Calling Trump ‘heartless’, top Senate Democrat blames president for food aid cut off
Democratic senator minority leader Chuck Schumer is laying into Donald Trump, after his administration announced that it could not continue a crucial food aid program beyond Saturday, because of the government shutdown.
Schumer argues that money is available to continue the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), otherwise known as food stamps, but Trump refuses to use it.
“For the first time in history, a president, Donald Trump, is refusing to fund Snap during a shutdown,” Schumer told a press conference.
“Forty-two million Americans – hungry children, middle class families who’ve just … lost [their] job, veterans, senior citizens who struggle to pay for their food, all of these people will lose their SNAP benefits, not because the money’s gone, not because it’s not permitted, because Donald Trump ordered it stopped. Donald Trump is a vindictive politician and a heartless man.”
Key events
Republican Senate leader calls bill funding food aid during shutdown ‘cynical’
Things just grew heated on the Senate floor after Democratic senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico asked the chamber to unanimously pass his bill guaranteeing federal food aid during the shutdown.
John Thune, the Republican majority leader, blocked the bill to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), arguing that Democrats should instead vote to reopen the government.
“Snap recipients shouldn’t go without food. People should be getting paid in this country, and we’ve tried to do that 13 times. You voted no 13 times. This isn’t a political game,” Thune said, referring to the number of votes he has held on the Republican bill to fund the government through 21 November.
Democrats have blocked passage of that bill, because it does not address their health care concerns, including the extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans.
Thune continued to hammer Luján’s bill:
This request is a transparent admission that Democrats want to keep the shutdown for what – another month longer? This bill is a cynical attempt to provide political cover for Democrats to allow them to carry on their government shutdown for the long term.
In response, Luján accused Thune of refusing to compromise:
When you hold power, when you’re the majority, you meet people, you pull them in. You don’t tell folks, you know where my office is. You all have heard me talk about the late governor Bruce King, a cattle farm out in New Mexico. He used to tell us when people can’t figure out what’s going on, you lock them up in a barn and you don’t let them out until they figure out how to get along.
Well, we don’t got a barn. Maybe they’ve got an office around here to sit some people. And there’s a White House. It’s easy to get in – there’s a big hole in it.
More about that big hole:
In the government funding standoff, Democrats are demanding that Republicans support extending tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans, arguing that they will soon become unaffordable for many enrollees without congressional action. Here’s the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon with more about just how much prices may rise:
People in the US shopping for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces will face a steep 26% average price increase next year, according to new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation released just days before enrollment begins on 1 November.
The jump represents one of the sharpest rises since the healthcare program launched over a decade ago, with consumers using the federal healthcare.gov platform set to see even steeper hikes of 30% on average. State-run marketplaces are also expected to experience a 17% increase.
But the financial pain for many of the 24 million Americans enrolled in ACA plans, now a record number, could be far worse. Enhanced subsidies that have kept premiums affordable for millions are set to expire at year’s end, which threatens to more than double what many households actually pay out of pocket, according to KFF.
The research from the non-partisan health policy organization found that monthly payments for subsidized enrollees could increase by an average of 114% if Congress fails to extend the enhanced tax credits. The healthcare.gov website, which opened for preview shopping on Tuesday, is already displaying the higher costs that reflect the lapse in assistance.
Federal prosecutors suspended after calling January 6 defendants ‘rioters’
Two federal prosecutors have been put on leave after writing in a court filing that “a mob of rioters” attacked the Capitol on January 6, Reuters reports.
Donald Trump pardoned all those convicted or facing charges over the insurrection at the Capitol on the first day of his second term. Reuters reports that Samuel White and Carlos Valdivia were prosecuting Taylor Taranto on gun charges after he drove to the neighborhood around Barack Obama’s Washington DC home in 2023. Taranto had previously been involved in the January 6 attack, and White and Valdivia noted his presence at the Capitol in a memo where they argued he should face a 27-month sentence on the gun charges.
The story was first reported by ABC News. Here’s more, from Reuters:
Taranto had previously been charged for his role in the 2021 assault on the Capitol and was pardoned in January on Trump’s return to the White House. He was one of nearly 1,600 people pardoned but remained incarcerated on the 2023 gun charges.
Trump and his allies have sought to play down the January 6 violence, decrying the prosecutions as a “national injustice.”
White and Valdivia had asked US district judge Carl Nichols in Washington DC, to impose a sentence of 27 months for Taranto.
