Food

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares48 Views

    Trump administration blocked from suspending Snap benefits for millions of Americans

    by

    Two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings on Friday in separate cases ordering the Trump administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown.A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday afternoon blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union.At almost the same time, in a separate but similar case, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the government must continue to fund the program that helps low-income households stave off food insecurity, in a case brought by the Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors who sued the administration.Without intervention, the US Department of Agriculture said it planned to suspend payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as Snap or food stamps, on Saturday, 1 November, putting millions of low-income households that rely on the benefits at risk of food insecurity and financial hardship.John McConnell, a US district judge in Providence, issued a temporary restraining order in the Rhode Island case at the behest of those plaintiffs. They had argued that the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap benefits due to kick in on Saturday was unlawful.Snap, the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, provides assistance to nearly 42 million – one in eight – low-income Americans each month. The USDA has said insufficient funds exist to pay full benefits, as issuing food stamps costs the public purse between $8.5bn and $9bn every month.The Trump administration contends the agency lacks authority to pay them until Congress passes a spending bill that will ending the enduring government shutdown which began on 1 October.The plaintiffs in the civil case being heard in Rhode Island are represented by the liberal legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The group argued that the federal government’s decision to suspend the nutritional benefits was wrong and unlawful, as the USDA still had funds available to fulfill its obligation to fund the Snap program.Such available funding includes $5.25bn in contingency funds that Congress has previously provided for the USDA to use when “necessary to carry out program operations”, the plaintiffs said.Aside from the contingency funds, the plaintiffs argued that a separate fund with about $23bn in it could also be utilized to avoid what would be an unprecedented suspension of Snap benefits.In the Massachusetts case, the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partly pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.The rulings are likely to face appeals.In their challenge, the Democratic-led states argued that the agriculture department has the legal authority – and available funds – to at least partly maintain the program during the shutdown.“Because of [the] USDA’s actions, Snap benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception,” the states said in their complaint. “Worse still, [the] USDA suspended Snap benefits even though, on information and belief, it has funds available to it that are sufficient to fund all, or at least a substantial portion, of November Snap benefits.”The Trump administration has maintained that the department’s contingency fund is intended for natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, not government shutdowns. The government has acknowledged that it has billions of federal dollars left, including emergency funds especially marked for Snap, but top officials have maintained they are unable to tap into those reserve funds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration warned that a court order requiring it to use emergency reserves to fund Snap would be “operationally fraught”, arguing it could take weeks to deliver benefits and might leave families with less than half their normal monthly allotment. In court filings, officials noted that such a partial payment “has never been made – and for good reason”.The argument appears to contradict the department’s lapsed-funding plan, released in late September, which stated that Congress’s “evident” intent was for Snap operations to continue during a government shutdown and pointed to “multi-year contingency funds” that could be tapped in the event the closures dragged on. The plan has been removed from the department’s website.The USDA’s website now carries a strikingly partisan notice, accusing Senate Democrats, incorrectly, of shutting down the government to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants and trans Americans. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”The administration’s refusal to intervene underscored a broader strategy during the shutdown, now the second-longest in US history. Throughout the impasse, Trump has selectively reprogrammed federal funds to protect priorities central to his political agenda – such as paying troops and law enforcement officers, including those involved in immigration enforcement – while allowing other programs like Snap to starve.Bracing for the loss of federal nutrition assistance, food banks and pantries, already stretched thin amid rising food prices, were bracing for a surge in demand. Officials in states such as Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Hawaii and Minnesota have announced plans to tap state and local funds to provide food aid and assist food banks in the interim.The governors of New York, Delaware, Oregon and Virginia have declared the looming crisis a state of emergency, while states set aside millions to help offset the lapse of federal benefits.“Unlike Washington Republicans, I won’t sit idly by as families struggle to put food on the table,” New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced on Thursday.In California, the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said he would deploy the California national guard under his command to support food banks and announced $80m in state support to fill the Snap gap.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

    More stories

    • 200 Shares42 Views

      in US Politics

      Share how the ongoing US government shutdown could affect your access to food or health insurance

      by

      More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.Meanwhile, Democrats are also refusing to vote to end the shutdown because health insurance costs are set to go up dramatically as insurers prepare for a lapse in subsidies. Senate Democrats are demanding that any short-term government funding deal include an extension of the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, while Trump and the Republicans have said they will not negotiate until the government is back up and running. Extending the subsidies would require $350bn in federal spending over the coming decade.We’d like to hear from Americans who are about to lose Snap food assistance due to the shutdown, as well as from people whose healthcare may become unaffordable due to rising premiums. Have you received any notices or paperwork that your insurance will change soon? Tell us. More

