I‘ve been making every effort to post positively on this blog. I know we’re all worn down by the horrors, lies, and deceit of the Trump administration, but tonight as I read Heather Cox Richardson I must post excerpts from what she says. It’s unfathomable that when they control the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, and much of the media, they continue to try to set the Democrats up to take the blame.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It appears the administration is using those Americans who depend on food assistance as pawns to put more pressure on Democrats to cave to Trump’s will. Today, Annie Karni of the New York Times reported that Trump has joked, “I’m the speaker and the president,” and Trump ally Steven Bannon calls Congress “the state Duma,” a reference to Russia’s rubber-stamp assembly.

With Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the normal way, with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) keeping the House out of session, and with Trump leaving for Asia for a week, Republicans are clearly making the calculation that Democrats who refused to give up their demand for the extension of the premium tax credit to stop dramatic hikes in the cost of healthcare premiums will cave when America falls into a hunger crisis.

I drop down to this: While a great deal has changed in nutrition support programs in the past sixty years, what has not changed is the importance of food assistance programs to retailers, and thus to local economies. In 2020, Ed Bolen and Elizabeth Wolkomir of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that about 8% of the food U.S. families buy is funded by SNAP. In fiscal year 2019, that amounted to about $56 billion. Beneficiaries spent SNAP dollars at about 248,000 retailers. While about 80% of that money went to superstores or supermarkets—in 2025, Walmart alone captured about 25% of that money—the rest of it went to small businesses. Bolen and Wolkomir note that about 80% of stores that accept SNAP are small enterprises. SNAP benefits are an important part of revenue for those smaller businesses, especially in poorer areas, where they generate significant additional economic activity.

Not only will the loss of SNAP create more hunger in the richest country on earth, it will also rip a hole in local economies just as people’s health insurance premiums skyrocket.

And yet, at the same time the Department of Agriculture says it cannot spend its $6 billion in reserves to address the $8 billion needed for SNAP in November, the administration easily found $20 billion to prop up right-wing Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina.

What are we doing here? Yes, what are we doing here, and why?

Yesterday Trump again showed his true colors to the world at the United Nations.

Given 15 minutes to address the UN General Assembly, he spoke for 57 minutes in a rant that will go down in history as cruel, embarrassing, false, and insane.  

Heather Cox Richardson ends her column today with this: The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”

We know that those Trump chooses to support and lie to him are incompetent, but who knew they can’t even ride an escalator without stopping it or manage to work a teleprompter.  On the other hand, maybe it was purposeful, an underhanded way to stop him now so we can return to the well-thought out and considered values on which the country was founded.  

Jimmy Kimmel was returned to us, and ended his beautiful monologue with the hope that the silver lining of this is bringing people from the left, right and center together to speak up for the First Amendment. He said he was touched by the speech that Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, delivered at his memorial on Sunday, in which she said she forgave the man who shot her husband.

“That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. … A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow.” Kimmel said. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that and not this.”