They were not provided an official reason for their removal, which was carried out by the executive office for United States attorneys, three of the people said. A justice department spokesperson declined to comment and Reuters could not immediately reach the two attorneys for comment.
The decision to place them on leave marks the latest in a string of personnel actions targeting justice department employees who worked on criminal or civil cases disfavored by Trump and his supporters. More than 200 prosecutors, agents and other personnel have been fired, some of whom worked on two criminal cases against Trump or on cases related to the attack on the Capitol.
Taranto was convicted on gun charges after having “perpetrated a hoax” on 28 June 2023, in which he falsely claimed he would cause a car bomb to drive into the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The next day, after Trump posted Obama’s purported address on social media, Taranto reposted it and began live-streaming himself as he drove into Obama’s neighborhood in Washington DC In the video, he said he was searching for “tunnels” to access private residences. Eventually he parked and walked into a restricted area protected by the US Secret Service where he stated: “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.”
In a search of his van, law enforcement found two firearms, a stabilizing brace and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
The day so far
Here’s a rundown of what’s been happening today:
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The US government shutdown hit its 29th day, with no indication Democrats and Republicans were close to an agreement to restart funding.
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The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan forecaster, predicted the shutdown would negatively impact the economy, but much of its damage would be reversed when the government reopens. Nonetheless, anywhere between $7bn and $14bn in real GDP will be lost.
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Donald Trump continues his trip through Asia, with the White House confirming a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday.
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The Federal Reserve made a quarter-percentage-point cut to its interest rates, while warning of “elevated inflation” and an uncertain economic outlook.
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Las Vegas may be the site of the proposed midterm political convention Trump wants Republicans to hold ahead of next year’s pivotal legislative elections, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called Trump “heartless” after his administration determined it could not continue a crucial food aid program because of the shutdown.
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Demonstrators in South Korea staged “No Trump” protests as the US president visited the city of Gyeongju for events around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Fed chair Powell says shutdown has hit growth, but effects ‘should reverse’ when government opens
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that the government shutdown has undermined US economic growth, but restored funding should undo the damage.
“The shutdown of the federal government will weigh on economic activity while it persists, but these effects should reverse after the shutdown ends,” Powell said at his ongoing press conference.
He noted that the shutdown had also delayed the release of some government data the central bank relies on to make its decisions.
Powell also nodded to the economics impacts of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, saying: “Job gains have slowed significantly since earlier in the year. A good part of the slowing likely reflects a decline in the growth of the labor force due to lower immigration and labor force participation, though, labor demand has clearly softened as well.”
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision:
The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday, the second rate cut this year amid economic turbulence from the federal government shutdown and Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The decision to cut the Fed’s benchmark interest rate by a quarter point to a range of 3.75% to 4% comes at an extraordinary moment for the central bank. The Fed has been under immense pressure from Donald Trump to cut rates despite persistent inflation.
In a statement, the Fed said that the unemployment rate had gone up but remains low. “Job gains have slowed,” the statement reads. “Inflation has moved up and remains somewhat elevated.”
The ongoing federal government shutdown, now one of the longest in US history, has also complicated the Fed’s job. Collection of important economic data has been indefinitely halted as employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are furloughed during the shutdown.
The Fed typically studies BLS data to determine labor market conditions, including the number of new jobs added to the economy and the current unemployment rate. The last jobs report was released in early September, before the shutdown, and gave a relatively bleak snapshot of the jobs market in August. The number of jobs added to the economy in August was down by more than 100,000 since the spring, and unemployment crept up to 4.3% – the highest since 2021.
Though BLS was scheduled to release September’s job market report in early October, it suspended its release once the shutdown started. Private payroll firm ADP reported earlier this month that the private sector cut 32,000 jobs in September, a sign that the job market is continuing to slow.
Federal Reserve slashes interest rate again, notes ‘somewhat elevated’ inflation
The Federal Reserve has voted to slash its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point amid inflation that has remained “somewhat elevated” and an uncertain US economic outlook.
The rate cut comes as the central bank shifts from fighting the inflation that plagued the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and towards bolstering economic growth and the labor market.
“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remained low through August; more recent indicators are consistent with these developments. Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated,” the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement released just now, following the conclusion of its regular meeting.
In a sign of the tricky balance the Fed faces between quelling inflation and supporting hiring, the statement noted: “Uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated. The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate and judges that downside risks to employment rose in recent months.”
