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Trump administration offers bizarre new explanation for refusing to fund food stamps

Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its website with an expanded message blaming Democrats’ support for “illegal aliens” and gender-affirming care for transgender people as reasons “mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us” will be denied “critical nutrition assistance.” Benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are expected to be shut off on November 1 due to the federal government shutdown, although some say there are funds available that legally can be used to continue benefits.

On Saturday, visitors to USDA.gov were confronted with this message: “Due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown, this government website will not be updated during the funding lapse. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.”

Some experts have said similar messages may violate the Hatch Act.

On Sunday, the message was changed to read: “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”

It then went on to blame Democrats for continuing to “hold out for healthcare” for “illegal aliens,” before adding also a coarse description of gender affirming care, including surgery, for transgender people.

The federal government has been shut down since October 1. At 27 days, this is the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. The longest, 35 days, was during President Trump’s first term.

About 42 million people access Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help feed themselves and their families. The vast majority of adults using SNAP have at least one job.

Democrats have refused to vote to re-open the government because Republicans have said they will not negotiate on reinstating subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Millions of Americans may see their monthly health care premiums double or even triple, some experts have said. Double-digit increases, at least, are expected. Millions are expected to lose their health care as a result of the canceled subsidies.

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Trump USDA sec wants Americans to have more 'access' to program Republicans just defunded

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed Medicaid is “bankrupting” the states, while suggesting that “healthy” foods could serve to help reduce health care costs. Yet both Medicaid and nutrition programs like SNAP were slashed under President Donald Trump and Republicans’ so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law just ten days ago.

“Medicaid is bankrupting almost every state,” Secretary Rollins claimed in remarks on Monday (video below).

With the Republicans gutting over $1 trillion in federal Medicaid funds, and approximately $200 billion in SNAP funds, states face either picking up that massive shortfall or cutting some programs, benefits, or users.

Medicaid is “taking between 30, 40, 45, 50 percent of the state budgets, and has for a really long time, for those of us who come from state policy, we know this very, very well,” Rollins continued. State funds for Medicaid (not including federal matching funds) account for less than 20 percent of state budgets, overall, according to the Pew Research Center.

Secretary Rollins previously served as a policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry and led the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation. More recently, she headed the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank dedicated to advancing President Trump’s first post-presidency agenda.

Rollins decried what she says is the number one purchase using SNAP funds: “sugary drinks and junk food.”

“Frankly, we have to make a change,” she insisted.

“So there is a lot of wholesale across the government that we can do, but there’s also a recognition that a lot of these communities that are part of the Medicaid program, they don’t always have access to healthy food,” Rollins continued, not mentioning the billions the BBB Act gutted from both.

Rollins insisted the federal government has to do “a better job through our nutrition programs, through our partnerships, et cetera, of ensuring that those communities have access to healthy foods.”

“So on the back end, we have programs that are not bankrupting our government.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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'Let's break it down': Ex-RNC chair buries Trump USDA secretary in brutal fact-check

President Donald Trump's new massive tax and spending law makes more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, partially through imposing stringent new work requirements on recipients. One of his Cabinet secretaries recently posed a solution to Medicaid beneficiaries scrambling to deal with their new reality — hard manual labor on American farms. U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke maintained that all undocumented immigrants, including farm workers, should be deported, but argued that they could be easily replaced with Medicaid recipients.

"Ultimately, the answer on this is automation. Also, some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program," Rollins said recently. "There are plenty of workers in America."

During a Thursday segment on MSNBC's "The Weeknight," co-host Michael Steele — the former lieutenant governor of Maryland who also once chaired the Republican National Committee — took issue with Rollins' remarks. He observed that at the time of the broadcast, there was an ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a farm in Oxnard, California "in which workers are. being detained and some have already been arrested" and suggested that her idea was both nonsensical and nearly impossible to implement.

"Apparently, this is the plan of this administration. I knew we were going to have this conversation. I really wanted to sort of get in front of people. Who are we talking about? Who's the secretary talking about, 34 million able bodied individuals?" Steele said. "Let's. break it down."

Steele cited research from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) showing that of the tens of millions of people on Medicaid, 38% are children, 17% live in rural areas and 15% have at least three chronic health conditions. Additionally, KFF's data showed that roughly 70% of adults who receive Medicaid are already working (44% have full-time employment and the other 26% are working part-time).