    • 138 Shares118 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr railed against ultra-processed foods. Trump’s policies encourage their production

      by

      As health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country’s chronic illness and obesity crises, and urged Americans to limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes and preservatives.Amid a slew of controversial and unbacked public health claims, his stance on ultra-processed foods is one of his least polarizing. More than 65% of Americans say they are in favor of reforming processed foods to remove added sugars and added dyes, according to a January Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center poll.Yet while RFK Jr touts the importance of eliminating ultra-processed foods from the US diet, nutrition experts say several of the Trump administration policies, including massive subsidies to corn and soy farms, undermine that goal.“Maha leadership is really failing on their promise to fight chronic disease, and they’re betraying the members of the public who put their trust in them to address this very real problem that Americans are really concerned about,” said Aviva Musicus, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.In September, Kennedy’s health and human services department released the “Make America Healthy Again” strategy report, billing it as a roadmap to improve children’s health. The report named highly processed foods as a leading driver behind the rising rates of chronic disease in children and outlined more than 120 recommendations, including educational campaigns to promote new, forthcoming dietary guidelines; advancing policies to restrict food dye additives; and potential revisions to nutrition information rule-making.The report has been criticized by nutrition and public health experts, however, for its focus on voluntary action over meaningful regulation of food and chemical companies. It suggests tracking Americans’ exposure to chemicals and pesticides, but does not impose any limitations on pesticide use, for example. Despite poor diet being named as a harm to children’s health, it does not suggest regulating the majority of additives in ultra-processed foods (UPFs).It instead proposes developing a government-wide definition to “support potential future research and policy activity”. The plan also recommends the exploration of “potential industry guidelines”, to limit the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Some advocates say that the report’s goals clash with the Trump administration’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), Medicaid and scientific funding, all of which are essential to public health.“When it comes to food, Maha doesn’t seem particularly interested in regulation, despite talking about the need to protect consumers from industry influence and the harms the industry is creating,” Musicus said.A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a statement to the Guardian: “The MAHA Strategy is a comprehensive plan with more than 120 initiatives designed to reverse the failed policies that have fueled America’s childhood chronic disease epidemic. It represents the most ambitious reform agenda in modern history – realigning our food and health systems, transforming education, and unleashing science to safeguard America’s children and families.”She added: “HHS is committed to serving the American people, not special interests, by delivering radical transparency and upholding gold-standard science.”Ultra-processed foods are industrially altered food products that include processed additives to improve taste, convenience and shelf life. Making up as much as 73% of the US food supply, UPFs have been linked to a number of health risks including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, digestive and microbiome issues, and adverse mental health.Many of the additives in UPFs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch, dextrose, soy lecithin and maltodextrin, are derivatives of corn and soy, two commodity crops that receive millions in agricultural subsidies. Trump’s reconciliation bill, signed into law in July, increases spending on these subsidies by $52bn over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. (Subsidy payments increased even as programs like Snap, which in 2024 provided food and nutrition assistance to 41 million Americans, faced significant cuts.)Subsidies for corn and soy “have definitely contributed”, to the proliferation of UPFs, said Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, for example, increased 1,000% between 1970 and 1990.“Our farm policy is designed for farmers to overproduce corn and soy, and encourage them to do that,” Lilliston said. Decades of huge subsidies for commodity crops led to an excess amount of corn and soy, which eventually were used to produce the additives in ultra-processed foods like corn syrup and soy lecithin, he added.“It’s hard to find a processed food, if you look at the ingredients, that doesn’t have corn and soy in there. It’s incredibly cheap – below the cost of production – there’s so much of it, and there’s access to so much of it,” Lilliston said. Today, ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the calories in the American diet, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Soy and corn – most of which is converted to animal feed, ethanol fuel, and byproducts used in UPFs – make up more than half of the country’s cropland. The farms that grow fruits and vegetables (known as specialty crops), are typically smaller and are not eligible for the majority of subsidies. But, these “are the types of farms that will be providing healthy foods, fruits, and vegetables on plates across the US”, said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group.Before joining Trump’s cabinet, RFK Jr himself blamed agricultural subsidies for America’s addiction to ultra-processed foods. In a 2024 interview, RFK Jr said the US obesity epidemic was being driven by food “poisoned” by “heavily subsidized” commodity crop derivatives. In a 2024 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy listed several steps Trump could take to “Make America Healthy Again,” and among them was reforming crop subsidies.“They make corn, soybeans and wheat artificially cheap, so those crops end up in many processed forms,” he wrote, adding: “Our subsidy program is so backward that less than 2% of farm subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.”The first Maha assessment report, released in May, blamed the food manufacturing industry for rising rates of chronic illness. After its publication, more than 250 food and agriculture groups, including the American Soybean Association and the National Corn Growers Association signed a letter claiming it included “erroneous representations” about food and agriculture and called for “formal inclusion of food and agriculture representatives in the commission’s processes moving forward”.But in the follow-up report, there was little mention of the food industry’s role in children’s health, nor were there suggested pathways to regulate what ingredients companies put in their products. While ultra-processed foods were mentioned 40 times in the initial report, the second, strategy report mentioned the term just twice.“Kennedy has framed himself as an anti-corporate hero, while at the same time utilized the age-old tactic of becoming buddies with the very industries that he purports he wants to change or regulate,” said Rebecca Wolf, the food policy lead at Food and Water Watch.“There’s anti-corporate rhetoric, but at the same time an inability and an unwillingness to actually take on corporate power,” Wolf said. “We’ve just [been] keeping a really close eye on the difference between narrative and policy, and what I’ve seen right now are policies that will not protect people, but in fact, further threaten their health.”To truly build a healthier US diet, Musicus says the Trump administration, in addition to regulating UPFs, should not be cutting the very programs that make nutritious food and healthcare more accessible to low-income families and individuals.“We’ve seen the federal government cut Snap benefits, write off millions of Americans from their health insurance coverage, slashed programs to help farmers bring local foods into schools, eviscerate government funding for research on nutrition and health and threaten access to life-saving vaccines,” Musicus said, adding that RFK Jr had simultaneously failed to impose meaningful regulation on the food industry.“As a result, the net public health impact of this administration has been negative, despite the fact that they’re constantly talking about improving Americans’ health,” she said. More