The decision was endorsed by 10 of the committee’s 12 members. Donald Trump’s former top economic adviser, Stephen Miran, dissented, arguing for a cut of a half a percentage point, in line with the president’s desire for lower interest rates. Jeffrey Schmid also did not vote for the decision, preferring not to lower the rate.
US representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat, has now been waiting 36 days to be sworn in to office, setting a new record that any member of Congress has had to wait following a special election, Axios reports.
The matter has become a political football, with House speaker Mike Johnson refusing to swear Grijalva in until the House is back in session.
The House speaker is able to swear in new members during “pro forma” sessions when the House isn’t in session, as Johnson did earlier this year with two Florida Republicans, but he is declining to do so with Grijalva, of Arizona.
She won almost 70% of the vote in the 23 September election for Arizona’s 7th congressional district. The results were certified on 14 October.
Democrats are accusing Johnson of depriving southern Arizona of representation, and feel he is delaying Grijalva’s swearing in because she is expected to deliver the final signature required on a petition to force the release of the Epstein files.
Further to that, millions of poor and disadvantaged Americans could face trouble accessing funds for home heating starting next month due to the government shutdown, lawmakers from both parties and non-profit groups said on Wednesday.
The shutdown, now in its 29th day, could prevent states from receiving about $3.6bn under the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, run by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The funds help families pay winter heating and summer cooling bills, with about 80% used in the winter months.
States typically receive their allocations in late October or November, and the funds are distributed to households in November and December.
Republican representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania called on health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to ensure uninterrupted LIHEAP funding during the shutdown.
“No household should have to choose between keeping their homes at safe temperatures, basic healthcare, or having food on the table,” Fitzpatrick said in a letter to Kennedy, calling on HHS to use every available authority and mechanism to maintain LIHEAP operations without interruption and to communicate with states and providers to prevent service gaps that would endanger communities.
Officials in Minnesota and New York have also warned residents that funds may be delayed. The program assisted 1.5 million New York households last year, governor Kathy Hochul’s office said in a statement last week. “Thanks to Washington Republicans’ government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers are about to be left in the cold,” she said.
The Trump administration fired LIHEAP staff in April as part of wider cutbacks in the federal government, which also raised concerns about getting funds to states.
Democratic representative Madeleine Dean, also of Pennsylvania, called the situation “unacceptable”. “While the most vulnerable among us pay the price for this shutdown, Republicans seem uninterested in ending it,” Dean posted on X.
Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said any delays in funding would be difficult for vulnerable Americans, 42 million of whom are also set to lose Snap food aid, which is set to lapse on Saturday.
“If the shutdown continues, the lives of low-income families, the lives of poor families, in the United States will just become much harder,” Wolfe told Reuters. “A $500 grant for energy assistance might not sound like a lot to a middle-income family, but for a low-income family, that’s what allows them to buy heating oil to get the furnace started.”
Schumer ended his press conference by accusing Republicans of using people who rely on Snap “as hostages”.
Replying to a question about whether Democrats should take any responsibility if the food aid benefits ends on Saturday because of the shutdown, as the Trump administration says it will, Schumer replied:
We are saying the Republicans can fund it now, and they’re using these people as hostages, plain and simple … that’s the answer.
He also linked Democrats’s insistence that Snap be funded with Republican’s refusal to negotiate over extending tax credits for Affordable Care Act premiums until the government is reopened:
And by the way, we don’t want to pit health care and food – they do. We think you can have both.
Schumer said that Senate Democrats would support two different bills, one proposed by a Republican senator, the other by a Democrat, to fund Snap beyond Saturday.
But it is up to Republican Senate majority leader John Thune to hold votes on those, and he said he is not in favor, insisting that Democrats vote for the GOP’s bill to reopen the entire government.
Referring to the Snap proposal from New Mexico Democrat Ben Ray Luján, Thune said on the Senate floor today: “This bill is a cynical attempt to provide political cover for Democrats to allow them to carry on their government shutdown even longer, and we’re not going to let them pick winners and losers. It’s time to fund everybody.”
Republican senator Josh Hawley has proposed similar legislation, which Democrats say they would support, but Thune is not expected to bring it up for a vote.
Calling Trump ‘heartless’, top Senate Democrat blames president for food aid cut off
Democratic senator minority leader Chuck Schumer is laying into Donald Trump, after his administration announced that it could not continue a crucial food aid program beyond Saturday, because of the government shutdown.
Schumer argues that money is available to continue the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), otherwise known as food stamps, but Trump refuses to use it.
“For the first time in history, a president, Donald Trump, is refusing to fund Snap during a shutdown,” Schumer told a press conference.
