Government accountability organization accuses agriculture secretary of unlawfully refusing to use emergency fund created to prevent food stampt disruptions during shutdowns
A government accountability organization has accused agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins of unlawfully refusing to tap a $5bn emergency fund that Congress specifically created to prevent food stamp disruptions during government shutdowns.
The Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to Rollins arguing that the USDA is legally obliged to use the SNAP contingency fund to continue benefits for 42 million Americans, warning that the secretary’s failure to draw on available money represents “a deliberate decision to deny food” to vulnerable populations including the elderly, children and veterans.
Key events
Military and state investigators examine ‘tragic event’ that killed three at Wright-Patterson AFB
Three US servicemembers connected to Wright-Patterson air force base in Ohio were found dead in a double-murder suicide over the weekend that impacted multiple locations around Dayton, according to a statement from the Air Force materiel command’s deputy commander.
Lieutenant general Linda Hurry said authorities are “committed to fully investigating this incident” but declined to share specific details as the Ohio bureau of criminal investigation, assisted by the Air Force office of special investigations, continues its probe into deaths occurring over a 12-hour period overnight between the 24 and 25 October.
Government accountability organization accuses agriculture secretary of unlawfully refusing to use emergency fund created to prevent food stampt disruptions during shutdowns
A government accountability organization has accused agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins of unlawfully refusing to tap a $5bn emergency fund that Congress specifically created to prevent food stamp disruptions during government shutdowns.
The Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to Rollins arguing that the USDA is legally obliged to use the SNAP contingency fund to continue benefits for 42 million Americans, warning that the secretary’s failure to draw on available money represents “a deliberate decision to deny food” to vulnerable populations including the elderly, children and veterans.
The halting of SNAP benefits will devastate merchants across the country who accept food stamps, including about 26,600 grocers and farmers’ markets in California alone, 17,000 in New York, and 10,600 in Pennsylvania, according to the states’ legal filing.
And with Thanksgiving a few weeks away, the filing argues that many retailers have already purchased increased inventory to meet expected demand, but without SNAP funds flowing to recipients, businesses face significant revenue losses and food waste just as families would ordinarily be preparing for the holiday.
The sudden loss of food assistance for 42 million Americans is expected to trigger a cascade of healthcare costs as food insecurity drives increased emergency room visits and hospitalizations, according to the lawsuit.
One example state officials point to is Connecticut, which anticipates that the abrupt termination of SNAP benefits will create downstream effects on safety net programs like Medicaid, which partially depend on state funding to cover healthcare costs for vulnerable populations.
About one in eight people in the United States are on food stamps, which average around $187 a month and cost the federal government about $8bn monthly, making the potential November cutoff a crisis affecting tens of millions of households.
The Trump administration declined to extend a reprieve for Snap benefits, despite the agriculture department acknowledging weeks ago that it could reprogram emergency reserve money to prevent benefit cuts – a move supported by both congressional democrats and republicans.
Two dozen states sue Trump administration as 42 million Americans face food stamp cuts
More than two dozen states and Washington DC have filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to prevent food stamp benefits from being cut off for roughly 42 million Americans during the ongoing government shutdown.
State officials from Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan and other states asked a federal judge to force Washington to tap emergency reserve funds so that families receiving assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would not see their benefits interrupted starting 1 November.
Trump expected to offer China tariff cuts in exchange for fentanyl crackdown – report
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will likely discuss a trade framework that would see the US slash tariffs on Chinese goods in return for Beijing’s commitment to restrict exports of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
The report said the US could halve the 20% levies imposed on Chinese products as retaliation for fentanyl precursor exports, with details to be negotiated following Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders during Trump’s Asia trip.
Stephen Starr
Every morning, Alicia Mercado makes the 50-minute drive from her home in Columbus to Springfield, where she runs the Adasa Latin Market store. She opened the business next to a Haitian restaurant in 2023, having spotted a gap in the market for Caribbean and Latin foods – the neighborhood’s Haitian population was booming at the time.
But over the past year, she says her business, which includes an international money transfer kiosk, has taken a major hit.
“About 80 to 90% of our customers were Haitians; now that’s down to about 60% over the past six months,” she says. “No more people are moving to Springfield.”
Mercado’s experiences are being echoed around the city of 58,000 people that garnered international attention last year when Donald Trump falsely claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants were eating people’s pets.
Until the end of last year, Springfield was something of a surprise economic juggernaut. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that it ranked second among all Ohio cities for job growth since the pandemic. New housing projects, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are among the biggest investments the city has ever made.
That growth was partly fueled by the availability of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that were eagerly filled by the more than 15,000 Haitian immigrants who had moved to the city over the past eight years, fueling businesses such as Mercado’s.