"And that 30% of folks that are not working, guess what? They're not working because they have to care for other family members who otherwise don't get cared for. They have illness or disability. They they have school attendance issues they've got to deal with because they're trying to better themselves, even though they're living in poverty," he said. "It's amazing to me how they want to rebrand and reframe the storyline ... about human beings who are just trying to get through the damn day, who are just trying to care for a loved one, who just trying to raise their families and have enough to deal with in that vein, and then layer on top of that, being poor and having to find health care wherever they can get it. And this program is there for them."

"And so now this secretary wants to ship them off and put them in a field?" He added. "Because she thinks they're able bodied and should be working?"

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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'Wildly unpopular': Trump slammed after opening 30% of US National Forest land to logging

The Trump administration announced plans Monday to roll back a conservation rule that has protected nearly 60 million acres of undeveloped national forest land for over 20 years — a decision that has triggered strong opposition from environmental advocates and conservationists.

The proposed changes would pave the way for expanded logging and road construction in some of the country’s most pristine wilderness, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins revealed that the administration is initiating efforts to repeal protections covering approximately 59 million acres of roadless forest, including a significant portion of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — a nearly 9-million-acre expanse of old-growth wilderness, per the Post. Rollins made these remarks while speaking before a gathering of Western governors in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates have swiftly denounced the move and vowed legal action against it.

If finalized and upheld in court, the rollback would eliminate safeguards on around 30% of the National Forest System. According to the Agriculture Department, this includes more than 90 percent of Tongass, one of the planet’s largest remaining temperate rainforests.

In a statement highlighted by the Post, the department — home to the U.S. Forest Service — labeled the Roadless Area Conservation Rule “outdated."

The statement went on to say that it “goes against the mandate of the USDA Forest Service to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands.”

Chris Wood, chief executive of the conservation group Trout Unlimited, told the Post the administration’s decision “feels a little bit like a solution in search of a problem.”

“There are provisions within the roadless rule that allow for wildfire fighting,” Wood said. “My hope is once they go through a rulemaking process, and they see how wildly unpopular and unnecessary this is, common sense will prevail.”

Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, told The Post: “The roadless rule has protected 58 million acres of our wildest national forest lands from clear-cutting for more than a generation."

“The Trump administration now wants to throw these forest protections overboard so the timber industry can make huge money from unrestrained logging," he added.

Originally implemented in the late 1990s under former President Bill Clinton, the roadless rule was developed to preserve increasingly rare undeveloped areas in national forests. Environmental groups have long viewed these lands as crucial habitats for wildlife threatened by expanding development and industrial-scale logging operations.

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'Absolutely alarming': Critics say Trump building 'surveillance weapon' for poor Americans

The Department of Agriculture is reportedly asking states to supply personal details of people receiving food aid, including Social Security numbers, addresses and, in at least one state, citizenship status.

NPR reported Friday that the information collected has been used to disseminate false accusations regarding undocumented immigrants receiving public assistance and engaging in fraud, as well as to bolster enforcement and deportation initiatives.

The report states that NPR acquired emails indicating that the nationwide guidance for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was issued in response to a request from federal auditors for information that included citizenship details. The request did not encompass other data usually used to confirm financial eligibility for the program.

In a letter dated May 6 addressed to all states, an advisor for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services stated that the federal agency would be collecting personally identifiable information from SNAP applicants and recipients, including, but not limited to, "names, dates of birth, personal addresses used, and Social Security numbers" dating back to January 1, 2020.

The letter referenced President Donald Trump's March 20 executive order, "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos," which mandates that agencies ensure the federal government "has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding," including data from "third-party databases," to help identify fraud.

DOGE has faced backlash for retrieving sensitive information across various federal agencies in recent months by citing allegations of wasteful and fraudulent spending.

Jon Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, told NPR the demands are "absolutely alarming."

"It is an unprecedented extension of the administration's campaign to consolidate personal data," he said, adding that the database could be used as a "surveillance weapon" that "can be put to all sorts of adverse uses in the future."

The NPR report notes that in 2024, the Department of Agriculture reported that SNAP assisted an average of 42 million individuals each month, costing approximately $100 billion.

Eligibility for SNAP benefits is limited to certain categories of lawfully present noncitizens, while those lacking legal status are ineligible. But a noncitizen parent without legal status can still apply for assistance to support their U.S. citizen children.

AlterNet reached out to a DOGE spokesperson for comment.