“Forty-two million Americans – hungry children, middle class families who’ve just … lost [their] job, veterans, senior citizens who struggle to pay for their food, all of these people will lose their SNAP benefits, not because the money’s gone, not because it’s not permitted, because Donald Trump ordered it stopped. Donald Trump is a vindictive politician and a heartless man.”
Las Vegas eyed as host of GOP’s 2026 midterm convention – report
Donald Trump’s advisers are considering hosting his proposed political convention ahead of the 2026 midterms in Las Vegas, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Political parties typically hold conventions ahead of presidential elections every four years, but Trump has floated the idea of a convention ahead of next year’s midterm elections, where the GOP will be defending their majorities in Congress.
They control the House of Representatives by a mere three seats, when all vacancies are filled, and the Senate by the same amount. The party in power has lost control of the House in recent midterms – as Trump did, during his first term in 2018 – and the Democrats are seen as having a good shot of retaking the lower chamber. That would give them expanded powers to investigate his administration, and block much of his legislative agenda.
Las Vegas is the largest city in Nevada, a swing state that Trump became the first Republican to win in two decades last year, when he triumphed over Kamala Harris.
Government shutdown could cost $14bn, congressional forecaster predicts
The US government shutdown has temporarily slowed the economy, and while most of its ill effects will disappear once funding is reauthorized, between $7bn and $14bn in GDP will not be recovered, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts.
Their prediction underscores the shutdown’s potential for economic damage, which is now on its 29th day. Congress failed to agree on extending funding beyond the end of September, leading federal agencies to curtail their operations, around 700,000 workers to be furloughed and hundreds of thousands of others to continue working without pay.
The CBO predicts that the shutdown will slash real gross domestic product, which has been adjusted for inflation, by between one and two percentage points in the fourth quarter, though much of that damage will be undone whenever funding is restored.
But there will nonetheless be a lingering economic hit, CBO forecasts. If the shutdown were to end today, it would cost $7bn, while if it ended after six weeks, on 12 November, it would cost $11bn. After eight weeks, on 26 November, the toll would be $14bn.
The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, believes that Republicans will back down from their positions as public outrage grows over sharply higher Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums.
“We are just three days, three days away from open enrollment and three days away from the biggest health care crisis America has seen in a generation,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
It’s the start of “window shopping” for the ACA, when enrollees can get a look at prices for health plans, and Schumer predicted that they “are seeing that, due to Republican obstruction, they will end up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars more each year for healthcare, seeing their premiums, triple, quadruple, or more”.
The current government shutdown is, in many ways, a continuation of the debate over the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats passed unilaterally in 2010 during Barack Obama’s presidency.
The tax credits that lower premiums for the plans came during Joe Biden’s presidency, and will expire at the end of the year. Democrats now want the GOP to extend them in conjunction with reopening the government.
Republicans have refused that demand, and insisted the government be reopened before the premium issue is addressed. But many Republicans are also pointing to the debate as proof that the Affordable Care Act has not lived up to its promise, though they have yet to resurrect their apparently dormant quest to repeal the law entirely. Here’s Senate majority leader John Thune just now, in a floor speech:
Suffice it to say, as Democrats are now implicitly admitting that Obamacare massively failed, Democrats of course now want to put a bandaid on a gaping wound by extending the Biden Covid bonuses. But, of course, that will do nothing to fix the underlying problem, which is that healthcare costs will continue to spiral under Obamacare.
Throwing $350bn in taxpayer dollars at the problem in the form of enhanced tax credits will do nothing to stop Obamacare premiums from going up by double digits, because that’s what they have been doing. And it will do nothing to improve health care for the majority of Americans who are not – not – on Obamacare health plans, like our seniors, our most vulnerable citizens, and those who get their coverage through their employer.
No end in sight as US government shutdown hits day 29
The US government shutdown has dragged into its 29th day, with no sign that lawmakers in Congress are anywhere near approving a measure to get federal agencies working again.
The Senate yesterday held its 13th vote on a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but Democrats blocked its advancement because it does not include funding for their healthcare priorities. The House of Representatives remains out of session on Republican speaker Mike Johnson’s orders, as it has since 19 September. The prolonged recess is seen as a gambit to force Senate Democrats to get on board with the funding proposals, which Republicans passed through the House with almost no Democratic votes before leaving Washington DC.
All signs point to no resolution of this crisis today. While the Senate will take votes, majority leader John Thune has not announced plans to bring the funding bill back up.
