The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families; ProPublica, April 28, 2026

 Eli Hager, ProPublica; The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families

"Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is poised to penalize people like Burton simply for living in the same home as their families, according to four federal officials, internal emails and a federal regulatory listing. The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third — about $330 a month in Burton’s case — or ending their support altogether.

The effort to cut SSI for families who also rely on food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was initiated by top White House and Department of Government Efficiency officials last year, multiple Social Security officials said. It marks a second attempt by the Trump administration to quietly but dramatically downsize disability benefit programs overseen by the Social Security Administration, despite those programs’ strict eligibility standards and minimal instances of fraud. White House Budget Director Russell Vought and Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano abandoned a different proposed regulation involving disability payments last year after ProPublica and other news outlets reported on the harm that the plan would cause to hundreds of thousands of largely blue-collar workers in red states. (The disability programs are administered by the Social Security Administration but separate from the retirement program for which the agency is named. The Trump administration has promised not to cut Social Security retirement payments.)

The likely SSI cut will affect not just younger adults with disabilities such as Down syndrome and severe autism who are still living at home with their low-income parents, but also older people with health or financial problems who have had to move in with their adult children on tight budgets. All told, as many as 400,000 poor and disabled people and indigent older people across the United States could have their support cut or eliminated, according to a ProPublica analysis of actuarial figures from the Social Security Administration."

Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

 

Mariana Alfaro

 and 

Hannah Natanson

, The Washington Post ; Trump administration prepares to fire worker for TV interview about SNAP

"Debra D’Agostino, a federal employment lawyer, argued that Mei probably has a strong case against her dismissal. Mei’s speech was almost certainly protected under both the First Amendment and the Whistleblower Protection Act, D’Agostino said.

There have been at least two Supreme Court cases — Pickering v. Board of Education in 1968 and Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean in 2015 — in which the justices decided in favor of staffers accused by their employers of speaking out of turn, D’Agostino noted. In the first, the court ruled for a teacher who had written to a newspaper criticizing the superintendent, saying the educator had a right to speak on matters of public concern so long as she was not knowingly lying.

In the second, the court ruled for a Transportation Security Administration staffer who the government accused of revealing “sensitive security information” to a reporter. In that case, the court decided the staffer’s activity was covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, which says federal workers can report lawbreaking or anything that poses a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."

The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense; The Washington Post, November 7, 2025

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense

" In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

That same amount of money could pay for about four years’ worth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government program that distributes more than $90 billion in yearly food assistance to 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits are in limbo for now during the government shutdown...

Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That’s according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies’ stock held by investors."

Trump is threatening the basic needs of poor Americans. How low he has sunk; The Guardian, November 7, 2025

Robert Reich , The Guardian; Trump is threatening the basic needs of poor Americans. How low he has sunk

[Kip Currier: This is a very persuasive opinion piece by Robert Reich on moral authority and moral sustainability. I encourage everyone to reflect on these observations (excerpted below) about the contrast between FDR's actions in the 1930's and Trump's actions now and share them with others. Each of us has a choice we can make as to which approach we support and advance: adding more and more wealth to the ultra-rich or showing compassion and generosity to persons in need.

For those who follow a religious tradition, too, ask yourself which approach your higher power would support? Giving more money to a billionaire -- even potential trillionaire Elon Musk -- or providing compassionate assistance to a school with hungry children, a military family experiencing food scarcity, or a disabled individual with ongoing healthcare needs who is unable to work?

Realistically, we can't imbue a moral conscience or basic sense of decency upon those who even now emulate the Gilded Age Robber Barons, as Trump's Halloween Great Gatsby party unequivocally demonstrated while SNAP food benefits were being eliminated. However, we can make a choice each day about what each of us can do to help someone in need and support political candidates and organizations who are helping those less fortunate than we are.]

Eighty-eight years ago, in his second inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told America that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

It was not a test of the nation’s military might or of the size of the national economy. It was a test of our moral authority. We had a duty to comfort the afflicted, even if that required afflicting the comfortable.

The Trump regime has adopted the reverse metric. The test of its progress is whether it adds to the abundance of those who have much and provides less for those who have too little.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/07/trump-snap-medicaid-moral-authority

[Excerpt]

"How low Trump has sunk.

