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Tag: federal government

  • Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of the way Trump is managing the government, AP-NORC poll shows | Fortune

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    Approval of the way President Donald Trump is managing the government has dropped sharply since early in his second term, according to a new AP-NORC poll, with much of the rising discontent coming from fellow Republicans.

    The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted after Democrats’ recent victories in off-year elections but before Congress took major steps to try to end the longest shutdown in U.S. history. It shows that only 33% of U.S. adults approve of the way the Republican president is managing the government, down from 43% in an AP-NORC poll from March.

    That was driven in large part by a decline in approval among Republicans and independents. According to the survey, only about two-thirds of Republicans, 68%, said they approve of Trump’s government management, down from 81% in March. Independents’ approval dropped from 38% to 25%.

    The results highlight the risks posed by the shutdown, which Trump and his administration have tried to pin squarely on Democrats, even as U.S. adults have cast blame on both parties as the funding lapse has snarled air traffic, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without paychecks and compromised food aid for some of the most vulnerable Americans. But it could also indicate broader discontent with Trump’s other dramatic — and polarizing — changes to the federal government in recent months, including gutting agencies and directing waves of mass layoffs.

    Trump’s approval on government management erodes among Republicans

    Republicans have generally been steadfast in their support for the president, making their growing displeasure particularly notable.

    “I’m thoroughly disturbed by the government shutdown for 40-something days,” said Beverly Lucas, 78, a Republican and retired educator who lives in Ormond Beach, Florida, and compared Trump’s second term to “having a petulant child in the White House, with unmitigated power.”

    “When people are hungry, he had a party,” she said, referring to a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “I thought he seems callous.”

    The survey found an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 95%, continue to disapprove of Trump’s management of the federal government, compared with 89% in March.

    Trump’s overall approval holds steady

    Even with the decline in support for his management of the government, Trump’s overall approval rating has remained steady in the new poll. About one-third of U.S. adults, 36%, approve of his overall handling of the presidency, roughly in line with 37% in an October AP-NORC poll. Approval of his handling of key issues like immigration and the economy have also barely changed since last month.

    Health care emerged as a key issue in the shutdown debate as Democrats demanded that Republicans negotiate with them to extend tax credits that expire Jan. 1. But Trump’s approval on the issue, which was already fairly low, has barely changed.

    About one-third, 34%, of Americans said they approved of Trump’s handling of health care in the November poll, compared with 31% in October.

    And many of his supporters are still behind him. Susan McDuffie, 74, a Republican who lives in Carson City, Nevada, and retired several years ago, said she has “great confidence in Trump” and thinks the country is on the right track. She blames Democrats for the shutdown and the suffering it’s caused.

    “I just don’t understand how the Democrats can care so little about the people,” she said, scoffing at the idea that Democrats were trying to use the shutdown to force Republicans to address soon-to-skyrocket health care costs.

    “I don’t have any patience for the Democrats and their lame excuses,” she said, arguing that people who are scared about SNAP benefits expiring and struggling to put food on the table are a more pressing issue.

    Plenty of blame to go around

    When it comes to the shutdown, there is still plenty of blame to go around. Recent polls have indicated that while Republicans may be taking slightly more heat, many think Democrats are at fault, too.

    “I truly do believe it’s everybody. Everybody is being stubborn,” said Nora Bailey, 33, a moderate who lives in the Batesville area in Arkansas and does not align with either party.

    After recently giving birth, she said, she faced delays in getting a breast pump through a government program that helps new mothers while her son was in intensive care. And she is worried about her disabled parents, who rely on SNAP food stamp benefits.

    Overall, she said she is mixed on Trump’s handling of the job and disapproves of his management of the federal government because she believes he has not gone far enough to tackle waste.

    “I don’t see enough being done yet to tell me we have downsized the federal government instead of having all these excess people,” she said.

    It’s possible that Trump’s approval on handling the federal government will rebound if the government reopens. But the showdown could have a more lasting impact on perceptions of the president, whose approval on the economy and immigration has eroded slightly since the spring.

    Lucas, the Florida Republican, said shutdowns in which civilians aren’t paid are the wrong way to address ideological disagreement.

    “Air traffic controllers? Really? You want to not pay the people in whose hands your lives are every day?” she said. “We need to be addressing these conflicts like intelligent people and not thugs and bullies on the playground.”

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    Colvin reported from New York.

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    The AP-NORC poll of 1,143 adults was conducted Nov. 6-10 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

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    Jill Colvin, Linley Sanders, The Associated Press

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  • Supreme Court temporarily blocks full SNAP payments

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    The Supreme Court issued an emergency order on Friday night, temporarily blocking full payments of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

    Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.

    Why It Matters

    The fate of SNAP has become a critical and ongoing flashpoint in the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, with nearly 42 million Americans depending on the assistance to eat, some of whom already faced interruptions in food assistance due to the program’s funding being in limbo.

    What To Know

    According to the Associated Press, the High Court granted the Trump Administration’s request to appeal a previous ruling that would require SNAP to be fully funded amid the ongoing federal government shutdown.

    The order written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says in part, “The applicants assert that, without intervention from this
    Court, they will have to ‘transfer an estimated $4 billion by tonight’ to fund SNAP benefits through November.”

    “Given the First Circuit’s representations, an administrative stay is required to facilitate the First Circuit’s expeditious resolution of the pending stay motion,” Justice Jackson wrote. The order now blocks a previous ruling by a Rhode Island judge that required the payments to be paid out by Friday night, NBC News notes.

    What People Are Saying

    New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul on X earlier on Friday before the Supreme Court order: “I’ve just directed state agencies to fully fund federal SNAP benefits for November. President Trump’s actions have been senseless and un-American. I’ll never stop fighting for New York’s families.”

    California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom on X on Friday before the order: “Donald Trump is now going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to take SNAP food benefits away from Americans in need. California won’t back down in court from supporting the tens of millions of Americans the Trump Administration seemingly wants to starve.”

    Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday: “SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT”

    What Happens Next

    The Supreme Court’s administrative stay pauses District Judge John J. McConnell Jr.’s previous mandate for full SNAP payments, giving the First Circuit Court of Appeals additional time to review the case.

    Meanwhile, millions of SNAP recipients face continued uncertainty about the timing and amount of their benefits.

    Update 11/7/25 10:33 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.

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  • Trump vowed to stop crypto crackdowns. Samourai Wallet proves he hasn’t.

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    For years, President Donald Trump complained that his predecessor had weaponized the judicial system against him on what he claimed were trumped-up charges, including election interference, mishandling classified documents, hush-money payments, and fraudulent tax and property dealings. 

    Now that the shoe is on the other foot, the president seems wholly uninterested in stopping the very weaponization he once railed against. 

    This week, Keonne Rodriguez, the co-creator of the bitcoin privacy wallet Samourai, was sentenced to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine—the maximum sentence under the charge for which he pleaded guilty earlier this year. “In July, Rodriguez and his cofounder William Hill plead[ed] guilty [to] the known transmission of illicit proceeds,” The Rage reported on Thursday. 

    Samourai Wallet did not perpetrate financial crimes, ransom data for bitcoin, or steal digital assets. Rodriguez and his team wrote code—that First Amendment–protected activity we learned to cherish after the crypto wars in the 1990s. Their service obfuscated users’ bitcoin transaction histories, making it harder for observers on a public blockchain to trace funds after they had passed through the tool. In the Justice Department’s view, that now constitutes money laundering and a failure to register as a money transmitter—even though Samourai never held custody of bitcoin (making the entire money-transmitting charge odd in the first place).

    In a letter seeking leniency, Rodriguez acknowledged he should have obtained a license for the business, but U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, addressing the letter in court on Thursday, thought that was not relevant, even though that’s explicitly the “crime” for which he was maximally sentenced. “You chose to use your considerable talents to make it harder to recoup those stolen funds,” said the judge. Admittedly, some shady actors used the software—but five years in prison for that?

    In the TD Bank money-laundering scandal in 2024, the Justice Department collected the largest penalty ever imposed under the Bank Secrecy Act for poor compliance practices that allowed far more illicit funds to flow through its dollar-based system than the amount of bitcoin that ever ran through Samourai. Notably, nobody went to jail for that crime, even though bank employees were bribed tens of thousands of dollars to look the other way while criminal networks laundered more than a billion dollars of illicit funds through a top-10 bank in America. 

    Tools can be wielded by users for good or bad—the moral or legal responsibility for that is on the users, not the creators. Most money laundering occurs using U.S. currency—physical or digital. Prosecutors claimed that terrorists and criminals used Samourai Wallet’s services, but to a much larger extent, they use dollar bills.

    The Samourai Wallet prosecution—and the closely related Tornado Cash trial on a similar Ethereum blockchain service in August—was always an outdated remnant of Operation Chokepoint 2.0, where the executive branch excessively and disproportionately went after cryptocurrency developers. 

    Earlier this year, the Trump administration publicly stated that it would cease prosecuting developers for writing code. In the months since, several bitcoin services that had shut off access for Americans in fear of legal repercussions have returned. The White House proclaims America to be the “crypto capital of the world,” adding the laughably incoherent statement that “all the remaining Bitcoin [will] be made in the USA.”

    The president has issued various crypto-related pardons. On his second day in office, he made good on a campaign promise to libertarians by pardoning Ross Ulbricht from an excessive double life sentence for building a website. Last month, he pardoned Changpeng Zhao (known as C.Z.), the billionaire former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, following a four-month money-laundering stint (though he recently admitted to not even knowing who C.Z. is).

    It’s time for the Trump administration to get its legal house in order—that should start with a pardon for Rodriguez. 

    Then again, unlike C.Z., Rodriguez doesn’t have a billion-dollar investment to make in a Trump family–related business, nor a bunch of bitcoin votes to sway a critical election. Right now, leniency in crypto cases seems reserved for those with billions to invest or political leverage to trade.

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    Joakim Book

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  • Federal judge orders Trump administration to make full November SNAP payments

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    (CNN) — A federal judge in Rhode Island said Thursday that the Trump administration must fully cover food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November.

    “People have gone without for too long,” US District Judge John McConnell said during a hastily called hearing Thursday. “Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.”

