VIDEO OF THE DAY: SCOTUS temporarily blocks SNAP funding as Trump pleads for more time to starve hungry Americans
As his government shutdown enters its record 40th day, and as Mar-a-Lago hosts yet another lavish ball — filet mignon, anyone? — Donald Trump is throwing everything AND the kitchen sink at the judicial system to continue denying 42 million Americans critical SNAP benefits. The Trump White House wants the American public to believe that it really, truly, honestly wishes it could fully fund SNAP but simply cannot because, well, it's unfortunately not legally allowed to do so. Aw, shucks. This, despite two federal judges ruling that emergency funds be immediately released to deliver food aid benefits. And while Trump and his MAGA foot soldiers race before cameras to desperately make their our-hands-are-tied case, wouldn't you know they've ALSO appealed to the Supreme Court to OVERTURN both lower court rulings and allow them to continue starving hungry Americans. It's craven, duplicitous, cynical, and impressively immoral — just like Lord Goldemort himself.
Take Action: Demand Trump release emergency funds to feed hungry families now!
Trump has one mission: To make your life hell
Alex Shepard, The New Republic: "On Wednesday, Donald Trump finally seemed to wake up. Republicans everywhere had just gotten demolished in off-year elections, from gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia to down-ballot races in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The president told Senate Republicans that the government shutdown was 'worse for us than for them'—meaning the Democrats—and that they were at risk of being a 'dead party' if they didn't nuke the filibuster to reopen the government. Trump is right: The shutdown has been a political disaster for the Republicans, who are receiving the lion’s share of blame in public opinion polls. But Senate Republicans are not going to nuke the filibuster—at least not yet, and probably not ever. At the same time, their negotiating position has just been weakened by an electoral wipeout. So the administration is now desperate to try anything to turn the tables on Democrats. Here is how that’s going so far: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not long after Trump finished berating his fellow Republicans, announced that he would be ordering 40 of the busiest airports in the country to start canceling flights—thousands of them—starting on Friday. It’s a revealing move. This administration can only think in political terms. Trump and his lackeys aren't worried about the human costs of the shutdown, just ways to increase political pressure. This is consistent with how Trump operates in general. As we’ve seen in so many respects—from tariffs to DOGE to ICE—he only knows how to destroy stuff, whether it be federal agencies, American business, or livelihoods. So faced with a painful, destructive shutdown, the administration responds with yet more pain and destruction...it’s just the latest example of a long-standing approach to governance on the right. Near the end of Trump’s first term, the president and his party shut down the government for over a month in a futile attempt to pressure Democrats to provide more funding for a border wall—increasing suffering in the hopes of achieving a policy goal whose utility was largely symbolic. It didn't work then because it never does. But that’s all Republicans really have to offer."
Take Action: Demand Congress take action to rein in Trump’s ICE thugs ASAP!
Time is running out to make a difference in CRITICAL state Supreme Court race
State and Local Election Alliance: On November 4th, the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania will vote on whether or not to keep three Democratic state supreme court members. If PA votes “no,” then Gov. Josh Shapiro will have to replace them before a full-on partisan election to replace them in 2027. If we lose control of the state Supreme Court, Trump and his cronies will have the opportunity to unleash a dark money avalanche and install loyalist justices who will happily rubber-stamp lawsuits to throw out votes, nullify election results, or award delegates regardless of vote count. In other words, we could never win the White House again. That’s why Republicans have poured a historic $8 MILLION in dark money into the race. Will you chip in to the State and Local Election Alliance and support their efforts to convince the people of Pennsylvania to vote YES on retaining our Democratic justices?
The SNAP freeze shows charity is no substitute for welfare
Carl Beijer, Jacobin: "Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) expired on [last] Saturday amid the government shutdown, putting an estimated forty million people at risk of going hungry. Already the news is full of stories about local food banks getting slammed by poor Americans who have run out of food stamps. And predictably, a lot of these private charities are already failing to meet the demand. A story from Florida is typical: 'Community Cooperative had to turn away about 75 people after serving nearly 200 families due to running out of food, although their main market remains stocked. CEO Stefanie Ink Edwards said, 'It’s heartbreaking. We never want to turn anybody away to say we’re out of food or we can’t help you. . .'' In all of this coverage, one thing you won't find is a food bank worker who is surprised by this outcome. Still, this is the opposite of what capitalist discourse in the United States would lead one to expect. In that narrative, the private sector is much better suited to feed the poor than state welfare programs could ever be. They’re more efficient, more localized, and best of all: they don't rely on taxes. For this reason, the private sector should be more than able to pick up the slack of the government shutdown. The Left has a lot of objections to this of course, and one of their most compelling is the capacity problem. After all, Americans already give a lot to charity, yet the government still has to spend around a trillion dollars on poverty programs. But that shouldn't be a problem, according to Cato Institute senior fellow Michael Tanner, since pointing at that deficit 'ignores evidence suggesting that, in the absence of government welfare programs, private charitable giving will almost certainly increase. Numerous studies have documented a 'displacement effect,' whereby government programs crowd out private giving.' In any case, SNAP’s funding lapse has provided the perfect opportunity to test this supposed “displacement effect” — and so far, the results aren't looking good. One may object that the private sector needs more time to take over the state’s responsibilities, but the public had plenty of notice that a funding lapse was possible. Moreover, one of the chief advantages of private charity is supposed to be its efficiency: as Tanner puts it, 'few successful charities have the burdensome bureaucratic infrastructure of government programs.' If the private sector does indeed launch a program that provides the same benefits as SNAP, and if it can do this reliably for the foreseeable future, then they will have at least addressed the capacity problem. If this does not happen, however, then capitalists like Tanner should acknowledge that the private sector is not up to the task. So far, it’s not looking good."
Take Action: Impeach Trump's FCC chairman Brendan Carr!
Unfettered and unaccountable: How Trump is building a violent, shadowy federal police force
J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam, ProPublica: "When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system. Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings... During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities. Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. 'It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, 'It worked there, so now let me send them there,' Amezcua said."
Home insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable
Veronica Riccobene, Jacobin: "Home insurance has never been more expensive: across all fifty states, rates are skyrocketing faster than home prices and economy-wide inflation, draining homeowners of billions of dollars in premiums amid rising policy cancellations — especially as insurers turn to artificial intelligence to determine risk. As The Lever reported last year, the process for handling the financial risks of homeownership is breaking down as the planet melts: insured losses from natural disasters in the United States now approach $100 billion a year, up from less than $5 billion in 2000. Since 2008, homeowners have seen their insurance costs increase 74 percent, and in the last three years alone, premiums rose twice as fast as inflation, totaling $21 billion in additional insurance payments. During this period, premiums increased in 95 percent of American zip codes. While homes in disaster-prone states like Florida and California remain the most expensive to insure, the biggest premium increases occurred in Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Utah. And the rate increases have been lucrative for insurance companies: property and casualty insurers — which include home, rental, and auto — profited $169 billion last year, a 90 percent increase over 2023 and a 333 percent increase over 2022, as annual premium payments reached $1 trillion for the first time. More home insurance companies are relying on AI to boost profits and cut margins, using the technology to underwrite policies, identify risks, and justify rate hikes. This year, consulting giant McKinsey confirmed that the application of artificial intelligence in underwriting has enabled insurers to spike premiums by as much as 15 percent."
Food for thought
The Sunday wrap-up
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