Eighty-eight years ago, in his second inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told America that “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

It was not a test of the nation’s military might or of the size of the national economy. It was a test of our moral authority. We had a duty to comfort the afflicted, even if that required afflicting the comfortable.

The Trump regime has adopted the reverse metric. The test of its progress is whether it adds to the abundance of those who have much and provides less for those who have too little. It is passing this test with flying colors.

What is the Democrats’ demand amid the shutdown? That lower-income Americans continue to receive subsidized healthcare. Otherwise, healthcare premiums for millions of lower-income Americans will soar next year in large part because the Trump Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act (really, Big Ugly Bill) slashed Obamacare subsidies.

Republicans had rammed the Big Ugly Bill through Congress without giving Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster it because Republicans used a process called “reconciliation”, requiring only a majority vote of the Senate.

The Big Ugly Bill also requires Medicaid applicants and enrollees – also low-income – to document at least 80 hours of work per month

Many people dependent on Medicaid won’t be able to do this, either because they’re not physically able to work or won’t be able to do the required paperwork to qualify for an exemption from the work requirement.

The Congressional Budget Office, as assessed by KFF, estimates the work requirement will be the largest source of Medicaid savings, reducing federal spending on the low-income Americans by $326bn over 10 years and causing millions to become uninsured.

All told, the Big Ugly Bill cuts roughly $1tn over the next decade from programs for which the main beneficiaries are the poor and working class, and gives about $1tn in tax benefits to the richest members of our society.

It is the most dramatic reversal of FDR’s moral test in American history.

By the time of FDR’s second inaugural address in 1937, most of the country was still ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Yet we were all in it together. The fortunes of the robber barons of the Gilded Age had mostly been leveled by the Great Crash of 1929...

Trump is throwing a huge party for America’s wealthy – giving them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks to ensure that their wealth (and support for him) continues to grow.

Meanwhile, he is throwing to poor and working-class Americans the red meat of hatefulness – hate of immigrants, people of color, the “deep state”, “socialists”, “communists”, transgender people and Democrats.

This is the formula strongmen have used for a century – more wealth for the wealthy, more bigotry for the working-class and poor – until the entire facade crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

On Tuesday, millions of American voters refused to go along with this unfairness. They repudiated, loudly and clearly, the formula Trump and his regime have used.

It is the responsibility of all of us to return the nation to a path that is morally sustainable."

Supreme Court temporarily blocks full SNAP benefits even as they'd started to go out; Indiana Public Media, NPR, November 7, 2025

 Jennifer Ludden , Indiana Public Media, NPR; Supreme Court temporarily blocks full SNAP benefits even as they'd started to go out

"The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily granted the Trump administration's request to block full SNAP food benefits during the government shutdown, even as residents in some states had already begun receiving them.

The Trump administration is appealing a court order to fully restart the country's largest anti-hunger program. The high court decision late Friday gives a lower court time to consider a more lasting pause.

The move may add to confusion, though, since the government said it was sending states money on Friday to fully fund SNAP at the same time it appealed the order to pay for them.

Shortly after U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. issued that decision Thursday afternoon, states started to announce they'd be issuing full SNAP benefits. Some people woke up Friday with the money already on the debit-like EBT cards they use to buy groceries. The number of states kept growing, and included California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Connecticut among others.

The Supreme Court's decision means states must, for now, revert back to the partial payments the Trump administration had earlier instructed them to distribute. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the administration's request for an administrative stay, the appeals court said it would consider the request for the stay and intends to issue a decision as quickly as possible.

Funding for the nation's largest anti-hunger program ran out a week ago, as the federal shutdown entered its second month. States, cities and food banks have been ramping up donations desperately trying to fill the gap. Nearly 42 million people rely on SNAP, most of them extremely low-income families with children, along with seniors, or people with disabilities.

In his order, Judge McConnell admonished the government for deciding earlier in the week to make only partial SNAP payments. He said officials failed to consider the "needless suffering" that would cause millions of people who rely on that aid. He also suggested they had delayed the partial payments for "political reasons.""