Around 42 million Americans — including roughly 16 million children, 8 million seniors, and hundreds of thousands of veterans — are in imminent danger of going hungry.

Why?

• Donald Trump and congressional Republicans engineered a government shutdown — now the longest in our nation’s history — so they could make Americans pay even more for healthcare.

• But with the federal government shut down, the critical Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — which many refer to as “food stamps” — is also out of money.

• Years ago, Congress established a reserve fund specifically to keep SNAP going during emergencies — even manufactured emergencies that result when one political party throws a temper tantrum and shuts down the entire federal government.

• Two different federal judges have ruled that the administration must follow the law and use the reserve fund to keep SNAP going.

• But the regime is fighting those rulings — literally going to court and arguing that it has some “right” not to feed people. The cruelty on display here is beyond appalling.

• We’re talking about roughly one out of every eight people in this country — the richest country the world has ever seen — at serious risk of going hungry. If we made just slightly different choices as a society, nobody would be hungry, and the greediest among us could still have far more than their fair share. But here we are.

• All the Trump administration has to do to help millions of Americans avoid going hungry is follow the law. Instead — in a truly unhinged case of adding insult to injury — the regime is willing to let people starve while it holds the government hostage trying to jam through a budget that would deny people healthcare.

This is what the Trump regime is telling the American people: If you don’t let us jack up the cost of healthcare, we’re going to let millions of you go hungry.

Tell Donald Trump:

You are legally required to use available funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program going during the government shutdown. But this is even more basic than that. Do you really want to be the president who lets millions and millions of Americans go hungry when you have the power to help them? All you have to do is tell your Justice Department to stop going to court and arguing in favor of hunger in America.

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- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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