    • 125 Shares147 Views

      in US Politics

      Mocktails for Maga: why the US right is turning sober

      by

      Butterworth’s, an eclectically decorated restaurant in Washington DC, is an unofficial lounge of the Maga elite. A nameplate on one table declares it the official “nook” of Raheem Kassam, the former adviser to the rightwing British politician Nigel Farage and a co-owner of the restaurant. Steve Bannon is also frequently sighted holding court over Carolina gold rice – though the signature dish is bone-marrow escargot, which some young Maga politicos swear is good for your collagen.When he opened the farm-to-table brasserie in 2024, Bart Hutchins, Butterworth’s chef and one of its partners, was determined to resist what he sees as “the new puritanism” of wellness and sobriety culture. Hutchins finds non-alcoholic “mocktails” annoying on principle. “I did this edict, where I was like, ‘I’m not stocking that stuff,’” he said. “If you want to drink a glass of juice, just ask for a glass of juice; I’m not gonna pretend it’s a cocktail.”Hutchins has never felt teetotalism’s temptation, he told me, and his memory of drinks marketed as alcohol alternatives, like the near-beer O’Doul’s, was that they were “terrible”. But lately, as more Republican staffers, pundits and politicians patronize Butterworth’s antler-bedecked environs, a fifth column of non-drinkers has quietly undermined his anti-mocktail edict.It’s not just at Butterworth’s where rightwingers are drinking less. A Gallup poll in August found that the share of Americans of any political stripe who say they consume alcohol is at its lowest in nearly 90 years – though by only one percentage point. More strikingly, Republicans are the group, of the many demographic cohorts measured, that has turned most aggressively to sobriety.Gallup, which has asked Americans about their alcohol use since the 1930s, found in 2023 that 65% of Republicans said they drink alcohol – about the same as Democrats and independents. Just two years later, in 2025, that number has plunged a staggering 19 points to 46%. Democrats and independents also report drinking less, but each only by single digits. (All the results are self-reported; Gallup took participants at their word.)The decline is surprising and “statistically significant”, Lydia Saad, the director of US social research at Gallup, told me – though she has “no real hypothesis” for the sudden rise of Republican teetotalism.View image in fullscreenLaurence Whyatt, an analyst at Barclays who covers the beverage industry, “can’t explain it” either. He suspects the broader US decline in drinking may have to do with pandemic-era inflation and belt-tightening and may not last. “But there’s no obvious reason why Republicans would be drinking less,” he said. “Of course, I’m aware that some prominent Republicans don’t drink. Could that be the reason?”Yet theories abound. Perhaps this is another manifestation of the cult of personality around Donald Trump, a Diet Coke enthusiast. Maybe the rising tide of Christian nationalism has revived an old-fashioned Protestant temperance. Or perhaps red-blooded rightwingers, eager to “Make America healthy again”, are eschewing beer, barbecues and bourbon to become the sort of smoothie-drinking health nuts they might once have mocked.Prominent rightwing or right-adjacent abstainers include Trump himself, whose older brother died of alcoholism-related heart attack; Robert F Kennedy Jr (who has spoken about his own substance problems); Tucker Carlson (a recovering alcoholic); and the activist Charlie Kirk (for health reasons). JD Vance drinks, but his predecessor Mike Pence, a devout born-again Christian, did not. Joe Rogan, the podcaster and gym-bro whisperer who endorsed Trump in 2024, quit drinking this year for health reasons.“None of my core team [of colleagues] under 30 drinks,” Bannon, who hosts the podcast War Room, said in a text message.The War Room’s 24-year-old White House correspondent, Natalie Winters, does not drink for health reasons – nor wear perfume, consume seed oils or drink fluoridated tap water. Earlier this year a friend of hers told the Times of London that elective sobriety had become common and accepted in rightwing political circles. “Here you don’t second-guess,” the friend said. “In London if someone isn’t drinking, you think they have an alcohol problem. Here it’s either that, or they’re Mormon, or because they’re focused on health.”Carlson, speaking to me by phone as he returned from grouse hunting with his dogs, said he had noticed that young conservatives, particularly men, were far more health-conscious than they once were. When he came up as a journalist, he said, the milieu was awash in booze and cigarette smoke. “I’m just from a different world. When I was 25, the health question was ‘filter or non-filter?’” he said. “And I always went with non-filter.”Carlson quit drinking in 2002, after a spiral whose nadir saw him having two double screwdrivers for breakfast. He said he was surprised – but happy – to see people today, even those who are not problem drinkers, quitting or moderating their consumption. The Athletic Brewing Company’s alcohol-free beers are popular, he has noticed, and not just among “sad rehab cases like me. I think it’s normal young people.”Carlson – who has recently offered a range of unorthodox health advice including using