    Nearly 42 million Americans receive food stamps. Payments are made on a staggered basis over the course of a month.

    But the US Department of Agriculture took the unprecedented step of halting benefits for November, saying the program had run out of funding amid the government shutdown.

    Despite the judge’s ruling, however, many beneficiaries may have to wait a at least few more days to see the assistance. States send food stamp enrollees’ information to vendors every month so they can load funds onto recipients’ benefit cards, often days or weeks before the new month begins. Those steps need to take place before benefits can restart.

    McConnell’s order comes days after the administration, in response to an earlier order from him, said it would provide only partial food stamp benefits for November by using $4.65 billion in a contingency fund maintained by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps.

    The judge said the administration had not worked fast enough to ensure money reached the program’s millions of recipients and that it had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it decided earlier this week that it would not provide the full benefits this month.

    Under McConnell’s new ruling, the government must tap into billions of additional dollars held by USDA in a separate pot of money so full SNAP benefits can be paid. The judge said those payments needed to be made to states, which administer the program, by Friday.

    The administration quickly appealed McConnell’s order to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which is stacked with appointees of Democratic presidents.

    Throughout the brief hearing, McConnell repeatedly chastised an attorney representing the Trump administration over the government’s failure to ensure SNAP benefits quickly reached the millions of Americans who rely on them, stressing the on-ground-impact nearly a week after recipients began missing payments for November.

    “Without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” the judge said. “This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”

    On Tuesday, a coalition of cities, non-profits, unions and small businesses that brought the legal challenge complained that the administration was not complying with McConnell’s order from last week. The plaintiffs claimed that since the government admitted in court filings that reduced benefits could take weeks or months to be administered, they were violating his directive that the government work “expeditiously” to ensure November payments are made.

    The judge agreed.

    “It is clear to the court that the administration did not comply,” he said. “The court was clear that the administration had to either make the full payment by this past Monday, or it must ‘expeditiously resolve the administrative and clerical burdens it described in its papers.’ … The record is clear that the administration did neither.”

    The hearing was the latest high-stakes court showdown over food stamps, which the administration had attempted to defund amid the government shutdown, prompting both the lawsuit in Rhode Island and a separate one filed by Democratic governors and state attorneys general in Massachusetts.

    In both cases, McConnell and US District Judge Indira Talwani, of the federal court in Boston, made clear last week that the USDA must tap into contingency funds to provide at least partial SNAP benefits this month, but they left it up to government to decide whether to use unused tariff funds meant for child nutrition programs to provide full SNAP benefits for November. Both judges were appointed by former President Barack Obama.

    The administration said earlier this week that it opposed using the nearly $17 billion left in the child nutrition fund because it would endanger the nation’s free and reduced-price school meals program, which serves about 29 million children a day. (The agency has transferred $750 million in tariff revenue to the WIC food assistance program for pregnant women, new moms and young children.)

    But McConnell ruled on Thursday that the administration’s choice not to make full payments by dipping into the other pot of money at the USDA did not reflect reasoned agency decision-making.

    He pointed specifically to the USDA’s decision to pull money from that pot to the fund the WIC food assistance program, saying that move “undermines” their argument against using it for SNAP payments.

    “A rationale premised on such legal errors must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious,” McConnell said.

    The administration pushed back strongly on claims that it wasn’t complying with McConnell’s earlier order and that it had made a slap-dash decision to only partially fund food stamps this month. It insisted in court papers filed Wednesday that since it had released the money from its contingency fund to states and provided guidance on how state officials can calculate reduced payments, “there is nothing more USDA could do.”

    “We resolved all of the burdens that the government is responsible for,” Tyler Becker, a Justice Department lawyer, said during Thursday’s hearing.

    Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Rhode Island case said the new ruling from McConnell was a “major victory” for the millions of Americans who receive the federal food benefits.

    “This immoral and unlawful decision by the administration has shamefully delayed SNAP payments, taking food off the table of hungry families,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “We shouldn’t have to force the President to care for his citizens, but we will do whatever is necessary to protect people and communities.”

    Recalculating partial benefits

    The swiftly changing legal landscape has left states scrambling to catch up and recipients wondering when they would receive any assistance.

    The USDA provided states with guidance on Tuesday on how to issue benefits based on cutting households’ maximum allotments in half, which the agency initially said was all it could provide with the available contingency funds.

    To provide partial benefits, which has never been done before, states have to reprogram their systems to recalculate recipients’ payments.

    Illinois said that beneficiaries would start seeing payments on Friday, while North Carolina and Massachusetts said recipients could expect to get their assistance next week. But Pennsylvania wrote the agency a letter saying that it would take a few weeks to get aid to recipients because of the burdensome process the USDA chose. Other states CNN contacted could not give a timeline for when benefits would be distributed.

    By midweek, however, the situation has changed twice in less than 24 hours. On Wednesday evening, the USDA announced it could actually pay 65% of maximum benefits from the contingency fund and issued new guidance to states, which would necessitate another round of recalculations. The next day, McConnell ordered full payments to be made for the month.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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    Devan Cole, Tami Luhby and CNN

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  • Republicans block full SNAP benefits from being paid out this month

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    Senate Republicans blocked a push by Democrats to restore full funding for the Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP) on Monday, which has seen its resources run out over the weekend due to the ongoing government shutdown, according to multiple reports.

    Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, put forward a resolution backed by 44 Democrats in the upper house demanding that SNAP benefits be immediately restored for the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on it to put food on the table for them and their families.

    The Department of Agriculture would have been forced to release enough funds to support the delivery of SNAP benefits for the month of November—an estimated $8 billion – if the measure had been passed.

    But the initiative was blocked by Republicans after Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso objected calling the move a “political stunt” and saying reopening government would be the easiest way to restore benefits, reports The Hill.

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • About 1 in 5 kids are at risk of losing SNAP. Centralized control keeps failing low-income families.

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    The federal government shutdown is disrupting major federal programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Now one in five children nationwide risks losing benefits because Congress has failed to pass a budget. On October 30, a federal judge ordered the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to draw from SNAP’s contingency fund to cover payments, but that fund holds roughly $5–6 billion—barely enough to cover three weeks of payments for a program that spends more than $8 billion each month. 

    The ongoing deadlock highlights SNAP’s fragility due to its near-total reliance on federal funding. More importantly, its chronic dependency on Washington’s one-size-fits-all solutions has left it failing the very children it’s supposed to help. The best way to ensure healthy outcomes for kids and protect them from the partisan crossfire of D.C. politicking is to break the federal grip on nutrition programs.

    Washington has become a permanent fixture of childhood in low-income America. The N in SNAP stands for “nutrition,” but federal food aid has routinely failed to deliver healthy diets for low-income families despite nearly $2 trillion in spending since 2000. Almost one-quarter of food purchases by SNAP households are for junk food, which undermines the efforts of doctors and other federal agencies to promote healthy diets. SNAP participants also have higher rates of obesity and poorer nutrition than nonparticipants, regularly failing to meet dietary guidelines while performing poorly on key health indicators. All of this has helped drive child obesity to nearly one in five children and adolescents as of 2020.

    SNAP may provide assistance to families, but a program that consistently fails to deliver positive outcomes for the children it aims to serve falls far short of its purpose.

    We’ve seen this problem before—and its solution. Like SNAP, Congress designed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to assist low-income households, but its structure created perverse incentives that encouraged single motherhood, punished work, and trapped families in dependency for years. The 1996 welfare reforms replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a fixed block grant program that provided states with much-needed flexibility to innovate and tailor their programs to fit the needs of their residents.

    States leveraged TANF’s block grant flexibility by shifting funds from pure cash assistance to targeted supports such as childcare subsidies, job training, and education programs. These reforms helped parents—especially single mothers—overcome employment barriers and increase their income. The results surpassed everyone’s predictions. Within a decade, more than 1.6 million children were lifted out of poverty. Additionally, poverty in single-mother families fell to record lows, and overall poverty and child hunger declined substantially. All of this occurred while welfare caseloads declined by more than half.

    By converting SNAP into a block grant and gradually decoupling it from federal dollars, states would be able to take on decision-making and responsibility for their programs, controlling funding and tailoring solutions to the needs of their low-income families. Just as TANF prioritized economic independence and employment, state SNAP reforms could prioritize better health and self-sufficiency.

    The current shutdown should serve as a catalyst for Congress to reassess the federal role in welfare. Children shouldn’t go hungry because Congress can’t govern—nor should they be dependent on the D.C. bureaucracy for their food. SNAP’s centralization and reliance on federal dollars have caused it to fail at meeting the nutritional needs of children, and now, millions of families face the prospect of sudden benefit disruptions.

    Congress should stop treating Americans as collateral damage in their fight over extending Obamacare subsidies and end the shutdown immediately. While restoring federal funding will avoid immediate disruptions to benefits, Congress should also reform welfare to ensure it helps rather than hinders the families who rely on it. 

    SNAP is outdated. Congress should devolve funding and administration to the states, allowing them to pursue more effective nutrition policies for low-income families.

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    Romina Boccia

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  • How much could the federal shutdown cost?

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    The federal shutdown — one month long and counting — has an obvious economic impact for government workers who aren’t receiving paychecks and food aid recipients who could lose their benefits Nov. 1.

    But what about the broader economy? History points to some effect there, too.

    In past shutdowns, estimates of lost economic activity have reached into the billions of dollars. In the context of a $30 trillion economy, that’s not a lot. But on the margins, economists say it can have an effect.

    The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’ nonpartisan number cruncher, released an Oct. 29 estimate of how much the economy could lose from a four-week, six-week and eight-week shutdown. The shutdown has already exceeded four weeks; if it continues, Nov. 12 would mark six weeks. 

    Here’s a look at the agency’s calculations — and some of the count’s possible shortcomings.

    What is the current shutdown’s expected economic impact?

    The CBO estimate says the federal spending delay will produce short-term economic losses — largely in the fourth quarter of 2025 — that will mostly be recouped during the first quarter of 2026, assuming the shutdown ends by then.