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Farmers sound alarm as Trump's potential damage to food supply 'could be long-lasting'

President Donald Trump’s dramatic cuts have hit many parts of the federal government, but one worth paying particular attention to is reductions to agencies and programs that are working to protect plant and animal health, the New York Times reported Wednesday. Firings at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration could mean possible threats to food safety and animal health.

Emily Anthes and Apoorva Mandavilli write: “The damage could be long-lasting. Workers whose jobs were spared said that the upheaval had left them eyeing the exits, and graduate students said they were reconsidering careers in the federal government. The shrinking work force could also have far-reaching consequences for trade and food security and leave the nation unequipped to tackle future threats to plant and animal health, experts said.”

John Ternest was laid off from the USDA, where he was getting ready to study bee health and pollination. “These really were indiscriminate firings,” he told the Times. “We don’t know what we’ve lost until it’s potentially too late.”

Among fired USDA workers were people combating bird flu, but then their terminations were later rescinded. The agency was in the middle of hiring more people to work on the response, but the federal hiring freeze nixed the process.

Thousands of employees were laid off from the USDA, including about 400 people employed at its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Some worked to combat invasive insects that killed plants, while others made sure that agriculture entering the country did not have pests or pathogens. There are reportedly already delays in U.S. ports due to the firings.

“Over the longer term,” Anthes and Mandavilli write, “if agricultural pests and pathogens found their way into the country, they could infest the nation’s homegrown crops, threatening food security and reducing demand for American agricultural products abroad.”

“If the United States gets a reputation for having dirty products, does that mean other countries will also, you know, step in and say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to buy your goods’?” an official said.

Another part of the department hit hard was the veterinary services program, which checks imported livestock for disease and is working to combat bird flu, while firings at the CDC could put pets at risk. The agency regulates the entry of animals to the United States.

“For example, the agency does not permit dogs that have recently been in countries with a high prevalence of rabies to enter the United States unless they have been vaccinated against the disease,” Anthes and Mandavilli write.

About half of the CDC employees at the port health stations were fired. Some stations are now unattended.

Firings at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine could also stymie the approval of new medicine for animals and allow dangerous products to be put on the market.

About 800 people were fired from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, which stopped a variety of research projects, such as a project looking at potato disease. And fired employees at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska had been researching food safety and salmonella.

“We understand and respect the federal government’s desire to cut wasteful spending, but the truth of the matter is, U.S. MARC does not fall in that category,” the Nebraska Cattlemen Association said. The work at the center, “has potential to reduce costs for the beef industry long term and improve food safety for consumers.”

Some, but not all, of the scientists at the agency were reinstated.

“I think that people that want to earnestly do science are going to be viewing and remembering these decisions and how scientists are being treated,” said a scientist who was fired and rehired.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins “fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers and the agriculture community,” a USDA spokesman said.

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'Utter incompetence': Federal agency rehires crucial workers after 'accidentally' firing them — again

The latest workers to come in the crosshairs as the Trump administration moves to cut the federal government through mass firings and funding freezes are workers at the Department of Agriculture. NBC News reported Tuesday that the agency fired “several” employees over the weekend and is now trying to rehire them.

The fired employees have been working on the H5N1 avian flu outbreak, or bird flu.

"Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," a USDA spokesperson told NBC News in a statement.

“They need to be more cautious,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is part of the Agriculture Committee, told NBC News of the Department of Government Accountability, which is the group carrying out the firings. “There’s an old saying, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Well, they are measuring once and having to cut twice. Some of this stuff they’re going to have to return back. I just wish they’d make a better decision up front.”

“You don’t accidentally fire someone,” CNN commentator and former South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers posted on X. “You don’t accidentally fire [people] working on bird flu or [people] who oversee our nuclear arsenal. What you are seeing is incompetence, utter incompetence. This isn’t DEI or wokeness, this is stupidity for the sake of being l stupid. Now please make your excuses below…”

Last week, the Trump administration fired people working at the National Nuclear Security Administration, sparking national security concerns. They quickly reversed the firings.

“Understand USDA is now fast tracking to rehire front line employees working on bird flu outbreaks. They were ‘accidentally’ fired by the administration. Translation: Nice job [Elon] Musk! You and your friends will still get your tax breaks, but higher egg prices for everyone else,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) posted on Bluesky.

Musk has been working with Trump on the cuts, although his official role is unclear.