nicotine to improve focus and testicle tanning to improve testosterone levels – says political professionals and journalists today also inhabit a 24/7 news cycle in which “there’s just, substantively, a lot more going on; the world is reshaping in front of our eyes,” he said. “I think there’s an incentive to pay attention in a way that there wasn’t before. It’s just kind of hard to imagine spending three hours away from your phone – or three hours, like, getting loaded midday.”View image in fullscreenHutchins, Butterworth’s chef, noticed when diners, including those he considered “reasonable people, and not insufferable”, kept asking for non-alcoholic options. The restaurant was gradually “brought over to the dark side”, he said, ruefully. He tested a few zero-proof drinks that he deemed respectable enough to serve beside marrow without shame.Many patrons still drink enthusiastically, and by 10pm most nights the atmosphere is “pretty bacchanalian”, he said. But Butterworth’s now offers a pre-packaged alcohol-free Negroni, verjus (a wine alternative made from unripe grapes) and non-alcoholic Guinness (“super popular”, Hutchins said).Changing health attitudes are probably a factor in the broader decline in US alcohol consumption. Recent research has cast doubt on the idea that even moderate drinking is an acceptable health risk. In January, the US surgeon general suggested that alcohol bottles should carry warnings that drinking can contribute to cancer.Malcolm Purinton, a beer historian at Northeastern University, noted that many young people learned adult socialization during Covid lockdowns, meaning their relationship with alcohol may differ from that of their parents or older siblings. People turning 21, the legal drinking age, do not necessarily see drinking as cool.“There’s always some form of rebellion between generations,” he said. Thanks to the cruel march of time, for instance, craft beer – which millennials once embraced as a sophisticated alternative to their fathers’ Miller Lites – is now itself a “dad drink”.Yet none of this explains the dramatic shift among Republicans. Nor does it explain another odd anomaly: the same Gallup poll found that Republicans, despite reporting drinking less than other groups, were less likely than Democrats or independents to say they viewed moderate drinking as dangerous.Some observers suggest the shift may have more to do with who now identifies as Republican. “Republicans made a big push in toss-up states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2024 to register more Republicans, especially among far-right Christians, Mormons and Amish,” Mark Will-Weber, the author of a book on US presidents’ drinking habits, told the Financial Times in August. “These religious groups abstain from alcohol.”Saad is not sure. Republican respondents report drinking less regardless of other factors such as religiosity, she noted. “We’re not seeing anything that would tell us, you know, ‘It’s religious Republicans,’ ‘It’s pro-Trump Republicans,’ ‘It’s Republicans paying attention to the news.’ It’s really across the board.”It’s also difficult to determine the ideological correlation with sobriety. Although rightwing parties have gained ground in many other countries in recent years, Whyatt said, those places have not typically seen the same “aggressive decline in consumption”. The phenomenon seems specific to conservative Americans.The best guess may be that Republicans have turned against alcohol for the same economic and health reasons that Americans in general have – but amplified by “Make America healthy again” politics (with its hostility to vaccines and chemicals, and its faint granola paranoia) and a self-help podcast culture popular on the right that extols wellness, discipline, and treating your body like a temple.Months before his death, Charlie Kirk spoke on his podcast about the reasons he had quit drinking. He said he had done so “four or five” years earlier to improve his sleep and general health. Sobriety was “becoming trendier”, he argued, listing Trump, Carlson, Elon Musk and the Christian pundit Dennis Prager among prominent conservatives who don’t drink – or, in Musk’s case, don’t often.“The top-performing people I’ve ever been around,” Kirk said, “are very against alcohol, against substances. They’ll tell you they perform better, think clearer, have better memory, better recall, more energy, more pace. And I [also] find that some of the people who drink the most, they’re hiding something, they’re masking something.”Most experts acknowledged that it is too soon to tell whether this new sobriety will stick. “You can tie yourself in knots trying to solve those puzzles,” said Saad, the Gallup pollster. “We’re going to just have to wait and see if this holds up next year … maybe by then we’ll see other groups catch up.”Hutchins said Butterworth’s will continue to cater to drinkers and non-drinkers, just as it caters to diners of all political persuasions. But one group of patrons, he added, seems particularly unsettled by the sight of conservatives – or anyone – succumbing to the vice of sobriety.“We have a lot of British clientele, for some reason,” he said. “As soon as some new [British] journalist or diplomat type moves to DC, they come here. And they all say: ‘Nobody drinks here. Nobody even has martinis at lunch. What is happening in this country?’” More

