Trump’s default stinginess, is staggering in the scope of his sheer cruelty that inspired it.
By Spencer S. Hsu
A federal judge on Sunday formally struck down a Trump administration attempt to end food stamp benefits for nearly 700,000 unemployed people, blocking as “arbitrary and capricious” the first of three such planned measures to restrict the federal food safety net.
In a scathing 67-page opinion, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of D.C. condemned the Agriculture Department for failing to justify or even address the impact of the sweeping change on states, saying its shortcomings had been placed in stark relief amid the
coronavirus pandemic, during which unemployment has quadrupled and rosters of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have grown by more than 17 percent, with more than 6 million new enrollees.
The rule “at issue in this litigation radically and abruptly alters decades of regulatory practice, leaving States scrambling and exponentially increasing food insecurity for tens of thousands of Americans,” Howell wrote, adding that the Agriculture Department “has been icily silent about how many [adults] would have been denied SNAP benefits had the changes sought . . . been in effect while the pandemic rapidly spread across the country.” The judge concluded that the department’s “utter failure to address the issue renders the agency action arbitrary and capricious.”
Howell’s ruling granted summary judgment to a coalition of 19 states, D.C., New York City and private groups that sued to stop the new rule, finalized in December, to eliminate states’ discretion to waive work requirements in distressed economic areas.
Trump couldn’t care less about the well being of the people who were thrown out of work, through no fault of their own. The unemployed lost their jobs due to a ballooning pandemic, when Mr Trump was to lazy to do his vital job to protect the American People. Instead Trump threw up his hands and told the states they were on their own. Something no other national leader was so irresponsible to abdicate their responsibility to do their duty.
Only Trump turned his back on his nation, in a betrayal worthy of Nero.
Now Trump wants us to pretend everything is back to normal?
All for his sake.
Because everything is all about him.
.