    CBO projected how much the shutdown would hamper U.S. economic growth per quarter, adjusted for inflation and multiplied by four, to convert a quarterly figure into an annual one. It estimated that a four-week shutdown would reduce fourth-quarter 2025 growth by 1% and an eight-week shutdown would reduce fourth-quarter growth by 2%.

    Most of this lost growth, CBO said, would be made up in the first quarter of 2026 — but not all of it. Between $7 billion and $14 billion would be permanently lost, depending on how long the shutdown lasts.

    Much of the permanently lost economic output would stem from furloughed employees’ reduced output, CBO said.

    The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 24, 2025. (Louis Jacobson / PolitiFact)

    Why might this figure be low?

    This estimate could be low because of what CBO assumes when making its calculations.

    The agency listed four assumptions in its estimate: 

    • When the shutdown ends, furloughed employees will be paid retroactively.

    • When funding resumes, “all the spending on goods and services that did not occur during the shutdown will be made up.”

    • Active-duty military and certain law enforcement will continue to be paid during the shutdown.

    • When the shutdown ends, missed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will be paid retroactively.

    In each of these cases, however, the administration has either proposed doing the opposite or has struggled to accomplish the objective.

    • On Oct. 7, a week after the shutdown began, President Donald Trump said furloughed federal workers should not necessarily receive back pay once the shutdown is over and that some workers “don’t deserve” it. The White House wrote a legal opinion claiming a 2019 law guaranteeing eventual payment for furloughed workers is not ironclad.

    • During Trump’s second term, his administration has regularly moved unilaterally to cancel spending approved by Congress. Some of those efforts have been blocked in the courts, but the shutdown has emboldened the administration. One example is its effort to defund the Gateway Tunnel project between New York and New Jersey.

    • So far, active-duty military personnel have been paid, and they are scheduled to receive their next paychecks Oct. 31. But the administration was able to do this only by shifting $5.3 billion from research and development funding, from a Pentagon procurement account and from an account created under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

    • The administration is fighting in court efforts to require the use of emergency funding to pay for SNAP benefits, which are otherwise set to expire Nov. 1. It’s unclear whether the administration would reimburse recipients retroactively once the shutdown ends.

    Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, said it’s fair to assume that if any or all of CBO’s assumptions ultimately prove incorrect, there could be a substantially bigger hit to the economy than what the agency now projects.

    CBO acknowledged in its analysis that “the effects of the shutdown on the economy are uncertain” and depend on “decisions made by the administration throughout the shutdown.”

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  • Judges order USDA to restart SNAP funding, but hungry families won’t get immediate relief

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    Two federal judges told the U.S. Department of Agriculture in separate rulings Friday that it must begin using billions of dollars in contingency funding to provide federal food assistance to poor American families despite the federal shutdown, but gave the agency until Monday to decide how to do so.

    Both Obama-appointed judges rejected Trump administration arguments that more than $5 billion in USDA contingency funds could not legally be tapped to continue Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for nearly 42 million people — about 1 in 8 Americans — while the federal government remains closed. But both also left unclear how exactly the relief should be provided, or when it will arrive for millions of families set to lose benefits starting Saturday.

    The two rulings came almost simultaneously Friday.

    In Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani stopped short of granting California and a coalition of 24 other Democrat-led states a temporary restraining order they had requested. But she ruled that the states were likely to succeed in their arguments that the USDA’s total shutoff of SNAP benefits — despite having billions in emergency contingency funds on hand — was unlawful.

    Talwani gave USDA until Monday to tell her whether they would authorize “only reduced SNAP benefits” using the contingency funding — which would not cover the total $8.5 billion to $9 billion needed for all November benefits, according to the USDA — or would authorize “full SNAP benefits using both the Contingency Funds and additional available funds.”

    Separately, in Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John McConnell granted a temporary restraining order requested by nonprofit organizations, ruling from the bench that SNAP must be funded with at least the contingency funds “as soon as possible,” and requesting an update on progress by Monday.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — whose office helped bring the states’ lawsuit — praised the decisions of the two courts, saying SNAP benefits “provide an essential hunger safety net” to 5.5 million Californians. “Simply put, the stakes could not be higher.”

    Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which represented the nonprofit groups, said the ruling in that case “affirms what both the law and basic decency require” and “protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight.”

    The White House referred questions about the ruling to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to a request for comment. It was not clear if the administration would appeal the rulings.

    While the orders were a win for states and the nation’s SNAP recipients, they do not mean that all those recipients will be spared a lapse in their food aid, state officials stressed. State and local food banks continued scrambling to prepare for a deluge of need starting Saturday.

    Asked Thursday if a ruling in the states’ favor would mean SNAP funds would be immediately loaded onto CalFresh and other benefits cards, Bonta said “the answer is no, unfortunately.”

    “Our best estimates are that [SNAP benefit] cards could be loaded and used in about a week,” he said, calling that lag “problematic.”

    “There could be about a week where people are hungry and need food,” he said. For new applicants to the program, he said, it could take even longer.

    The rulings came as the now monthlong shutdown continued Friday with no immediate end in sight.

    It also came after President Trump called Thursday for the Senate to end the shutdown by first ending the filibuster, a longstanding rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections to legislation. The rule has traditionally been favored by lawmakers as a means of blocking particularly partisan measures, and is currently being used by Democrats to resist the will of the current 53-seat Republican majority.

    Los Angeles Regional Food Bank Chief Executive Michael Flood, standing alongside Bonta as members of the California National Guard worked behind them stuffing food boxes Thursday, said his organization was preparing for massive weekend lines, similar to those seen during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “This is a disaster type of situation,” Flood said.

    “5.5 million Californians, 1.5 million children and adults in L.A. County alone, will be left high and dry — illegally so, unnecessarily so, in a way that is morally bankrupt,” Bonta said.

    Bonta blamed the shutdown on Trump and his administration, and said the USDA broke the law by not tapping its contingency funds to continue payments.

    Bonta said SNAP benefits have never been disrupted during previous federal government shutdowns, and should never have been disrupted during this shutdown, either.

    “That was avoidable,” he said. “Trump created this problem.”

    The Trump administration has blamed the shutdown and the looming disruption to SNAP benefits entirely on Democrats in Congress, who have blocked short-term spending measures to restart the government and fund SNAP. Democrats are holding out to pressure Republicans into rescinding massive cuts to subsidies that help millions of Americans afford health insurance.

    Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, previously told The Times that Democrats should be the ones getting asked “when the shutdown will end,” because “they are the ones who have decided to shut down the government so they can use working Americans and SNAP benefits as ‘leverage’ to pursue their radical left wing agenda.”

    “Americans are suffering because of Democrats,” Jackson said.

    In their opposition to the states’ request for a temporary restraining order requiring the disbursement of funds, attorneys for the USDA argued that using emergency funds to cover November SNAP benefits would deplete funds meant to provide “critical support in the event of natural disasters and other uncontrollable catastrophes,” and could actually cause more disruption to benefits down the line.

    They wrote that SNAP requires between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month, and the USDA’s contingency fund has only about $5.25 billion, meaning it could not fully fund November benefits even if it did release contingency funding. Meanwhile, “a partial payment has never been made — and for good reason,” because it would force every state to recalculate benefits for recipients and then recalibrate their systems to provide the new amounts, they wrote.

    That “would take weeks, if it can be done at all,” and would then have to be undone in order to issue December benefits at normal levels, assuming the shutdown would have lifted by then, they wrote.

    Simply pausing the benefits to immediately be reissued whenever the shutdown ends is the smarter and less disruptive course of action, they argued.

    In addition to suing the administration, California and its leaders have been rushing to ensure that hungry families have something to eat in coming days. Gov. Gavin Newsom directed $80 million to food banks to stock up on provisions, and activated the National Guard to help package food for those who need it.

    Counties have also been working to offset the need, including by directing additional funding to food banks and other resource centers and asking partners in the private sector to assist.

    Dozens of organizations in California have written to Newsom calling on him to use state funds to fully cover the missing federal benefits, in order to prevent “a crisis of unthinkable magnitude,” but Newsom has suggested that is not possible given the scale of funding withheld.

    SNAP served about 41.7 million people in 2024, at an annual cost of nearly $100 billion, according to the USDA. Children and older people accounted for more than 63% of California recipients.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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    Kevin Rector

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  • As the shutdown drags on, here’s how it can drag down the economy

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    (CNN) — The federal government shutdown has lasted all month and is on pace to become the longest on record.

    While history has shown that the economy typically rebounds from a shutdown within a couple of months, each day it drags on brings a greater risk that the economy won’t just bend but will start to break — and rupture livelihoods in the process, economists say.

    “The economy is fragile and, therefore, something like a government shutdown could become a bigger problem a lot faster than people might think,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

    Congressional Budget Office estimates released Wednesday projected that the shutdown has permanently sapped at least $7 billion in output from the economy.

    The negative effects start to build on themselves very rapidly and the collateral damage becomes more widespread, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG.

    “That’s kind of like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering momentum and mass,” she said.

    Predicting something that has becoming increasingly unpredictable is an impossible task, but here’s a look at how the shutdown could ripple through critical avenues of everyday life.

    Jobs

    Prior to the shutdown, the US job market was already on its back.

    It’s been a low-hire, low-fire, low-churn environment. Employers, frozen by high economic and policy uncertainty, have held off making investments and adding workers. Some businesses have used this period to test the waters on artificial intelligence and other technologies – in turn putting to the test that “low-fire” descriptor by announcing mass layoffs in recent weeks.

    “We’re not creating any jobs of consequence, really,” Zandi said.

    Considering that backdrop, the tepid job gains can potentially turn into deeper job losses if safety nets become frayed, more paychecks are missed by federal workers and contractors, and spending pullbacks reverberate through the private sector, causing businesses to lay off workers or shut down, he said.

    A US Chamber of Commerce analysis released this week estimated that 65,500 small business contractors have billions of dollars in payments at risk because of the shutdown — $12 billion in payments for the month alone.

    Rate cuts and some greater clarity around trade deals and tariffs were supposed to fuel a rebound in hiring heading into 2026, noted Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at employment site ZipRecruiter.