    • 200 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Americans and US food banks brace for Trump cuts: ‘Battling hunger is no longer a priority’

      by

      Americans are bracing for the impact of the largest cuts to the government’s food assistance program for low-income people in US history that have begun to take effect as a result of Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Effective 1 October, the beginning of fiscal year 2026, funding for Snap-Ed, part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provided funding for food banks across the US, is being eliminated. The cuts are part of the sweeping spending bill Trump signed in July.A report this month by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted “some low-income families will see their food assistance terminated or cut substantially (or will be denied benefits) this fall, though most current participants will face cuts when their SNAP eligibility is next recertified,” with estimates that 4 million Americans in a typical month will lose some or all of their Snap benefits when the cuts are fully implemented.A Snap recipient in Camden county, New Jersey, who works as a cake decorator at a small business and requested to remain anonymous, said their Snap benefits were cut off in September without receiving a notice.“Snap was my way to finally not pay half to three-quarters of my paycheck on groceries. Now, I have nothing in my house regularly and it just feels like no one wants to help people any more,” they said. “I only got a little over $110 a month, but it helped tremendously.”They said it’s made it more difficult to work at a job they love, but that doesn’t pay enough.Jessica Griffin of Fort Smith, Arkansas, a mother of three, said she lost her job about five months ago and has struggled to find another, with her family relying on her husband’s income.After rent and utility bills, there isn’t much left over to buy groceries and she doesn’t have reliable transportation to get to food banks, she said.“I used to be able to buy $100 worth of groceries a week to feed a family of five, now even with one child out of the house $100 will only go a couple days,” she said. “The rent rates are so high now as well as groceries that families can barely afford to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads at the same time. So it almost feels like we have two options, to either live in a house or live on the street and not starve.”View image in fullscreenFunding cuts to states, which will be expected to share costs of Snap for the first time as well as cover more administrative costs, are phased for fiscal years 2027 and 2028, but several provisions and changes to Snap are being implemented as states have to grapple with drastic costs shifted on to them from the federal government.“States don’t have enough administrative staff or capacity to handle this,” said Gina Plata-Nino, interim Snap director at the Food Research and Action Center. “I think we’re on a downward path. Polling and data is showing that one of the biggest obstacles that people are having in being able to eat is just how expensive food is at the moment. This is a direct result of tariffs and other policy choices that the administration has made. It’s something that everyone, regardless of income, can understand.”The looming Snap cuts come as food prices are still rising under the Trump administration and are expected to continue rising due to tariffs and labor shortages in the food industry due to Trump’s immigration policies.From January 2022 to August 2025, overall food cost in the US increased by about 17.8%, according the consumer price index, and has increased 2.0% since January 2025, when Trump took office. Trump’s tariffs are expected to drive further increases, with food prices set to rise 3.4% in the short term and stay 2.5% higher in the long run, according to the Yale Budget Lab.Food banks have been struggling across the US to keep up with demand and manage rising food prices, while bracing for further cuts, higher prices, and a surge in demand once Snap cuts begin taking effect.At a food bank in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jane Colony Mills, executive director of Loaves & Fishes, said the food bank has “experienced a 20% increase in the numbers of people coming for food assistance in 2025, likely driven not only by the cost of groceries in our community, but by the overall cost of living in Charlottesville and Albemarle area.”She noted their food supply has decreased as well, since they rely on food that stores cannot sell, and have also been affected by cuts at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to programs that support food banks. Colony Mills noted Snap cuts haven’t taken effect yet in Virginia, but local social service departments are bracing for those reductions or cancellations starting 1 October.“People who rely on these incremental supports will be struggling even more to provide food for their households each month,” she added.In Washington, the Thurston County Food Bank said they are bracing for significant cuts to Snap that will increase demand and make it more difficult to meet the current demand, let alone handle increases. They have already had to lay off staff positions funded by the Snap-Ed program that was cut by the Trump administration.“We have been told to brace for cuts that could be as much as 20% to 25% of the food we received in prior years. For us, 25% is $1m worth of food in 2024 prices, so with rising food costs, we can assume that is a gap of well over a million dollars,” said executive director of the Thurston County Food Bank.Ahead of the cuts to Snap and rising food prices, the Trump administration announced the cancellation of the annual hunger survey that measures food insecurity in the US and food researchers at the USDA were put on leave.USDA deferred comment to a press release, where they claimed “these redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”The decision is viewed by anti-hunger advocates as an effort by the Trump administration to obfuscate the impacts of their cuts to Snap and other policies affecting food insecurity for Americans.“By cancelling the survey, USDA is sending a signal that tracking and battling hunger is no longer a priority,” Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger, said in a statement. “It is further troubling that the decision comes amid predictions that hunger may increase in the coming months and years. Hunger will not disappear simply because it is no longer tracked.” More

