Folks, here’s something you may not have heard about in the news, but is worth your time:

Last month, the Trump Administration ordered 500 tons of emergency food – enough to feed 27,000 starving children for a month – to be incinerated.

U.S. taxpayers had already paid for these resources. But instead of sending this nutritious food to kids who desperately needed it, the Administration locked it in a USAID warehouse, knowingly let it expire, and then got rid of it.

This is the chaos and cruelty of this Administration.

It gets worse: Back in March, after the U.S. government was put on notice that this food was set to expire, the U.N. World Food Programme reached out and said that if the U.S. wasn’t going to distribute it, they would. The Administration declined.

What does this say about us as a nation? And on a more mundane level, why is it a good and efficient use of resources to burn this food instead of distributing it?

Now, when I asked Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas about this during a committee hearing, he pointed out that the U.S. is still the largest giver of aid in the world.

That’s true. But sometimes a specific detail really exposes the soul.

To me, this choice to withhold nutritious food that could have helped 27,000 kids is a detail that exposes the soul of this Administration.

So when I fight back against them, when I reach out to you about how to help and get involved – I hope we’ll all remember this.

We must ALL work together to push against the chaos, the cruelty, and the calculated incompetence of this Administration and fight for something better in our future.

Thanks for being here.

-Tim Kaine