    “However, tariffs are projected to dampen consumer spending before year’s end, and a prolonged shutdown could further erode consumer confidence,” she wrote in a note earlier this month. “This would delay hiring plans that might otherwise materialize, keeping the labor market stuck in place.”

    US consumer confidence during October dipped to its lowest level since April, when President Donald Trump announced a massive suite of steep tariffs on imported goods, according to The Conference Board’s latest index released this week.

    Health care and the care economy

    The expiration of the enhanced premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act coverage is at the crux of the Congressional stalemate to fund the federal government and end the shutdown.

    Democrats are demanding that a short-term funding package include an extension of the enhanced assistance, while Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government reopens.

    Open enrollment starts on November 1, and the more than 22 million Americans who use the federal health insurance marketplace are expected to see their monthly premium leap by 26% on average, according to a KFF analysis.

    Also on November 1, more than 65,000 children and families in 41 states and Puerto Rico are at risk of losing access to Head Start programs, which provide early education and child development resources to low-income households.

    Any center closures could quickly increase financial hardship for lower-earnings families. Child care disruptions have been shown to negatively impact labor force participation (particularly for women), productivity growth and overall economic growth.

    Spending

    The lengthier the shutdown, the higher the probability for a greater drag on overall economic activity, said Joe Brusuelas, RSM US chief economist.

    “And this isn’t economic activity that is just deferred or delayed, you’re now creating a condition of economic activity that just simply doesn’t happen,” he said.

    There’s the job that doesn’t get filled, the trip that doesn’t get taken and the holiday spending that doesn’t occur.

    “At some point, things start to break because they’re just not getting done,” added Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics. “When this thing really metastasizes and takes out the broader economy is when it starts to affect confidence – consumer, business, investor confidence – the stock market takes notice and instead of going straight up, it starts to wobble and starts going down.”

    If the shutdown continues past Thanksgiving, “there’s no coming back from that quickly,” he said, adding that once it passes that “point of no return,” it will cause “damage that’s longer-lasting.”

    Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of US economic activity. It has remained largely resilient, despite massive uncertainty and persistently high inflation.

    However, it’s likely done so because of an increasingly bifurcated, or “K-shaped” economy. Wealthy consumers, buoyed in part by strong market gains, are driving more of the spending while lower- and middle-income households are facing increased strain.

    Prices and interest rates

    A drawn-out shutdown could inject further “crosscurrents” into an already choppy price environment, Zandi said.

    On one hand, disruptions to government services and funding could affect trade and supply chains, driving up prices. On the other hand, a weakened economy would mean it’s harder for companies to raise prices, which could help keep overall inflation in check.

    “The net of all that, I think, is hard to know,” he said.

    Still, the shutdown and its economic fallout could give the Federal Reserve one more reason to continue cutting interest rates, he added.

    “The Fed’s putting a higher weight at this point on the weak job market than they are on inflation or financial conditions,” he said. “This [shutdown] would weaken the already fragile job market more.”

    The human impact

    The shutdown could very well exacerbate those struggles for many Americans, especially people on the margins.

    Most Americans are “not taking any solace from the fact that AI stocks are going stratospheric; they’re focused on having to make their credit card payment or the student loan monthly payment,” Zandi said. “The economy is fragile and, therefore, something like a government shutdown could become a bigger problem a lot faster than people might think so.”

    A lack of funding for safety net programs, particularly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, could not only exacerbate hunger and hardship for tens of millions of Americans, but also threatens to destabilize local economies, especially in rural areas.

    “It just adds insult to injury on an economy that was already showing some cracks,” KPMG economist Swonk said. “Low- and middle-income households are really struggling, and inequality tends to stoke political divisions as well as political backlash. So, this is just feeding in to already a not very comfortable situation that we are in.”

    “It’s hard when you see the struggles we’re already facing, but this is a man-made problem,” she added.

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    Alicia Wallace and CNN

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  • A major ICE shake-up is reportedly underway affecting at least half of the agency’s top leadership positions | Fortune

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is reassigning at least half the top leadership at Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices around the country in a major shake-up of the agency responsible for carrying out the president’s vision for mass deportations, according to one current and one former U.S. government official.

    The current official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said 12 ICE field office directors — the officers who run the network of field offices around the country responsible for immigration enforcement — were being reassigned.

    Half are to be replaced by existing or retired Customs and Border Protection staff, while the other half would be replaced by ICE officers, both the current and former officials said. The changes were initiated by the Homeland Security Department, the current official said, without specifying which cities were impacted.

    The former official, who has direct knowledge of the changes and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not intended for public release, said on top of the 12 reassignments, leaders in another four cities were being swapped out through retirements or other circumstances. He said the cities include major immigration enforcement targets such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington.

    He added that ICE leadership has been discussing the changes with other Trump administration officials for some time as part of a broad review of the agency.

    The reason for the personnel changes wasn’t immediately clear. But they indicate a greater integration of Border Patrol agents in ICE at a time when Customs and Border Protection has been accused of using heavy-handed tactics in its immigration enforcement.

    A major shakeup in Trump’s immigration enforcement leadership

    With a total of 25 field offices around the country, the reassignments amount to turnover of about half or more of the top staffers carrying out the president’s hardline immigration enforcement plans, which has seen a major deployment of law enforcement in major American cities, thousands of arrests and surging fear among residents, especially in immigrant communities.

    Homeland Security and the White House did not comment on the reassignments and each instead highlighted that all elements of immigration enforcement were working as one team.

    Putting Customs and Border Protection officers into top positions within Immigration and Customs Enforcement would create an expanded role for an agency that is already at the forefront of many of the aggressive tactics seen in both Los Angeles and now in Chicago.

    CBP officers — specifically Border Patrol agents — have carried out some of the most controversial operations as part of immigration crackdowns in both of those cities, including a recent raid in Chicago where officers rappelled down onto a building in an apartment complex from a helicopter. Border Patrol agents have also popped out of a moving truck and chased after people and conducted patrols through downtown Chicago.

    Border Patrol agents protect the land and water between the official border crossings to prevent human trafficking, drug smuggling or other types of contraband from entering the U.S. ICE, since its creation in 2003, is the main agency responsible for immigration enforcement inside the country.

    But during the Trump administration, Border Patrol agents have been taking part in immigration enforcement operations around the country, far from their more traditional duties.

    Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief from California who has been heading the Border Patrol’s operations in both cities, is himself accused of throwing tear gas canisters at protesters and took the stand Tuesday as a defendant in a federal lawsuit about whether federal officials are using excessive force in Chicago.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its agents carry out “targeted enforcement operations,” which often involve hours of time staking out people they’re trying to remove from the country.

    It’s the latest in a series of personnel changes

    This is the third shake-up at ICE since Trump took office, reflecting the importance of the agency’s role in executing the president’s vision.

    In February, Homeland Security reassigned Caleb Vitello, the acting director of ICE, to another position. Todd Lyons, a veteran ICE agent, was later announced as the new acting head of the agency, a position he still holds.

    Then in May, ICE announced the reassignment of the two top officials heading the agency’s main branches.

    A spokesperson for Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, did not comment Tuesday on the personnel changes but said in a statement that the department remained “laser focused on RESULTS and we will deliver.”

    “This is one team, one fight,” she said. “President (Donald) Trump has a brilliant, tenacious team led by Secretary (Kristi) Noem to deliver on the American people’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from this country.”

    White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an e-mailed statement: “The President’s entire team is working in lockstep to implement the President’s policy agenda, and the tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves.”

    ___

    Spagat reported from Chicago.

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    Rebecca Santana, Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press

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  • UC must publicly release Trump administration’s $1.2-billion settlement proposal

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    UCLA must release the Trump administration document that outlines the terms of the $1.2 billion settlement proposal at the center of talks between the University of California and the federal government, the California Supreme Court ruled Friday.

    The decision is a win for UCLA faculty who have pushed for more transparency in the negotiations over the future of the nation’s premier public university system. UC has until the end of the day to disclose the 28 pages of federal demands for far-reaching policy changes at UCLA that are in line with President Trump’s vision for higher education.

    UCLA asked the high court to take two actions: block a lower court’s ruling that ordered UC to turn over the document to faculty and force the appeals court that declined to review the lower court decision to release a detailed explanation of its reasoning.

    “The petition for review and applications for stay are denied,” said brief Supreme Court decision, signed by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero. The court did not elaborate on the matter.

    The proposal will be shared with the UCLA Faculty Association, an independent campus group which sued UC. Faculty leaders have said they intend to distribute the document publicly.

    “We’re excited that the Supreme Court agreed with us that every Californian has a right to see this letter and understand the scope of federal interference into our state institutions,” said Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Assn. and an associate professor in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies.

    UC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    What’s at stake for each side

    UC said in court filings that it would “suffer irreparable harm” to negotiations with the Trump administration if the document became public. It also said disclosure would hurt future settlement negotiations with other parties.

    University lawyers argued that releasing the proposal would invite “every member of the entire public to express each one’s views on every settlement” for an “uncontrollable public fray” around negotiations.

    The UCLA Faculty Association said that the document’s disclosure is required under the Public Records Act. The association argued that the information is a matter of public interest to faculty, staff, students, UCLA Health patients and Californian’s whose tax dollars support the UC system.

    Faculty sued after UC and UCLA denied public records requests. UC said it was not bound by public records law to share details of confidential settlement discussions.

    “The intense public reaction to disclosure at an early stage of an initial proposal could easily end any opportunity for discussion at its inception and hamper the ability to fully and fairly evaluate a response,” UC wrote a court filings.

    A lower court’s Oct. 14 ruling ordered UC to release the proposal to the association within 10 days. On Wednesday, an appeals court declined to reverse the decision before UC sought emergency relief from the state’s highest court.

    The Trump administration sent the more than 7,000-word settlement proposal in August, after the Department of Justice accused UCLA of violating the law in its handling of antisemitism complaints, admissions practices and gender identity on campus. Citing those alleged violations, the federal government suspended $584 million in medical, science and energy research funding to UCLA. The vast majority of the funds are now restored as the result of the a lawsuit filed by UC-wide faculty.

