Forget the 40 million Americans who rely on food assistance just to eat. The new national crisis? Flight delays.
For weeks, D.C. has been in chaos. The White House and Congress are locked in a budget fight that has created the longest government shutdown in history. President Trump is in pitched battle against Democrats over his budget priorities and the future of ACA subsidies in particular. And like always, it’s regular people paying the price.
Fallout from the shutdown
Federal workers have been locked out of their jobs or forced to work without pay. Families are missing rent and mortgage payments and their bills pile up. Now the pain has spread. The next wave of casualties? Families, seniors, and folks with disabilities who rely on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
With funding frozen, the USDA warned that SNAP money could run out entirely. This would leave over 40 million Americans without adequate funds to buy food. Under court pressure, the agency scraped together contingency funds to issue partial payments. Partial. As if hunger can be paid in installments.
Court battles ensue
On November 5, the USDA said it would make those partial payments. The catch: most state systems aren’t built to handle these partial payments. Which means that partial payments would take much longer to reach beneficiaries than regular payments.
The next day, a federal judge stepped in, ordering the Trump administration to send full SNAP payments by Friday. It looked like a win for common sense and compassion – states rushed to issue benefits and keep food on tables.
But the relief was short-lived. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, trying to block the payments again. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson granted a temporary stay – handing Trump a brief victory in his effort to use food aid as leverage in his budget fight.
Attorney General Pam Bondi went on the offensive, claiming the Trump Administration will fight tireless for advance its “agenda”. With the Trump agenda being to insure that millions of parents, children, elderly and disabled Americans go hungry. That’s the fight she picked.
So that’s where things stand. Despite the real catastrophe playing out, focus has started to shift.
A new distraction
The FAA just told airlines to cancel a few thousand flights — about 4% at major airports, maybe 10% by mid-November — and suddenly that has become the big story. Hunger? Off the front page. Travel delays? National emergency.
The outrage machine has kicked into gear. Fox News and its allies can’t stop talking about “airport chaos.” Some travelers are “completely in panic” as a result of the sudden disruption. The inconvenience of a delayed flight is only slight compared to families going without food. How’s that for a nation that supposedly has “Christian values”?
This isn’t new. Just as airline cancellations are starting to steal the spotlight from the SNAP crisis, the SNAP crisis pushed stories about draconian ICE raids out of the headlines. Those heartless ICE raids cleared the stole the spotlight from the steady progress being made in releasing new information related to Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts with the worlds elite, including (allegedly) Donald Trump. It’s distraction by design.
It’s as if someone’s pulling every lever they can to keep the public angry, scared, and divided, all divert our attention from other matters.
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