    • 250 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      When even Ben & Jerry’s can’t speak out, it’s clear: the era of corporate responsibility is over | Austin Sarat

      by

      When the history of this era is written, there will be much to say about the behavior of large corporations. And none of it will be good.As the Trump administration has ramped up its assault on American democracy, many corporations have chosen to look the other way or to curry favor with the president. They have fired employees who were too outspoken in their criticism of Donald Trump – ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talkshow, after Kimmel’s remarks about Maga’s reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk, is the latest example.Or corporations have muted their brand’s identification with progressive causes.One casualty is Jerry Greenfield, co-founder and namesake of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. This week, he resigned from the company.He did so because, he said in a statement, the politically outspoken company had been “silenced”.The consumer goods company Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, for a reported $326m. At the time, it agreed to respect the company’s independence.No more, according to Greenfield.“Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important,” Greenfield noted in explaining his resignation. But, he said: “Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.”Ben & Jerry’s crossed swords with Unilever last year when it sued the company for allegedly fighting its calls for a Gaza ceasefire and an end to US military support for Israel.The 2024 suit claimed that Unilever had threatened to dismantle the ice-cream company’s independent board and punish members if Ben & Jerry’s issued a call for a ceasefire. (Unilever said it rejected “the claims made by B&J’s social mission board”. Its motion to dismiss the lawsuit is pending.)Another flare-up occurred in March of this year, when, according to Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever fired its chief executive, David Stever, over his work to advance the company’s “social mission”.If those allegations are true, Unilever would not be alone in trying to avoid offending the Trump administration or its supporters. This is just the latest sign that the era of corporate social and political responsibility is over.Ice-cream lovers will now have to choose between their taste buds and their consciences.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires that business leaders recognize, as Harvard Business School explains, that they “have a responsibility to do more than simply maximize profits for shareholders and executives. Rather, they have a social responsibility to do what’s best – not just for their companies, but for people, the planet, and society at large.”The CSR movement really took off about 40 to 50 years ago when businesses realized that they could carve out a niche and attract investment from people who wanted to make money and stay true to their values. Ben & Jerry’s was founded in 1978 during the heyday of CSR, by Greenfield and Ben Cohen.It was upfront about the issues it cared about and the values it sought to promote. The list was long, but it included racial justice, refugee rights, climate, LGBTQ+ rights and democracy.The Association of Corporate-Citizenship Professionals traces the roots of CSR back to the 18th century. At that time, religious groups would not invest, and would urge their members not to invest, in businesses that did not advance their values. Those included the slave trade and businesses that supplied the instruments of war.Fast forward to the start of the 20th century, when in 1928, the Pioneer Fund became one of the first mutual funds to promote socially responsible investing, which meant avoiding companies producing alcohol or tobacco, or promoting gambling. Almost a century later, the Business Roundtable included in its statement on the purpose of a corporation the following: “We commit to … supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.”Some progressives have criticized CSR, describing it as a charade and a public relations tactic that left the profit motive intact and did not require substantial changes in the way companies did business. But Ben & Jerry’s did more than brand itself as interested in social justice and political equality.As its 2024 lawsuit made clear, Ben & Jerry’s has wanted to take political stands even if it meant that it would lose some customers. A year earlier, in March 2023, as Newsweek reports, Cohen “shocked many” by speaking out against the US providing military aid to Ukraine.” (An ally said he opposed Russia’s invasion but wanted a diplomatic solution.)While from time to time, the company has been accused of not living up to its values, not surprisingly, conservatives have targeted Ben & Jerry’s for being “woke”. Some have tried to organize a boycott to protest what they see as its radical left politics.That’s perhaps why Unilever apparently wanted to pull back Ben & Jerry’s activism.What we are witnessing now in the way of corporate acquiescence to the rise of authoritarianism is a familiar story. There are plenty of examples.Take Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. There, as the political economist Gábor Scheiring argues: “Since 2010 Orbán has been using the momentum created by popular anger at the failures of liberal policies to build up his own system: authoritarian capitalism. A system that is deeply illiberal but capitalist: private property and the profit logic still dominate, but the state bureaucracy and its institutions are subdued to the enrichment of the preferred national economic elite.”There is ample evidence that Trump is succeeding in that same endeavor. That’s why the era of corporate social responsibility is over. Greenfield’s departure is just the latest evidence.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s tariffs have hurt tea exports to the US, says Fortnum & Mason boss