    UCLA has maintained that its policies comply with state and federal laws,. Its chancellor, Julio Frenk, has said the “far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”

    What’s in the document

    The Times reviewed the settlement proposal and, in September, published a detailed account of its demands.

    They include proposed changes to admissions to prevent alleged affirmative action, stricter protest rules and a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors at UCLA medical facilities.

    The document calls for UCLA to publicly announce that it does not recognize transgender people’s gender identities, prevent the admission of “anti-Western” international students and to pay the costs for an outside monitor to oversee the agreement.

    The offer also says that “the United States and its consultants and agents will have full and direct access to all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement, in coordination with legal counsel for UCLA, except any documents or data protected by work product or the attorney-client privilege.”

    UC President James B. Milliken has said fine — a $1-billion payment to the government and a $172-million claims fund for people who say they faced discrimination — would be near impossible to pay.

    He has been less detailed on the other federal demands, leading to faculty complaints over how UC has handled negotiations and communicated updates to employees. Milliken has broadly said that UC will protect academic freedom as well as its mission and values in any potential Trump agreement.

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    Jaweed Kaleem

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  • A wish list for Carney’s fall budget – MoneySense

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    But things changed in the second quarter as Canada’s economy weakened. This has put the spotlight on the weakness of Canadians’ income and savings in the face of change. It also provides an important opportunity for the November 4 federal budget to protect financial well-being in the months ahead.  

    The income gap reaches a new high

    The income gap, which is the difference in the share of disposable income between households in the top 40% and the bottom 40% of income distribution, is a common measure that makes the news. It was at a record high of 49% in the first quarter, with a slight reduction in Q2, and has been increasing every year since the pandemic. 

    Interest rates have had a lot to do with this. Fortunately, for the first time since 2022, household interest payments declined by almost 5% in Q1. Disposable income, therefore, increased for those indebted households. 

    Then the U.S. tariffs entered the economic picture. Lower-earning households tend to suffer the most during periods of uncertainty and this is holding true now. Statistics Canada reported declining average wages, mainly due to reduced hours of work in Q1. Those working in mining and manufacturing, professional and personal services were particularly affected. 

    For the lowest-income households, income grew at a faster-than-average pace (+5.6%) in the second quarter. But on closer inspection, this was actually due to an increase in government transfers including Employment Insurance (EI), social assistance, and retirement benefits.  

    Unfortunately, tax collections—the very source of these payments in the future— will decline too. The Parliamentary Budget Office projects a lower nominal GDP (which measures the size of the tax base), averaging $12.9 billion less annually from 2025 to 2029. This too is due to the impact of tariffs.

    The government plans to increase taxes for some as well as penalties and fines and resulting interest charges to bolster its revenues. However, a more positive, proactive approach is to make income- and wealth-building easier. That starts with getting back to the basics.

    Diversification of investments matters    

    Despite a good start in the first quarter of the year (Q1), Canadians’ financial well-being was affected by the impact of tariffs imposed in the second quarter (Q2). Consider the following investing trends:

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    1. Lower-income households tend to earn interest income. Net investment income dropped the most for low-income households. The decline in investment earnings (-35.3%) more than offset the decline in interest payments (-7.1%). Second-quarter outcomes were similar.
    2. Higher-earning households have more diversified portfolios, holding more equities. These produce more tax-efficient capital gains and dividend income. These households’ net worth grew as the value of their financial assets increased by 7.1% in Q1—close to three times the rate of inflation—and 9.6% in Q2. These families also had limited growth in mortgage debt (+1.9%).
    3. As a result, by the end of the second quarter, the wealthiest 20% of households had accumulated almost two-thirds (64.8%) of Canada’s total net worth, averaging $3.4 million per household. The bottom 40% of households accounted for 3.3% of total net worth, averaging $86,900.  
    4. As a special wealth-builder category, homeowners experienced lower borrowing costs and lower inflation and this resulted in more savings as debt reduction in Q1. Still, personal net worth declined for younger Canadians and those without investment portfolios, because real estate values also declined.

    Income Tax Guide for Canadians

    Deadlines, tax tips and more

    The wealthy will be OK, others need help

    What can we learn from this? The wealthiest households can continue to increase their net worth, even if incomes are interrupted or don’t keep up with inflation and debt servicing costs are threatened by unemployment, incapacity, or retirement. That’s because their investment earnings and capital appreciation make up for the income gap.  

    Where are the opportunities for lower-income households? There are two. In the face of the same issues, it is critical to be able to continue to save consistently. Second, it is important to earn more tax-efficient investment income.

    This is where government policy comes in. It seems to be an easy ask for some to pay more tax, but that can result in brain drain, reduced incentives work or innovate, and the flight of capital. The real opportunity in the next federal budget is to help all Canadians build both income and wealth, against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, and to do so with the help of knowledgeable professionals.

    Building income and capital: a six-part plan

    Tax and financial literacy is elusive but critical to the prosperity of Canadians. Having the knowledge, skills, and confidence to make responsible financial decisions enables people to plan ahead and deal with increasingly complex systems that are a barrier to accessing income supplements through tax refunds, credits, and social benefits. 

    To that end, here’s my six-point wish list. Perhaps you’d like to add to it?

    1. Protection for interest earnings. Periods of high interest rates to combat inflation are particularly damaging to average households that earn interest income. If this monetary policy is necessary, protect those fragile savings from both inflation and taxes. Bring back the $1,000 investment income deduction, eliminated in 1987, to do so.  
    2. Deduction for professional help. Canadians need help with their tax and financial literacy. They won’t get that interacting with online help alone, no matter how good it is. Especially at a time the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is pushing for increased digitization, helping individuals better understand basic tax planning—what comes first, an RRSP, a TFSA or FHSA, for example—can bolster lifelong wealth-building habits and help to diversify their investments. To remove barriers to professional help, make income tax preparation and financial planning costs tax-deductible.
    3. Waive CRA penalties and interest from auto-filing. Even though the federal government is touting automatic tax filing for 5.5 million of the lowest-income Canadians by 2028, in reality, navigating both tax and digital complexity underlying this initiative may be unattainable for most targeted filers. Imagine the repayment nightmare for years to come (remember CERB?) if these tax returns are incorrect. The CRA should be empowered to permanently waive interest or penalties resulting from honest errors in automatic tax filing processes. 
    4. Help young people start saving. Young workers are most susceptible to job loss but have the most to gain from increased compounding time in their investments. By enabling matching grants for start-up savings for the first five years after post-secondary education, similar to the grants available for registered education savings plan (RESP) and registered disability savings plan (RDSP) savings, sound saving habits could be encouraged with a New Graduate Savings Plan.   
    5. Recognize community service as a tax deduction. Younger Canadians aged 15 to 24 are most likely to volunteer, while those over age 65 volunteer the most hours. Keeping track of volunteer hours is not much more onerous than keeping track of dollars donated to charity. The resulting tax savings could help with community wealth creation. The Liberals had proposed a Health Care Workers Hero Tax Credit in their party platform. This should be extended to those who volunteer to help others with tax preparation and financial planning, by expanding the charitable donation credit. 
    6. Change retirement savings options. Most people know that the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) alone will not fund their retirement, even with the higher premiums workers and their employers are now paying. Rising CPP premiums squeeze out cash flows needed to fund a tax-free savings account (TFSA), which ensures a tax-free retirement. Required matching premiums also make it difficult for employers to give raises or increase staffing. One way to improve cash flow for more private savings is to increase take-home pay. Governments should encourage TFSA savings by making contributions tax deductible for both employees and employers who contribute to their employees’ accounts.

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    Read more about tax planning:



    About Evelyn Jacks, RWM, MFA, MFA-P, FDFS


    About Evelyn Jacks, RWM, MFA, MFA-P, FDFS

    Evelyn Jacks is President of Knowledge Bureau, a world-class financial education institute where readers can take micro-credentials in Financial Literacy, the Fundamentals of Income Tax Preparation, and earn career-enhancing Specialized Credentials, all online.

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    Evelyn Jacks, RWM, MFA, MFA-P, FDFS

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  • Harris County Wants $7 Billion Solar Program Restored – Houston Press

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    Since Donald Trump took office in January, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee has sued the federal government four times, saying Tuesday that it’s the only way to get the attention of an administration that has repeatedly, illegally, broken promises to low-income Texans. 

    Menefee announced this week that he filed the latest lawsuit in federal court demanding that the $7 billion Solar for All program be reinstated. The grant would have offered $59 million to Harris County, the largest Solar for All award in the nation. Earlier this year, the county attorney filed two lawsuits against the federal government related to healthcare funding and one to challenge federal workforce layoffs. 

    “In the two that were about money, we’re 2 and 0,” Menefee told the Houston Press on Tuesday. “Over the refugee health funds, the funding was restored. Over the public health funds in the wake of COVID-19, the funding was restored. In the federal layoffs case we got a temporary injunction that blocked the federal government from continuing the layoffs. That went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which eliminated the injunction.” 

    “In many instances, with the Trump administration, the left hand has no clue what the right hand is doing,” he added. “They’ll eliminate funding; they will get rid of programs; they will temporarily freeze programs. It is 100 percent illegal, and they’re not truly made aware of that until they’re hauled in front of a judge and they have to answer for what they’ve done.” 

    Menefee’s latest action is an effort to salvage about $250 million that was awarded to the nonpartisan Texas Solar for All Coalition, designed to lower electricity bills, create clean energy jobs, and expand access to affordable solar power across disadvantaged communities. 

    Grant recipients would have had their energy bills slashed by about $500 per year, and the funding would have covered solar and battery installation for thousands of residents in neighborhoods that experience blackouts and high heat, said Menefee, who is running for U.S. Congressional District 18 in November. 

    The Solar for All program was approved as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The federal government rescinded the grant — illegally, according to Menefee — in August of this year, saying the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority and funding for the program. 

    Menefee said Congress created the program and promised funding to local governments and families across the country. They can’t just walk it back, he said. 

    “This isn’t just another policy disagreement,” he said. “It’s a clear-cut case of federal overreach, an illegal attempt to cancel a program that Congress already appropriated the funds for. They never supported this program, so they made up a justification for killing it.”

