally Ukraine in its effort to repel an invasion by Trump’s friend Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Other joined Democrats in an effort to protect Haitians from deportation. In the Senate, a host of Republican senators stepped up to give Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, “a cold reception.”

Republicans do not disagree with Trump unless they want the tiny MAGA turnout in Republican primaries to replace them with Trump’s chosen puppet, but Stein says Republicans “appear bedeviled by the complications of their three-seat majority in the Senate, and historically slim hold on the House.”

“While they managed to enact a major domestic policy bill less than six months after Trump’s inauguration, the president has made few serious asks of Congress in the months since, leaving lawmakers to navigate shutdowns instigated by Democrats in protest of his policies and the brouhaha over the government’s investigation into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein,” said Stein.

And Trump “has made no apologies for his apparent disengagement with the concerns of congressional Republicans,” said Stein, reminding readers that the president announced at a recent cabinet meeting that: “I don’t care about the midterms.”

However, the GOP does. Trump’s approval ratings are historically low and Democrats are leading Republicans on the generic ballot. Gas prices are high and polls show voters believe Trump’s entirely voluntary war on Iran is afflicting them with inflation.

Those trends may indeed have been motivating defections by some lawmakers, particularly Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Reps. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) But if Republicans are looking for a sudden rash of independence to save their reputation with voters in the midterms, they should temper their enthusiasm, said Doug Heye, a former House Republican leadership aide. Instances of Republicans standing up to the president “may be less significant than they appear,” and thus unlikely to convince voters the party can act as any sort of mediating influence over the president.

“What does it say about Trump’s hold on the party that 1.8 percent of the House Republican conference voted against him? I’d submit nothing,” he said.

Officials in Trump-voting North Carolina say new requirements under President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful bill will place significant financial and administrative burdens on local SNAP operations, reports WTVD. The new strain arrives as state staff work desperately with growing demand and limited resources.

A provision of Trump’s law — that state Republicans did not like to talk about during its passage out of the Republican-controlled U.S. House and Senate — will increase costs associated with administering the state’s SNAP program beginning in October 2026.

“County officials said the federal government's share of those administrative costs will be reduced, leaving states responsible for a larger portion. North Carolina is passing those costs on to counties,” reports WTVD. “Those costs are estimated at $69 million annually for counties statewide.”

"We won't have the funds to do that," said Latoya Chambers, assistant director of the Family Economic Independence Division.

Chambers added that state concerns extend beyond expanded administrative costs. Beginning in October 2027, states with SNAP payment error rates of 6 percent or higher will be required to pay a portion of benefit costs.

To fund the extension of Trump’s controversial tax cuts, H.R. 1 punishes states for accounting errors, even if the errors are not intended. County staff must also implement new beneficiary requirements and policies under H.R. 1. The changes include expanded work requirements, changes to noncitizen eligibility, and additional eligibility checks and recertifications.

"We've seen an influx of people coming in applying for services," said Chambers, adding that the department does not have enough workers to meet current or new demands required by the Trump administration.

"We should have about 14 to 15 application workers, I only have nine workers determining eligibility for all residents in Durham County," she said.

Worse, if N.C. and other minimally staffed Southern states fail to process cases accurately, they could lose their SNAP program entirely because the payment error rate is going to also be attached to the administrative costs, Chambers said.

WTVD reports upwards of 500,000 children across the state could lose the ability to eat the only meal that they have to survive on each and every day, if that happens.

"It's going to be severely devastating,” warned 4th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee, one of only three Democrats representing the state. “We know that counties don't have the funding to provide for the number of people who will need that kind of assistance. And so to push the responsibility down to states who are now pushing that responsibility down to the counties, it is not going to work. And Congress needs to act and it needs to provide that funding that we know the states and the counties can not do.”

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, called the megabill — supported by every congressional Republican from North Carolina with the exception of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis — a “disgrace.” And now facing the ruin of a major social safety net, Republican legislators in many Trump-voting states are desperately trying to delay or navigate Trump’s rule change.

No North Carolina Congressional Republicans commented for this story.