Congressional Republicans are reportedly trying to insert anti-abortion language into government funding legislation as the shutdown continues, with the GOP and President Donald Trump digging in against a clean extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits as insurance premiums surge.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sounded the alarm on Saturday about what he characterized as the latest Republican sneak attack on reproductive rights.
Wyden said Saturday—which marked day 39 of the shutdown—that “Republicans are spinning a tale that the government is funding abortion.”
“It’s not,” Wyden continued. “What Republicans are talking about putting on the table amounts to nothing short of a backdoor national abortion ban. Under this plan, Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive healthcare. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations.”
“The possibilities are endless, but the results are the same: a complete and total restriction on abortion, courtesy of Republicans,” the senator added. “Trump said he’d leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along.”
Son of a nice lady!
Jokes aside. I’m going to preface this by saying fuck the Trump administration for trying to starve people like my family and fuck the Democrats for capitulating to them. But my understanding on this is actually that “fully funding” SNAP for the entire country would take more than what that contingency fund had and that was the main driver behind the block. The plan was to send out partial payments from the fund but some states started moving faster than others and got their whole allotments. Probably not the best idea to just let as I understand it like 2/3s of enough money be first come first served. So the order got blocked temporarily while some procedural stuff got ironed out.
Like, entirely fuck the Trump administration for creating this problem. But if the stuff I’m reading is accurate, not blocking it to give the court a chance to figure out procedure stuff could have been a massive shit show.
Oh, they’ve tricked you with their hand waving bullshit unfortunately
They had enough money to fully fund the program for about 2 weeks. So two weeks of food now, then in another two weeks we can work something out and they can get the other half in time. Or nothing is worked out, and so they get half of November now
What the Trump admin wanted to do is split it in half, give them one quarter in November and one quarter in December
It all sounds very reasonable and procedural until you think about what that would mean for individuals dependent on it. It means they would become food insecure now instead of in a couple weeks
I’m one of the people dependent on it. Yes I’m aware of the bullshit excuses they’re peddling. But unfortunately the way our legal system is structured, it doesn’t fucking matter that everyone with half a braincell knows they’re lying because it doesn’t automatically force them to do the right thing.
Last I heard, 8 States managed to get their full November allotment out before the stay. what happens to everyone else when the fucking liars get to reasonably claim “oh no we have no more money” and it doesn’t matter that we know they’re lying because they’re still paying ICE because that’s not what they were ordered to do? Then they have to start a whole new set of fucking litigation and it gets bogged down longer.
So while I’m happy for the people who were able to get paid out their SNAP and would totally love to be able to buy my kids food because we’re really struggling right now, I cannot give the slightest fuck about a 2 day stay while the lower court figures out their shit.
My understanding is that the states that fully funded it did it with their own money and the assumption they’d get it back down the line
Which is why only 8 states did it
Also, Trump 1 did exactly what the court ordered them to do. There was no confusion about the procedure
The Supreme Court decided that the lower court order was invalid because it didn’t have a time frame. That’s a bullshit justification
This was really a case about presidential power
I was seeing conflicting things about that. I saw some things saying there were States trying to shift funds around to pay SNAP recipients, then others saying it was USDA money that the administration was trying to claw back before the whole stay, order getting reaffirmed, then last night the dems voting to open the government. So I’m not sure how that actually shakes out.
My understanding though about the stay was that it wasn’t the whole court, just KBJ because she handles such things for that district. That it was set to expire 48 hours after the lower court issued their ruling on the broader appeal which they did a couple hours later on Friday(declined the appeal) from what I remember reading and the stay expired yesterday and today the original court reaffirmed the funding order.
That’s my understanding of where things sit at this time. Not sure where any of this lands with the dems caving on ending the shutdown though.
When it’s unclear and muddy like that, someone is lying. It’s why billionaire controlled media is such a problem
But yeah, it looks like it’s cut and dry - the 8 States are just using their own funds, probably because they were the only ones with the flexibility in their budget
Idk, the list I saw last was:
I’m not super knowledgeable about all of these states, it’s pretty conceivable that California or Nevada might be able to shift things around and pay people. But like Louisiana? Pretty sure they get way more from the federal government than they give in taxes. It seems kinda crazy that they’d have the money to fund their own SNAP recipients. According to one of the legal creators I follow the administration was fighting to only pay out the 5 or so billion that the USDA contingency fund had and I guess there are filings that indicate that they have paid out that much.
So it sounds to me like they had intended to just give everybody a pittance, not enough to really do anything as a full fuck you to as many people as possible. Then fucked it up and accidentally released full funds in a free-for-all to states that were able to snap them up quickly enough and between their own budgets and that money those 8 have been able to fully pay out their SNAP recipients.
But as things stand right now KBJ’s stay is over, it lasted max 48 hours after the lower court issued their ruling on whether they’d hear the administration’s appeal of the orders to fund SNAP. Which it seems that ruling amounted to “Fuck you, pay SNAP. And pay it from your tariff money” basically. I guess the most recent order tells them to fund the rest of the missing SNAP funds from this pool of funds called Section 32 funds which I guess he was trying to take the remaining money out of the Child Nutrition Fund so like the School Lunch program and stuff. So that’s a whole different pot of cruelty.
Do you know how illegal it is to steal federal funds? It’s super extra illegal, control of funding is where most actual federal power lies. The federal government has surprisingly little direct authority over the States, so I find it difficult to believe this, especially since the 8 States announced it was coming out of their own budget
I’m pretty sure this is all just bullshit to muddy the waters. I think any truth in this was coordinated with the States, I don’t think they’d reach into the bucket and pull out more than was provisioned to their state
And as far as Louisiana paying it? Not only are they one of the most corrupt states, they’re extremely reliant on aid programs. I find it very easy to believe they had money laying around that they repurposed to avoid a massive problem
They have money to fund their Gestapo; they can fund SNAP. The cruelty is the point.
Imagine defending the Trump administration’s bullshit argument to starve citizens. I’d be ashamed.
I’m not defending anything. But there is a little bit more to the discussion on the SNAP stay thing than just saying “court blocked SNAP order”
It’s boring, it’s stupid, I hate that our fucking courts are structured like this. But the adminstration also can’t be allowed to just let the funds be a free for all and just let whoever is able to grab their SNAP funds get food while everyone else now has to sue again to get them to comply with the original order.