    U.S. Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, said at a Monday press conference that work had already started in the communities that were awarded Solar for All grants when the funds were rescinded. 

    “In Houston, Port Arthur and Waco, training programs were already underway to certify Texans in solar installation and energy efficiency,” Fletcher said. “The coalition had already begun building resilience hubs, community centers, and homes equipped with solar and battery backup to keep the lights on during hurricanes or potential grid failures. For communities like ours along the Gulf Coast, these hubs mean the difference between safety and suffering in the next storm.” 

    The Solar For All program would have offered measurable savings for families that have trouble paying the bills, “especially in times like these when prices are going up because of other terrible policies implemented by the Trump administration,” the congresswoman added.  

    When the cuts were announced, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called programs like Solar for All “a grift and a boondoggle,” citing a need for environmental regulation. About 90 percent of the EPA workforce has been furloughed during the government shutdown that began October 1, so it’s unclear whether a response to Harris County’s lawsuit will be forthcoming. 

    Menefee told the Press on Tuesday that the lawsuit and media events aren’t part of a symbolic pep rally; the goal is to get the funds reinstated. 

    “We want a ruling that the EPA’s decision violates the law,” he said. “We’re taking action to ensure that the courts hold the federal government accountable. The elimination of this program is illegal .My hope is that the court requires the EPA to reinstate the program.” 

    Hundreds of applications were submitted for the competitive program, and several county leaders worked to ensure that Harris County got a cut. The grant would have assisted more than 28,000 families across Texas and about 10,000 in Harris County. 

    Harris County families and neighborhoods had not yet been identified as funding recipients, Menefee said, but the program was widely publicized. 

    “Folks very much knew that Harris County had been awarded this grant and we were going to, with federal dollars, make a deep investment in lowering people’s bills,” he said. “There were not specific individuals who were expecting they were going to get the money but certainly the community at large expected this money to come.” 

    Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Commissioner Adrian Garcia attended the press conference this week and detailed the rigorous grant application process for the solar program. 

    “Generating more electricity is not part of a political agenda, power is not partisan, and fuel for our first responders should not be controversial,” Garcia said. “We need to produce more energy to sustain the growth across Texas, and I hope the courts will see it this way too.”

    Hidalgo said the grant wasn’t just going to help Harris County families; it was going to boost infrastructure for natural disasters. 

    “There’s a saying in emergency management that there are two kinds of generators: the kind that start and fail and the kind that never start,” she said. “We were working based on that premise and developing hubs that would have their own ability to produce solar energy, their own microgrid, so if the grid failed, they could still have power.”

    Menefee said he hopes Harris County will get a response from the government within 60 days. 

    “This is about more than one grant,” Menefee said. “It’s about good government. The federal government made a promise to local communities. We did our part, and now Washington has to hold up its end of the deal.” 

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    April Towery

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  • Commentary: In shutdown fight, this Nevada Democrat stands (almost) alone. And she’s fine with that

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    As the partial government shutdown grinds on, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto stands ready to end it right now.

    The lawyerly senator from Nevada is one of just two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and Maine’s independent senator, Angus King, to have the federal government up and running.

    She’s not only bucking her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but also placing herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! Now is the time! This is the fight!

    Cortez Masto evinces not a flicker of doubt.

    “I have been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and the impact to Americans and the fact that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming healthcare crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.

    “And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”

    Unlike the Democrats’ other defector, Pennsylvania’s quirky Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto hasn’t developed a reputation for partisan heresy, or antagonized party peers by playing footsie with President Trump and the MAGA movement.

    Despite her temporary alliance with the GOP, she’s unstinting in her criticism of the president and the Republican stance on healthcare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown fight.

    “Of course we need to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I’ve been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”

    Her split with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not over ends but rather means.

    It’s entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, work through the parties’ differences over healthcare, including, most imminently, the end of subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.

    It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which in Cortez Masto’s view, is still possible — even in these rabidly partisan times.

    “That’s what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get stuff done. I still believe in it.”

    Although she noted — with considerable understatement — “there are those in the administration and some of my colleagues” who disagree.

    Not to mention a great many Democratic activists who believe anything short of jailing Trump and dispatching the entire GOP-run Congress to a far-off desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.

    Nevada, where Cortez Masto was born and bred, is a state that was Republican red for a very long time before turning blue-ish for a while, starting under Barack Obama in 2008. It went back to red-ish under Trump in 2024.

    Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing the onetime Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, after the Democrat retired.

    Six years later, when she sought reelection, Cortez Masto was widely considered Democrats’ most endangered incumbent. She was not nearly as powerful or prominent as Reid had been. Inflation was raging, and Nevada was still suffering an economic hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Her opponent was a middling Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to harbor a soft spot for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

    Still, Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. In retrospect, the result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in carrying the state after twice losing Nevada.

    Cortez Masto next faces reelection in 2028, which is politically ages away. By then, the shutdown will be long forgotten. (And presumably long over.)

    Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, especially, the shutdown’s economic effect at a time Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which runs on tourism, has experienced a notable slump, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown only makes things worse.

    That, however, hasn’t deterred Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who has repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shuttered until Republicans give in.

    “Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Not to cave.”

    Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy. “She’s a good friend.… Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are doing it,” she said. “We both are doing it in different ways.”

    So, negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.

    What makes Cortez Masto think Trump, who’s run roughshod over Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats cut with Republicans to reopen the government and address the healthcare crisis she sees?

    “Well, that’s the rub, right? We know what he’s doing,” she replied. He’s “flouting the law when it comes to … taking the role of legislators and appropriating funds at his own whim…. So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.

    “But he is there. What you got to figure out is how you work together with Republican colleagues to get something done.”

    Cortez Masto noted, dryly, that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to solve problems, she said, and do more than the president’s bidding, they “need to come out and do bipartisan legislation to push back on this administration.”

    “We’ve got to govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We’ve got to work together.”

    Wouldn’t that be something.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • The Trump administration begins ‘substantial’ layoffs of federal workers

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    It’s day 10 of the government shutdown, and the Trump administration is finally starting to make good on its plans to permanently lay off federal workers.

    “RIFs have begun,” Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought wrote in a X post on Friday, using the acronym for “reductions for force”—the technical jargon for government layoffs.

    The administration has offered no details on the layoffs, beyond the OMB’s comment to Semafor that they will be “substantial.”

    Any permanent firings of government workers during a shutdown would also be unusual. Typically, federal workers are temporarily furloughed when Congress fails to agree on appropriations bills to keep the government open, and then given back pay once funding resumes.

    In September, as Politico first reported, Vought circulated a memo to government agencies instructing them to prepare more permanent “reduction in force” plans should a shutdown occur.

    In the event of a shutdown, agencies were told to eliminate employees working on “programs, projects, or activities” whose funding had lapsed during the shutdown, and which were not “consistent with the President’s priorities.”

    Once funding resumes, Vought’s memo instructed agencies to “revise their RIFs as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions.”

    In short, the Trump administration is hoping to use the shutdown to permanently reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, with an immediate focus on eliminating employees who might be working on programs that conflict with President Donald Trump’s agenda.

    This is just the latest example of the Trump White House arm-twisting Democrats during the shutdown. Last week, federal departments announced they’d be pausing the release of funds for transportation and energy projects in Democratic states.

    Whether the president has the legal power to unilaterally fire employees en masse during the shutdown is controversial.

    Vought asserted in his RIF memo that since funding has lapsed for discretionary programs, there’s no statutory requirement that they be carried out. Staff dedicated to those programs can therefore be let go at the executive branch’s discretion.

    In a lawsuit filed at the beginning of the shutdown, the major public sector unions rejected this argument. They asserted that a temporary lapse in funding for a program does not mean the legal authorization for the program has lapsed.

    Additionally, they argued that since federal law prohibits the executive branch from devoting resources to activities for which there’s no funding, the Trump administration can’t devote resources to firing employees during the shutdown.

    In short, this is yet another battle in the constant war Trump and Vought have been fighting with government employees, their union representatives, and liberal litigants more generally, over the extent of the president’s power over executive branch employees.

    Vought has consistently asserted that the president has effectively unlimited authority to hire and fire at will. Laws to the contrary are unconstitutional and can more or less be ignored.

    His critics argue that Congress has substantial power to shape and regulate the federal bureaucracy, including on matters of personnel, and that creates significant legal limits on the president’s personnel decisions.

    Government unions are already preparing to challenge the shutdown layoffs. The AFL-CIO, which already sued over Vought’s initial memo, intimated on X that they’d sue to challenge the actual layoffs as well.

    Reducing federal headcount has been one of the few areas where the Trump administration’s government-slashing efforts have produced significant results.

    Trump took over a federal bureaucracy numbering some 2.4 million civilian federal employees in January. Between firings, retirements, and the administration’s deferred resignation program, it’s estimated that there are 201,000 fewer federal workers as of September 23.

    The layoffs Vought announced Friday would be in addition to that figure.

    The Trump administration has said it plans to end the year down some 300,000 employees, which would amount to a 12 percent cut in the federal workforce. Depending on how many workers are let go during the shutdown and whether their firings are allowed to stand, the federal workforce could end up being even smaller still come 2026.

    That’d be much to the good. The federal government does too many things. By definition, it employs too many people as well.

    A smaller federal workforce equates to a smaller government. Workers who leave non-productive federal employment for productive private sector work enrich the entire economy.

    To be sure, there’s only so much firing federal workers can achieve in the pursuit of a leaner state. Reducing federal headcount doesn’t by itself eliminate federal laws, regulations, or programs.

    It also has a relatively marginal impact on the cost of government, given that the vast majority of government spending is not going toward civil servants’ pay and benefits.

    Still, most shutdowns end with no real change to the size or scope of the federal government. Eventually, appropriations are passed, spending resumes, and government employees go back to work.

    This time, if the Trump administration’s shutdown layoffs are allowed to stand, the government that reopens will be smaller than the one that closed down.

