Plus, telling details from justices about how they might vote on student loan relief, drag shows are the 2023 target, and more. Email not displaying correctly?
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** The One-Minute Meeting
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28 million American families will lose about $95 a month in emergency SNAP benefits (food stamps) starting today. The extra benefits made a big difference for people who lost their jobs during the pandemic. But as COVID-19 cases wane, the emergency relief is ending, too. Various studies say the emergency benefits kept 4 million Americans out of poverty during the pandemic. Researchers say that with inflation and high food prices, cutting the benefits will hurt the poorest among us.

40 million Americans have a stake in how the Supreme Court rules on student loan debt forgiveness. The court heard arguments in two cases. As you might expect, the court is mostly split along ideological lines. The more conservative justices wondered why it was fair for people who went into debt to get up to $20,000 in loans forgiven, while people who paid off their debt or never went into debt have to pay the bills for others. A key question the justices will wrestle with is whether Congress, not the secretary of education, should have the power to forgive the debts. Conservative justices say only Congress has the authority to make such big economic decisions. I will share some key quotes from justices in today’s column. It’s a darn shame that CNN, MSNBC and Fox didn’t consider the court hearing to be big enough to carry it live on the air. I mean, it does involve $400 billion of your tax dollars.

Lawmakers in 14 states have found a common target to protect you from: drag shows. The legislatures that are on the “ban drag queens” campaign are mostly in Southern states. Six of the states want to protect children from drag shows and 10 seek to expand the definition of adult or sexually oriented businesses to include any establishment that hosts drag performances. That would make it illegal for such businesses to be located within a certain distance of public schools or residential areas. In Texas, at least four different bills would put venues that host drag performances in the same category as adult movie theaters and strip clubs.

Dictionary.com just added 300 new words that you can use in confidence. “Petfluencer” and “digital nomad” are now real words. And one of the biggest growth areas for new words is in the category of breads. Don’t miss my column if you want to rule this weekend’s Scrabble game.
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