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https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/fcc-chairman-carr-npr-pbs-investigation
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Trump and GOP Attack Children’s Food Aid in Order to Fund Tax Cuts for the Rich
This comes as roughly 14 million children in the US are already food insecure.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are waging a multi-front war on nutrition benefits for children, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture moving this week to end programs that provided over $1 billion in funding for schools and charity organizations to buy food from local farmers as GOP lawmakers simultaneously take aim at school meal programs as part of an effort to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
Schools and farmers are “bracing for impact,” as The Washington Post put it, after the USDA axed the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program as part of a purported effort to “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
The Local Food for Schools Program, according to the USDA, “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
The decision to kill the programs could be disastrous for schools, childcare facilities, and other organizations that were expecting federal funding this year. Politico observed that “roughly $660 million that schools and childcare facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms” has been terminated by the Trump administration.
“Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer ‘priorities,'” Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement, noting that her state was set to receive $12.2 million “to provide local healthy food to childcare programs and schools, and to create new procurement relationships with local farmers and small businesses.”
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, said that “the Trump administration is proving to be bad for farmers, bad for children, and bad for people in need.”
Food insecurity rose for the second consecutive year in 2024, and roughly 14 million children in the U.S. are food insecure, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.
“Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty,” said Brown. “These two programs were a win-win for farmers and communities, and it is incredibly short-sighted to abruptly end them.”
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid that “could make it harder for schools to operate meal programs and for families to obtain free or reduced-price school meals, Summer EBT, or benefits through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).”
That’s according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which noted that “school meal programs and Summer EBT use SNAP and Medicaid data to automatically enroll children.”
“If low-income families with children lose their SNAP and/or Medicaid benefits, they would have to complete a school meal application instead of being automatically enrolled,” CBPP warned. “In addition to diminished access to meals during the school year, families who are unable to successfully navigate the application process would no longer be automatically enrolled in Summer EBT. Families with children who lose SNAP and/or Medicaid would also lose their adjunctive income eligibility for WIC.”
Zoë Neuberger, a senior fellow at CBPP, said that “as families struggle to keep up with the rising cost of food, Republicans in Congress are looking at making it harder for millions of children in families with low incomes to get free meals at school.”
“Worse yet, the proposed cuts would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses,” said Neuberger. “Congress should instead focus on removing red tape for schools and families so parents can afford groceries and children can get the meals they need for healthy development.”
The School Nutrition Association (SNA), a national nonprofit whose members help provide meals to schools across the U.S., is sounding the alarm about three specific proposals that Republicans are weighing as they craft their sprawling reconciliation package:
- Restricting the Community Eligibility Provision;
- Requiring income verification with every free and reduced-price school meal application; and
- Ending Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility
“These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs,” SNA president Shannon Gleave warned in a statement earlier this week. “Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”
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Trump's Censorship Czar Orders NPR and PBS Investigation
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS. In a letter to the chief executives of both publicly funded networks, Carr used the investigation as a pretext to suggest that Congress end federal funding for NPR and PBS.
“To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars,” Carr wrote.
In his brief tenure as FCC chairman, Carr has also threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of other broadcasters, including affiliates of ABC, CBS and NBC, for airing segments that displeased President Trump. In public polling, NPR and PBS routinely rank among America’s most trusted brands, and taxpayer money “well spent.”
Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:
“His seat as FCC chairman is barely warm, but Brendan Carr is already abusing his power and harassing public broadcasters with a sham investigation designed to scare journalists into silence. This is all part of Carr’s far-right, Project 2025-inspired agenda.
“This bogus investigation is an attack on the freedom of the press and a bungling attempt to bash public broadcasters and further weaken their resolve to question the extremism, corruption and cruelty of the Trump administration. This unjustified investigation isn’t based on any genuine concern about whether there’s too much advertising on public media. It’s a blatant attempt to undermine independent, rigorous reporting on the Trump administration.
“Carr may not like public media — and that’s no surprise given that he isn’t a fan of journalism that holds public officials and billionaires accountable. In this, as in so many other areas under his purview, Chairman Carr is far out of step with the American public and their needs.
“Communities all across the country rely on their local public radio and TV stations to provide trustworthy news reporting and a diversity of opinions. In every survey, the American public indicates it wants more support for public and community media, not less.
“In a healthy democracy, we would be investing enough in our public-media system that it wouldn’t need to seek any corporate underwriting. Unfortunately, Carr’s cronies in Congress and the Big Media barons they serve have instead for decades tried to zero out funding for public media. They have repeatedly failed because millions of viewers and listeners opposed them.”