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    Christian Britschgi

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  • Government Shutdown continues into second week

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    Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport hasn’t experienced any slowdowns during the shutdown.
    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    It has been a week since the federal government shutdown, which took effect a minute past midnight on Oct. 1. Among the several federally funded initiatives impacted was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which furloughed roughly 8,700 employees as a result. Federal workers for essential services like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the National Park Service are at work, but might not get paid next week if the shutdown continues. The House has been adjourned for the remainder of this week, so it looks like the shutdown will head into its third week.  

    At the King Center in the Sweet Auburn Historic District, the level of quiet on a Tuesday morning was palpable. Ebenezer Baptist Church, a popular tourist attraction for its Church Talks series and tours of the former church home of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was closed due to the government shutdown. The sign behind the glass of the outdoor bulletin read: Closed in large black letters. Under that, “National Parks remain as accessible as possible during the federal government shutdown. However, some services may be limited or unavailable.”

    Along with the church, the gift shop inside The King Center was closed. The government shutdown affects more workers outside of the 15% of federal workers who live and work in Washington, D.C. Between the King Center and other national parks, there are thousands of employees who will have their finances affected by this shutdown.

    The wait time at the north checkpoint at Harstfield-Jackson was four minutes on Tuesday morning.
    Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice

    Earlier this week, the busiest airport in the country, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the lines outside of the main checkpoint in the domestic terminal were moving along. TSA agents could be seen checking IDs and scanning boarding passes. At Hartsfield-Jackson, the number of TSA employees and air traffic controllers affected is in the dozens. How those essential workers approach their daily duties will play a major part in how this shutdown will be remembered. 

    The shutdown will result in lower-than-normal paychecks on October 15, if they are distributed at all. Furloughed workers will receive back pay when the shutdown is over, but for so many Americans, that might be a paycheck or two too late. 

    This is the first government shutdown in six years, since the record-long shutdown that took place from 2018 to 2019. Government shutdowns usually happen because of disagreements over funding between the Democratic and Republican parties. The current shutdown had been brewing since early September, and as the fiscal year ended, the two parties could not agree on government spending, particularly related to health care funding.

    In simplest terms, Democrats wanted to include Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid protections in the recent stopgap funding. At the same time, Republicans wanted a “clean” funding bill without any changes to health care programs. This disagreement led to the shutdown on the morning of Oct. 1.

    When government shutdowns take place, the impact doesn’t just affect high-ranking political officials on Capitol Hill; it affects everyday workers locally, right here in Georgia, where more than 110,000 are federal employees.

    As a result of the current government shutdown, many federal employees are going without pay until an agreement is reached. “Certainly, we all have friends and family who know people who work for the federal government, including the CDC. If they’re furloughing half of the staff, that touches a lot of people in Atlanta,” said Staci Fox, president of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. The lack of pay during this indefinite shutdown period disadvantages households that rely on federal paychecks for living necessities.

    The shutdown also comes at a time when many federal entities, such as the CDC, FDA, and Department of Education, had already faced layoffs due to reduced federal budgets. The CDC alone laid off more than 600 employees in August 2025, according to data provided by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to the Associated Press.

    In the midst of the shutdown, programs such as WIC and SNAP are at risk. In Georgia, over 190,000 people benefit from WIC, putting families who rely on funding for food and baby formula at substantial risk. Additionally, more than 1 million residents in the state receive some form of federal funding from SNAP. “This is also children and elderly—to the tune of 1.4 million Georgians getting financial support to put food on their tables. This goes beyond someone losing a paycheck because they’ve been furloughed. This is a real economic security issue for families across the country, and certainly right here in Georgia when the government stops doing its job,” Fox said. Although SNAP and WIC have some contingency funds in place, if those funds are exhausted during the shutdown, millions of families could be negatively impacted.

    As of Wednesday, Oct. 8, the United States Senate had no scheduled votes. A potential vote could occur on Friday, but no decision has been made yet.

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    Donnell Suggs and Tabius McCoy, Report for America Corp Member

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  • Stephen Miller leads GOP charge equating Democrats to ‘domestic terrorists’

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    WASHINGTON — President Trump rocked American politics at the outset of his first campaign when he first labeled his rivals as enemies of the American people. But the rhetoric of his top confidantes has grown more extreme in recent days.

    Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared over the weekend that “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is fueling an historic national schism, “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”

    “The only remedy,” Miller said, “is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

    It was a maxim from an unelected presidential advisor who is already unleashing the federal government in unprecedented ways, overseeing the federalization of police forces and a sweeping deportation campaign challenging basic tenets of civil liberty.

    Miller’s rhetoric comes amid a federal crackdown on Portland, Ore., where he says the president has unchecked authority to protect federal lives and property — and as another controversial Trump advisor harnesses an ongoing government shutdown as pretext for the mass firing of federal workers.

    Russ Vought, the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, plays the grim reaper in an AI video shared by the president, featuring him roving Washington for bureaucrats to cut from the deep state during the shutdown.

    His goal, Trump has said, is to specifically target Democrats.

    As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear exactly how many federal workers or what federal agencies would be targeted.

    “We don’t want to see people laid off, but unfortunately, if this shutdown continues layoffs are going to be an unfortunate consequence of that,” White House press secretary Karoline Levitt said during a news briefing.

    ‘A nation of Constitutional law’

    Karin Immergut, a federal judge appointed by Trump, said this weekend that the administration’s justification for deploying California National Guard troops in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts.”

    “This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote, chiding the Trump administration for attempting to circumvent a prior order from her against a federal deployment to the city.

    “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition,” she added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

    The administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision, Leavitt said, while calling the judge’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”

    “We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this, and we are very confident we will win on the merits of the law,” Leavitt said.

    If the courts were to side with the administration, Leavitt said local leaders — most of whom are Democrats — should not be concerned about the possibility of long-term plans to have their cities occupied by the military.

    “Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?” Leavitt said. “They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities right now are being gunned down every single night and the president, all he is trying to do, is fix it.”

    Moments later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he does not believe it is necessary yet, he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act “if courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up.”

    “Sure, I’d do that,” Trump said. “We have to make sure that our cities are safe.”

    The Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping emergency power to deploy military forces within the United States if the president deems it is needed to quell civil unrest. The last time this occurred was in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush to send federal troops to help stop the Los Angeles riots that occurred after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.

    Subsequent posts from Miller on social media over the weekend escalated the stakes to existential heights, accusing Democrats of allying themselves with “domestic terrorists” seeking to overturn the will of the people reflected in Trump’s election win last year.

    On Monday, in an interview with CNN, Miller suggested that the administration would continue working to sidestep Immergut’s orders.

    “The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties,” he said, “but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the U.S. military to Portland.”

    Other Republicans have used similar rhetoric since the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative youth activist, in Utah last month.

    Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) wrote that posts from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have reached “the threshold of domestic terrorism,” after the Democratic governor referred to Miller on social media as a fascist. And Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said Monday that Democrats demanding an extension of healthcare benefits as a condition for reopening the government were equivalent to terrorists.

    “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Fine told Newsmax, “and what we’re learned in whether it’s dealing with Muslim terrorists or Democrats, you’ve gotta stand and you’ve gotta do the right thing.”

    Investigating donor networks

    Republicans’ keenness to label Democrats as terrorists comes two weeks after Trump signed an executive order declaring a left-wing antifascist movement, known as antifa, as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under U.S. law.

    The order, which opened a new front in Trump’s battle against his political foes, also threatened to investigate and prosecute individuals who funded “any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of antifa.”

    Leavitt told reporters Monday the administration is “aggressively” looking into who is financially backing these operations.

    Trump has floated the possibility of going after people such as George Soros, a billionaire who has supported many left-leaning causes around the world.

    “If you look at Soros, he is at the top of everything,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance last month.

    The White House has not yet made public any details about a formal investigation into a donors, but Leavitt said the administration’s efforts are under way.

    “We will continue to get to the bottom of who is funding these organizations and this organized anarchy against our country and our government,” Leavitt said. “We are committed to uncovering it.”

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    Michael Wilner, Ana Ceballos

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  • Afghan man freed after viral arrest and over 100 days in ICE custody

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    After a video of his arrest by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went viral in June, Afghan Sayed Naser was released on September 26 following 106 days of detention.

    On July 17, Naser’s attorney Brian McGoldrick filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus requesting his immediate release. McGoldrick argued that “attempts to detain, transfer, and deport [Naser] are arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the law.”

    According to court documents shared with Reason, the government opposed the petition, but Judge Gonzalo Curiel of the Southern District of California scheduled a hearing of Naser’s habeas petition on September 25. McGoldrick told Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, that during the hearing, Curiel was “very inquisitive” and sounded “very friendly to our position.”

    On September 26, Curiel put out a summarized opinion ordering Naser’s immediate release. Curiel found that Naser “could not have been legally subjected to and detained” given his status at the time of his arrest, and that by revoking Naser’s parole without providing notification, the government had denied “his due process rights.”

    In an October 2 press conference, McGoldrick said that Naser was released at 9:45 p.m. last Friday, and added, “we’ve been celebrating ever since.” Naser expressed gratitude for all the Americans who supported his case, telling assembled press that his time in detention was “the hardest piece of my life.” “I thought that the time is stopped,” Naser said, adding that every day felt “like a month.” 

    When asked if his ordeal had changed his mind about wanting to be an American citizen, Naser replied, “I still believe in America. I do not feel betrayed. I feel hopeful because of how many Americans stood up for me when I was arrested.”

    McGoldrick also expressed gratitude for Naser’s supporters, particularly the volunteers who filmed Naser’s arrest, saying that without their documentation, “nobody would know what happened.”

    Following Naser’s release, Curiel has restored the terms of the parole Naser received when he legally entered the U.S. through the CBP One App in July 2024. Curiel has also ordered that “Respondents shall not cause [Naser] to be re-detained during the pendency of his removal proceedings without prior leave of this Court.”

    Now, Naser and McGoldrick must return to square one and prepare his asylum claim once more before a new judge in San Diego immigration court.

    The Taliban murdered Naser’s brother in 2023. A Special Immigrant Visa applicant who had worked with U.S. forces for two years during the Afghanistan War, Naser fled to Brazil in April 2024 and made his way to the U.S.-Mexico border. Like many parolees who utilized the CBP One App to claim asylum, Naser was told that his parole was revoked in a letter from the Department of Homeland Security in April.

