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Trump and GOP Wage War on Children's Food Aid to Fund Tax Cuts for the Rich
The Republican Party's proposed cuts to nutrition assistance for children, said one analyst, "would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses."
Mar 13, 2025
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."
"Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty."
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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Israel Kills 11 in Bombing of Gaza Shelter as Urgent Polio Vaccination Effort Begins
"We cannot vaccinate children and families who have to flee for safety," said a spokesperson for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Sep 02, 2024
The Israeli military killed nearly a dozen people Sunday in its latest bombing of a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, an attack that came amid limited pauses aimed at allowing relief workers to vaccinate Palestinian children against reemergent polio.
Israel's strike on the Safad school in Gaza City killed at least 11 people, including a woman and a girl, a spokesperson for Gaza's civil defense agency told Agence France-Presse.
The Israeli military claimed it was targeting a "Hamas command center" inside the school, which—like other Gaza schools that remain standing—was being used as a shelter for people displaced by Israel's nearly 11-month assault.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Monday that Israeli bombing has damaged or destroyed more than 70% of the schools it runs in the enclave.
"The vast majority of our schools are now overcrowded shelters with hundreds of thousands of displaced families. They cannot be used for learning," Lazzarini continued. "With no cease-fire, children are likely to fall prey to exploitation including child labor and recruitment into armed groups. We have seen this way too often in conflicts around the world, let’s not repeat it in Gaza."
"A cease-fire is a win for all: it will allow respite for civilians, the release of the hostages, and a flow of much-needed basic supplies including for learning," he added.
A school shelter in Gaza City was hit by an Israeli military air strike as a ‘pause’ in attacks began in other areas in Gaza under an agreement to allow a polio vaccination campaign. pic.twitter.com/Brl4ubHkjC
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 2, 2024
The deadly attack came at the start of three days of localized humanitarian pauses to allow U.N. aid workers to vaccinate Palestinian children against polio amid growing fears of a mass outbreak of the infectious disease that has no known cure.
Last month, Gaza health officials detected the first polio case in more than two decades, heightening the urgency of a large-scale vaccination campaign—an effort made highly difficult by the Israeli military's relentless bombing and destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure.
UNRWA said early Monday that its teams were able to vaccinate roughly 87,000 children on the first day of negotiated pauses even as Israeli airstrikes continued across the besieged enclave.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement Sunday that "Israeli aircraft and tanks continue to bomb the central Gaza Strip, the area where the polio vaccination campaign has begun."
"Along with the ongoing shelling in various parts of the strip, these Israeli military attacks have coincided with the peak of families' movement with their children towards the designated vaccination centers," the group said. "Some of these attacks have even targeted locations near the vaccination centers, endangering the progress of the vaccination process that is required to stop the poliovirus from spreading among Palestinian children in the besieged enclave."
Louise Wateridge, a senior communications officer for UNRWA, told the BBC on Monday morning that "we cannot vaccinate children who are fearing for their lives."
"We cannot vaccinate children and families who have to flee for safety," said Wateridge as explosions rang out in the background. "We need these children to be able to come to the vaccination centers and receive these vaccines safely. And that's not possible when there's fighting like there is now."
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'Beyond Horror': Israel Kills Mostly Children in Fresh Attacks on Gaza Schools
"Remember that each one of those numbers is one person, a child who has been forever changed by what's happened."
Aug 05, 2024
Israeli forces killed dozens of displaced Palestinians—mostly children—on Sunday with attacks on a pair of United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip as diplomats in the region worked to prevent all-out war from breaking out in the aftermath of Israel's latest assassination spree.
Al Jazeera reported that 80% of the roughly 30 people killed in the Israeli attacks on two schools in Gaza City were children. The strikes came shortly after Israel's military bombed a hospital complex in central Gaza, killing at least five people.
"This is beyond horror now," David Shoebridge, an Australian senator, wrote in response to the attacks on schools-turned-shelters.
Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera noted that rescue teams were still searching the rubble of the two schools for survivors on Monday.
"At least 16 Palestinians are still missing, including children, under the remnants of these areas that were targeted by Israel without any prior warning," Azzoum wrote. "Civil defense crews have been using only their bare hands in order to look for survivors. They have been saying that sometimes the process for recovering and pulling out victims can take days simply because there isn't enough fuel to operate the vast majority of bulldozers, and due to the Israeli attacks on bulldozers at the municipal facilities, used in the initial months of the war to rescue victims."
🚑Palestine Red Crescent teams transported several martyrs and injured individuals following the Israeli occupation’s airstrikes on the Al-Nasr and Hassan Salama schools in northwest #Gaza City.
📷Footage by volunteer Yousef Khader. pic.twitter.com/eZMKHnqNVP
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) August 4, 2024
Israel's monthslong war on the Gaza Strip has devastated the territory's children, killing more than 14,000, wounding more than 12,000, and leaving over 20,000 missing. The physical toll has been compounded by what one Gaza mother recently described as the "complete psychological destruction" of the enclave's youth.
Becky Platt, a British pediatric nurse who recently returned from Gaza after a stint at a field hospital there, wrote Monday that "the psychological distress that I witnessed among children and young people is like nothing I'd ever seen before."
"It's very easy to be overwhelmed by the numbers when we watch the news or read about what's happening in Gaza," Platt continued. "Remember that each one of those numbers is one person, a child who has been forever changed by what's happened. Then multiply that one child by thousands. That's the work that needs to be done."
Israel's attacks came after a round of cease-fire talks in Cairo concluded without a deal to end the assault on Gaza. Critics, including some Israeli officials, believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actively sabotaging cease-fire talks in a bid to remain in power.
Axios reported Sunday that "Israeli officials and families of hostages are concerned Netanyahu, who recently toughened his demands and presented new conditions for a hostage and cease-fire deal, sent the delegation [to Cairo] only to create an appearance of negotiations to relieve some of the pressure from" U.S. President Joe Biden, who has called for a cease-fire while continuing to provide military support for the war on Gaza.
"Hamas rejected Netanyahu's new conditions, which include forming an international mechanism to prevent weapons transfers from southern Gaza to the north," according to Axios. "Israeli officials say this and other new demands are making a deal impossible."
Meanwhile, diplomats are trying to prevent the region from descending into full-scale military conflict following Israel's assassination of a Hezbollah commander and Hamas' political leader.
Iran's supreme leader has reportedly ordered an attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told G7 nations on Sunday that Iran's military response could begin as soon as Monday.
Late last week, the Pentagon announced it would "deploy additional fighter jets and Navy warships to the Middle East" as lawmakers and anti-war campaigners warned of deepening U.S. involvement in the regional war.
"Americans do not want to fight another war in the Middle East," Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said last week, "and the path out of the unimaginable death and destruction in Gaza that threatens to engulf the region is through a cease-fire."
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