      by

      The boss of upmarket retailer Fortnum & Mason has said Donald Trump’s trade war has hit sales of its luxury tea exports to the US and forced up prices.Tom Athron, the London-based retailer’s chief executive, said Trump’s stricter country of origin rules and the end of the “de minimis” cost exemption for parcels worth less than $800 (£587) had hit customers across the Atlantic.“The American authorities have told us – this is the tea industry in its entirety – that if you’ve got tea from China and India in your tea, then its country of origin [is] China or India, and therefore those enormous tariffs apply,” he told the Financial Times.Trump, who landed in the UK on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit for a US president, last month imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India as a punishment for buying Russian oil.And earlier this year, the US administration raised tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese goods as the trade war intensified, before dropping them to 30% in May to facilitate talks between the two trading giants. The world’s two largest economies held talks in Madrid this week to try to reach a potential deal.For a 250g canister of loose leaf Royal Blend tea, which retails to US consumers at $27.85, Fortnum’s has now been forced to charge delivery fees starting at $25.41 owing to the changes to US taxes and duties.The 318-year-old retailer, which holds two royal warrants, was not previously liable for any tariffs on the majority of its deliveries to US customers.US custom agents assess whether a “substantive transformation” has been made to a product to decide whether its country of origin is different from where the product has been sourced.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis process can be unclear to retailers, while the scrapping of “de miminis” rules has led to customers being wary of buying Fortnum & Mason’s products, which are popular with expats and international buyers.“A lot of our things are sent as gifts [so] if you’re living in New York and I’m sending a present to you, I want to be sure that you’re not going to be landed with a $200 bill on receipt of your parcel,” said Athron. “It’s all in hand, logistically we’re immaculate, it just means prices will go up for US consumers.”Overseas sales of Fortnum & Mason’s goods, including its famous hampers, were £12.5m in the year to July 2024, accounting for about 5.5% of total revenues.Wider inflationary pressure has led the retailer to raise the UK price of a 250g canister of loose leaf Breakfast Blend tea by almost 40% over the last five years. More

    • 200 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It seemed like a ghost town’: LA food vendors on how Trump’s Ice raids affected business