“Egg prices are SKYROCKETING because the government can't contain bird flu. Then Musk and Trump FIRED the top bird flu experts -- because they had no idea what vital work they did. Now they're scrambling to undo their massive mistake,” lawyer Tristan Snell posted on X.

The USDA said over the weekend that egg prices have reached record highs’; a dozen eggs now costs $7.44. And according to the USDA, 23 million birds have been affected by bird flu.

“If bird flu escalates into a pandemic, with this kind of leadership, we are going to be toast,” scientist Dr. Lucky Tran posted on Bluesky.

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'Do not comply': Inspector general who defied pink slip from Trump escorted out by security

Last Friday, President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors general throughout multiple federal agencies. Now, one of the independent federal watchdogs Trump fired is pushing back.

Reuters reported Wednesday that U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector general Phyllis Fong, who is a 22-year veteran of the agency, was recently escorted out of the building by security after she refused to leave her role following Trump's announcement that she had been fired. While Fong didn't directly comment, she sent an email to her colleagues saying that the Independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency had "taken the position that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time."

Trump defended the firing of the inspectors general — independent officials within federal agencies who monitor waste, fraud and abuse — by saying it was a "very common thing to do." And the White House argued the president's actions were necessary, saying that "rogue, partisan bureaucrats... have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy."

While Trump is able to fire inspectors general and replace them with new appointees, the Inspector General Act of 1974 requires that he first give Congress a 30-day notice that he plans to fire an inspector general, and list a specific cause for their firing. Even Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is one of Trump's biggest allies in the Senate, co-signed a letter with Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) insisting that the president "immediately" comply with the law.

"While [inspectors general] aren't immune from committing acts that require their removal, and they can be removed by the president, the law must be followed," Grassley and Durbin wrote on Tuesday. "The communication to Congress must contain more than broad and vague statements, rather it must include sufficient facts and details to assure Congress and the public that the termination is due to real concerns about the inspector General's ability to carry out their mission."

Both Grassley and Durbin called on Trump to reinstate the fired inspectors general on an "acting" basis in order to comply with the 30-day waiting period, and requested he appoint "qualified and non-partisan individuals" to replace them. Trump has so far not responded to their letter.

Reuters reported that Fong had been investigating billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — also a top Trump advisor — over his Neuralink brain implant startup before she was fired. She was also investigating the listeria outbreak at Boar's Head that resulted in tainted meat hitting supermarket delicatessens across the country. She was also overseeing the USDA's response to ongoing bird flu outbreak affecting poultry and eggs.

Click here to read Reuters' report in full.

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Trump Administration's New Orwellian GMO Labels Won't Actually Say 'GMO'

On August 1, 2016, then-President Obama signed a meaningless so-called mandatory GMO labeling law that, for all practical purposes, ended an intense four-year grassroots-led campaign for consumers' right to know if their food is genetically engineered, or contains genetically engineered ingredients.

Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has unveiled its proposed version of GMO labels. Wait until you see them. All bright and cheery, with sunburst and smiley-faced images—but without "GMO" appearing anywhere on the labels. (You can see all of the proposed images here.)

According to Politico, the USDA's long-awaited 106-page proposal for how companies must disclose the presence of genetically modified ingredients in their products includes eliminating the words "genetically modified" or "genetically engineered” and replacing them with "bioengineered."

That means no more "GMO"—instead, consumers will see “BE” on the environmentally friendly looking green and yellow images.

The images are just as insulting to consumers as the law, which the chemical and junk food industry lobbyists spent $400 million to pass—under the specious name of the "Safe and Affordable Food Labeling Act."

Opponents renamed the loophole-ridden bill the "Dark (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act" because its intent is clear: Keep consumers in the dark, by creating a long list of exemptions and/or by allowing companies to opt for electronic "smart labels" instead of clear, plain language that anyone can easily read.

The Dark Act preempted states from requiring labels on GMO foods, including Vermont, which had previously passed a GMO labeling law that took effect one month before Obama signed the Dark Act. Vermont's law required far more foods and ingredients to be identified than the federal law that preempted it, and also required on-package labels stating "produced with genetic engineering."

The USDA has until the July 29, 2018, deadline for completing the rulemaking process for the law that industry lobbyists and their friends in Congress claim will establish a "mandatory national standard" for GMO labeling—but will, in reality, do little or nothing to help consumers identify GMO foods.