Local companies got cheap, reliable labor, while Haitian workers received stable income, health insurance and a safe place to live. Many bought homes and invested their hard-earned income into improving the city’s housing stock that, in turn, padded the city’s tax coffers. For the most part, it was a win for all involved.
But since then, the city’s economic fortunes have spiraled.
For the full story, click here:
Trump appeals hush money conviction
Donald Trump has appealed his criminal conviction in his hush money case, with his lawyers arguing that the trial was “fatally marred” by evidence that should have been protected under the supreme court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity.
In a court filing on Monday night, his lawyers accused Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg of being politically motivated to prosecute Trump.
“Targeting alleged conduct that has never been found to violate any New York law, the DA concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory, which the DA then improperly obscured until the charge conference. This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his lawyers said.
The appeal comes 17 months after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to payments he made to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Those payments reimbursed Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, intended to keep her from speaking publicly about an alleged sexual affair with Trump.
Adam Gabbatt
The Trump administration is planning to revamp the leadership of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to reports, as the government seeks to intensify its mass deportation efforts.
Multiple news outlets have reported that the government intends to reassign multiple directors of ICE field offices in the coming days, potentially replacing them with border patrol officials.
It comes as the government is falling well short of its targets on immigration. Earlier this year, Stephen Miller – Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff – set ICE a target of arresting 3,000 people every day. But as of late September, the agency on average was arresting 1,178 daily, NBC reported.
The New York Times reported that the proposed changes stem from the White House becoming frustrated at the pace of deportations, which now lags behind Trump’s goal of removing 1 million immigrants in his first year in office.
For the full story, click here:
Trump may host Central Asian leaders – report
Donald Trump will reportedly meet the presidents of five Central Asian nations next week in what marks a rare high-level gathering focused on the resource-rich former Soviet republics, a source familiar with the plans tells Reuters.
Should the 6 November meeting happen, it will bring together the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Hugo Lowell
The justification for the strikes has been widely disputed by legal experts. For one, when the US killed al-Qaida members, Congress had authorized the use of force. In targeting drug cartel members, the administration has relied on Trump’s article II powers to defend the US against an imminent threat.
The latest boat strikes come as the US appears destined to start hitting land-based targets in the coming weeks, after the Pentagon sent its most advanced aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Caribbean – a major escalation in the Trump administration’s stated war against drug cartels.
The move is expected bring the USS Gerald Ford, with its dozens of fighter jets, and its accompanying destroyers, to the coast of Venezuela by roughly the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.
Read more from my colleague Hugo Lowell here.
A GOP House member pushes for Mamdani's deportation
A far-right Republican legislator has urged federal authorities to investigate whether Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, committed naturalization fraud by allegedly failing to disclose his Democratic Socialists of America affiliation and political views when becoming a US citizen.
The latest freak-out over Mamdani’s possible ascension to mayoralty comes from Andy Ogles, the Tennessee congressperson who claims in a letter to attorney general Pam Bondi that Mamdani “praised terrorists” and held views that “openly despised the US constitution” in 2017, and argues such positions should have been revealed during the citizenship process.
“If we deport Mamdani for breaking REAL laws, we can save NYC and take back our country from the Marxists who want to reduce America to a third-world wasteland,” he wrote on X.
Mike Johnson, while talking to reporters, said the pardons made by Joe Biden are “invalid on their face”.
“I used to be a constitutional lawyer,” the House speaker added. “I would love to take this case, go into the court and make that law to set the precedent”.
The Monday strikes hit four boats in three waves in the eastern Pacific ocean, Hegseth said. There were 14 confirmed killed, and one survivor, who was taken by Mexican search and rescue teams.
Prior to the missiles on Monday, US forces have carried out at least eight strikes against boats off the Caribbean over the last few weeks, killing 40 people.
Pentagon embraces ‘war on cartels' after announcing killing of 14 people onboard alleged drug-trafficking vessels in three separate operations
Pete Hegseth, the Trump administration’s defence secretary, announced on social media that US forces killed 14 people onboard alleged drug-trafficking vessels in three separate military operations on 27 October, and vowed that suspected narcotics smugglers will face the same treatment as terrorist organizations.
“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Hegseth wrote Tuesday morning, adding: “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
There was one survivor. Hegseth said the strikes came at the direction of the Donald Trump.
The GOP-led committee also released a staff report based on a 14-witness deposition alleging Biden’s advisors orchestrated a cover-up involving scripted appearances and restricted media access.
It claims that senior strategist Mike Donilon and other key advisors “stood to gain financially and politically” from maintaining Biden’s candidacy while suppressing evidence of his decline.
Three aides, including Biden’s physician Kevin O’Connor, invoked fifth amendment protections during the probe.