      by

      From early morning to late at night, food vendors are feeding the people of Los Angeles. They offer nearly anything – tamales, fried fish, crispy tacos, mole, pupusas, fresh fruit, esquites, bacon-wrapped hot dogs – to Angelenos as they start their commutes or head home after the bars have closed.Taco trucks and food vendors are a vital part of the city’s celebrated culinary scene, one that came under attack this summer as Donald Trump ordered mass immigration raids across the city.Shannon Camacho, a senior policy associate at Inclusive Action for the City, a non-profit in the Boyle Heights neighborhood that focuses on community economic development, says that many street vendors made the painful calculation between risking losing much-needed income or being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“Vendors are in a particularly vulnerable situation, given that they have to work outdoors,” Camacho said. “They rely on foot traffic. They rely on busy neighborhoods and streets … This was something intentional that the Department of Homeland Security was doing – targeting vendors that were outside, understanding that many of them are immigrants and many of them are undocumented.”The LA Vendor Street Campaign, which includes Inclusive Action and three other organizations, has been advocating for the rights of vendors long before this summer. The LASVC led efforts to create a statewide policy decriminalizing street vending throughout the state. Recently, it raised around $100,000 of direct cash assistance for street vendors across Los Angeles county.Still, Camacho says more is needed.“There are thousands and thousands of street vendors, even just in the city of Los Angeles,” Camacho said. “And that’s not even including other parts of Southern California. We don’t have enough to support everybody.”The Guardian spoke to three food business owners in LA about the summer of Ice, and how it’s affected their families and businesses.Juan Carlos Guerra, Taqueria FronteraIt’s Los Angeles … you drive anywhere on the street, you’re going to see pop-ups. You’re going to see street vendors. But it just seemed like a ghost town during that time. No one was out on the street.I was going to open the new Silver Lake location of Taqueria Frontera at the beginning of June. And then the raids happened. It didn’t seem like we should have a celebration or a grand opening.I reached out to Javier Cabral from [the hyperlocal news site] LA Taco, and I said to him, “I want to try to help out. Whatever I can do. Do you know a good organization?” And he said: “Oh, yeah. CIELO is a great organization.”I talked to someone at CIELO, Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (Indigenous Communities in Leadership). I was just like: “Taco Tuesday is usually a thing. Is it okay if I set up something saying that all proceeds of our trompo [taco] – which is what we sell the most – is going to be donated towards fundraising for CIELO so they can help immigrant families during this time?”We did Taco Tuesday with a purpose, and we ended up raising $4,000 from selling the trompo that day alone.Everyone was pretty supportive about it. And not just that day – a lot of people would come in just to check up on us, on my employees, see how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. There’s no way you could live in Los Angeles without being affected by this. And a lot of my clients were like: “I can’t believe this is going on.” Who doesn’t have a friend or family member or co-worker that isn’t undocumented here in Los Angeles?Street vendors are back out now and more people are outside eating. But I think that it’s still in the back of their minds. Could this happen at any time again? Right now it’s pretty calm, but what happens a month from now if they decide to do it again?Bulmaro, street vendorWhen we started the business, there weren’t many jobs out there. We knew how to make tamales, which is what we sell. Due to the lack of jobs and opportunities, we decided to do what we know how to do. From there, business grew and we started getting more clients, little by little. It’s our sole source of income.Because of the raids, everything stopped. We stopped selling for about a month, without working or anything. We just started working again a little more about two weeks ago. A lot of people don’t go out to buy things anymore because they’re scared. Sales have gone down a lot because of the raids. More than half of the clients we had haven’t come back to buy anything because of the fear that continues.We haven’t had phone orders, either. We just bring the day’s supply, and sometimes we come back home with tamales or with atol that didn’t sell. It’s never going to be the same as before the raids.View image in fullscreenIt’s me, my wife and another employee – three of us depend on the business. There’s nothing we can do, we have to keep working. We need to pay rent and bills, even though we’re going outside with fear. There’s no other way. The rent isn’t going to wait. The bills, and the food we need to buy, aren’t going to wait either.Alejandra Rodriguez, Alex Foods and Cemitas PoblanasA lot of our customers stopped coming. They were scared because a lot of them are Latino. Even at the local restaurants in the city of West Hollywood, [the workers] have their visas to be here, but they were still scared because of everything that was going on. They were saying that even if you had a visa, even if you had permission to be here, everybody was still getting kicked out. Our sales dropped more than 70%.Even on the street, there was nobody walking, nobody coming. It did take a very big toll on us … the local people that work at the restaurants, the chefs or the servers or the valet guys, they weren’t coming in to work.We closed down for about 10 days because it wasn’t worth coming out here. And luckily, we had a little bit of money saved up. Usually, when we leave on trips, customers will still call us to place orders. But no, the whole 10 days we were gone, we didn’t go to work. We didn’t get any calls or people asking us when we were going to come back.I had to let one of my two employees go. I couldn’t afford it anymore. And we’ve just slowly been climbing back. We have customers from the local car washes, and they told us that Ice actually got there at that car wash and took about four people. People are still aware. People are still scared. Any time they see a police officer pass by or a sheriff’s department or just somebody, they would flinch.People are just trying to get to work and come back. I know they were able to stay away, maybe for a couple of weeks, but everybody has to pay rent. More