    It was after presenting his asylum case in immigration court in June that Naser was arrested. The government said that Naser’s notice to appear had been “improvidently issued,” but provided no further information about their allegation. On June 26, a federal judge dismissed Naser’s asylum case, which placed him in expedited removal proceedings.

    While Naser’s release is a positive development, McGoldrick said he is now representing another Afghan, Habib, who is currently in ICE custody.

    Like Naser, Habib had entered the U.S. on parole in 2024. McGoldrick says that Habib had received work authorization and had filed an asylum claim when he was arrested on September 19. McGoldrick explained that Habib had been performing a delivery at a U.S. military base in California when base personnel noticed that he had a limited license.

    According to McGoldrick, base personnel called military police to the scene, and Habib was told that he could not depart the base until ICE arrived and took him into custody.

    Habib has a wife and two young children. With no money coming in, McGoldrick reports that Habib’s wife cannot afford rent and is facing eviction. McGoldrick is working pro bono on Habib’s case and filed a habeas petition for his release on September 29.

    After Naser’s release, VanDiver noted that while the judicial system has been successful in achieving assistance for Afghans in detention, the U.S. cannot go about rectifying “just one case at a time. We need Congress, companies, and citizens to step up.”

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    Beth Bailey

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  • Government shutdown threatens to drag on through weekend with lawmakers deadlocked

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    As the Senate meets Friday for another vote to reopen the federal government, Democrats are refusing to yield without a deal from President Donald Trump — likely extending the government shutdown into next week.Democrats say not even the threat of mass firings and canceled federal projects will force them to accept the GOP short-term funding proposal without major policy concessions on health care.A top White House official warned Thursday that the number of federal workers who could be fired because of the shutdown is “likely going to be in the thousands.” Trump hasn’t made public his exact targets yet, though he met with White House budget chief Russ Vought on Thursday to discuss the plan.The White House already has a list – put together by Vought’s Office of Management and Budget in coordination with federal agencies – of the agencies they are targeting with the firings, according to two White House officials. While details are still being sorted, according to the officials, announcements could come in the coming days on which are on the chopping block for not aligning with the president’s priorities.Speaking on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries skewered the president and his team for what he called their “retribution effort” against Democrats, but made clear his party would not relent. He added that neither he nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have received a call from Trump or GOP leaders for negotiations since the group met at the White House Monday.“Democrats are in this fight until we win this fight,” Jeffries said when asked if Democrats could accept a deal without an extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that his party has been seeking. “This is the first week of the shutdown but we’ve had months of chaos and cruelty unleashed on the American people.”With the two parties still bitterly divided, the deadlocked Senate is expected to leave town for the weekend, which means neither chamber will vote again until at least Monday. With no ongoing talks between the two parties, many Senate Republicans plan to decamp to Sea Island, Georgia, this weekend for a major weekend fundraiser. The National Republican Senatorial Committee informed attendees in an email this week that the event was non-refundable and contracted years in advance — long before the current organization’s leadership, according to two people familiar with the matter.Democrats, too, have a scheduled fundraiser later this month. That event in Napa, California, is set to take place on Oct. 13. A spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said they did not have information about whether the event was still on, though one of the featured attendees, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, has already informed organizers that she won’t be attending if there is a shutdown, according to a person familiar with the planning.Inside the Capitol, lawmakers and their staff are bracing for a lapse that could last into mid-October, with fears rising that government workers will miss a paycheck next week.GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota described Friday’s vote as “crucial,” warning that “things go south real quick” if the government isn’t reopened before the weekend.Rounds is one of the few Republicans publicly anxious about the potential harms of an extended shutdown on the federal workforce, and has worked behind the scenes with some Democrats to find a way out of it. The end needs to come as quickly as possible, he warned, suggesting that Democrats could soon see the White House take an ax to programs that they heavily favor if the shutdown doesn’t end.“I think it’s gonna bite them harder than it does us,” Rounds told reporters Thursday. “There’s a whole lot of things out there that the Democrats care about that are not consistent with the president’s policies, and those are the first things at risk.”Senate Majority Leader John Thune remained firm Thursday when asked about how the shutdown would end. He said Democrats would have a fourth chance on Friday to vote to open the government: “If that fails, then they can have the weekend to think about it, we’ll come back, we’ll vote again on Monday.”“My Democrat colleagues are facing pressure from members of their far-left base, but they’re playing a losing game here,” he added.

    WASHINGTON —

    As the Senate meets Friday for another vote to reopen the federal government, Democrats are refusing to yield without a deal from President Donald Trump — likely extending the government shutdown into next week.

    Democrats say not even the threat of mass firings and canceled federal projects will force them to accept the GOP short-term funding proposal without major policy concessions on health care.

    A top White House official warned Thursday that the number of federal workers who could be fired because of the shutdown is “likely going to be in the thousands.” Trump hasn’t made public his exact targets yet, though he met with White House budget chief Russ Vought on Thursday to discuss the plan.

    The White House already has a list – put together by Vought’s Office of Management and Budget in coordination with federal agencies – of the agencies they are targeting with the firings, according to two White House officials. While details are still being sorted, according to the officials, announcements could come in the coming days on which are on the chopping block for not aligning with the president’s priorities.

    Speaking on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries skewered the president and his team for what he called their “retribution effort” against Democrats, but made clear his party would not relent. He added that neither he nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have received a call from Trump or GOP leaders for negotiations since the group met at the White House Monday.

    “Democrats are in this fight until we win this fight,” Jeffries said when asked if Democrats could accept a deal without an extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that his party has been seeking. “This is the first week of the shutdown but we’ve had months of chaos and cruelty unleashed on the American people.”

    With the two parties still bitterly divided, the deadlocked Senate is expected to leave town for the weekend, which means neither chamber will vote again until at least Monday. With no ongoing talks between the two parties, many Senate Republicans plan to decamp to Sea Island, Georgia, this weekend for a major weekend fundraiser. The National Republican Senatorial Committee informed attendees in an email this week that the event was non-refundable and contracted years in advance — long before the current organization’s leadership, according to two people familiar with the matter.

    Democrats, too, have a scheduled fundraiser later this month. That event in Napa, California, is set to take place on Oct. 13. A spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said they did not have information about whether the event was still on, though one of the featured attendees, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, has already informed organizers that she won’t be attending if there is a shutdown, according to a person familiar with the planning.

    Inside the Capitol, lawmakers and their staff are bracing for a lapse that could last into mid-October, with fears rising that government workers will miss a paycheck next week.

    GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota described Friday’s vote as “crucial,” warning that “things go south real quick” if the government isn’t reopened before the weekend.

    Rounds is one of the few Republicans publicly anxious about the potential harms of an extended shutdown on the federal workforce, and has worked behind the scenes with some Democrats to find a way out of it. The end needs to come as quickly as possible, he warned, suggesting that Democrats could soon see the White House take an ax to programs that they heavily favor if the shutdown doesn’t end.

    “I think it’s gonna bite them harder than it does us,” Rounds told reporters Thursday. “There’s a whole lot of things out there that the Democrats care about that are not consistent with the president’s policies, and those are the first things at risk.”

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune remained firm Thursday when asked about how the shutdown would end. He said Democrats would have a fourth chance on Friday to vote to open the government: “If that fails, then they can have the weekend to think about it, we’ll come back, we’ll vote again on Monday.”

    “My Democrat colleagues are facing pressure from members of their far-left base, but they’re playing a losing game here,” he added.

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  • Another day of Government Shutdown impacts Atlanta

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    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    It was quiet outside the CDC on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 2. Foot and car traffic in and out of the gates was almost obsolete. It has been over 24 hours since the federal government shutdown, which took effect a minute past midnight on Oct. 1. Among the several federally funded initiatives impacted was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which furloughed roughly 8,700 employees as a result.

    This is the first government shutdown in six years, since the record-long shutdown that took place from 2018 to 2019. Government shutdowns usually happen because of disagreements over funding between the Democratic and Republican parties. The current shutdown had been brewing since early September, and as the fiscal year ended, the two parties could not agree on government spending, particularly related to health care funding.

    In simplest terms, Democrats wanted to include Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid protections in the recent stopgap funding. At the same time, Republicans wanted a “clean” funding bill without any changes to health care programs. This disagreement led to the shutdown on the morning of Oct. 1.

    Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice

    When government shutdowns take place, the impact doesn’t just affect high-ranking political officials on Capitol Hill; it affects everyday workers locally, right here in Georgia, where more than 110,000 are federal employees.

    As a result of the current government shutdown, many federal employees are going without pay until an agreement is reached. “Certainly, we all have friends and family who know people who work for the federal government, including the CDC. If they’re furloughing half of the staff, that touches a lot of people in Atlanta,” said Staci Fox, president of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. The lack of pay during this indefinite shutdown period disadvantages households that rely on federal paychecks for living necessities.

    The shutdown also comes at a time when many federal entities, such as the CDC, FDA, and Department of Education, had already faced layoffs due to reduced federal budgets. The CDC alone laid off more than 600 employees in August 2025, according to data provided by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to the Associated Press.

    In the midst of the shutdown, programs such as WIC and SNAP are at risk. In Georgia, over 190,000 people benefit from WIC, putting families who rely on funding for food and baby formula at substantial risk. Additionally, more than 1 million residents in the state receive some form of federal funding from SNAP. “This is also children and elderly—to the tune of 1.4 million Georgians getting financial support to put food on their tables. This goes beyond someone losing a paycheck because they’ve been furloughed. This is a real economic security issue for families across the country, and certainly right here in Georgia when the government stops doing its job,” Fox said. Although SNAP and WIC have some contingency funds in place, if those funds are exhausted during the shutdown, millions of families could be negatively impacted.

    As of the afternoon of Oct. 2, 2025, there are no votes scheduled in the United States Senate today. A potential vote could occur on Friday, but no decision has been made yet. Earlier this morning, Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account about his plan to meet with the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought.

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    Tabius McCoy, Report for America Corp Member

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