Yves here. We warned from the outset that Trump economic policies looked designed to produce Russia-in-the-1990s levels of desperation so as to facilitate plutocratic asset grab. We posted earlier on the impact of Trump cuts on food banks in New York City. This punitive policy has now become a national story.
More hunger is part of this “immiserate the population” picture. Of course, hunger also goes hand in hand with malnutrition, particularly of children. That is not a plus for brain development and having a skilled work force.
By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez, KFF Health News correspondent, who previously worked for The Nevada Independent. Originally published at KFF Health News
The Food Bank of Northern Nevada distributes produce and other items to partner organizations across the region. The food bank serves an average of 160,000 people a month, a 76% increase over its clientele before the covid-19 pandemic. (Aramelle Wheeler)
Food bank shortages caused by high demand and cuts to federal aid programs have some residents of a small community that straddles Idaho and Nevada growing their own food to get by.
For those living in Duck Valley, a reservation of about 1,000 people that is home to the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, there’s just one grocery store where prices are too high for many to afford, said Brandy Bull Chief, local director of a federal food distribution program for tribes. The next-closest grocery stores are more than 100 miles away in Mountain Home, Idaho, and Elko, Nevada. And the local food bank’s troubles are mirrored by many nationwide, squeezed between growing need and shrinking aid.
Reggie Premo, a community outreach specialist at the University of Nevada-Reno Extension, grew up cattle ranching and farming alfalfa in Duck Valley. He runs workshops to teach residents to grow produce. Premo said he has seen increased interest from tribal leaders in the state worried about high costs while living in food deserts.
“We’re just trying to bring back how it used to be in the old days,” Premo said, “when families used to grow gardens.”
Food bank managers across the country say their supplies have been strained by rising demand since the covid pandemic-era emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits ended two years ago and steepening food prices. Now, they say, demand is compounded by recent cuts in federal funding to food distribution programs that supply staple food items to pantries nationwide.
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which buys food from domestic producers and sends it to pantries nationwide. The program has supplied more than 20% of the distributions by Feeding America, a nonprofit that serves a network of over 200 food banks and 60,000 meal programs.
The collision between rising demand and falling support is especially problematic for rural communities, where the federal program might cover 50% or more of food supplied to those in need, said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer of Feeding America. Deepening the challenge for local food aid organizations is an additional $500 million the Trump administration slashed from the USDA Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which helped state, tribal, and territorial governments buy fresh food from nearby producers.
“The urgency of this crisis cannot be overstated,” Hall said, adding that the Emergency Food Assistance Program is “rural America’s hunger lifeline.”
Farmers who benefited from the USDA programs that distributed their products to food banks and schools will also be affected. Bill Green is executive director for the Southeast region of Common Market, a nonprofit that connects farmers with organizations in the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, Texas, and the Great Lakes. Green said his organization won’t be able to fill the gap left by the federal cuts, but he hopes some schools and other institutions will continue buying from those farmers even after the federal support dries up.
“I think that that food access challenge has only been aggravated, and I think we just found the tip of the iceberg on that,” he said.
Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha, Nebraska, for example, is experiencing four times the demand this year than in 2018, according to Stephanie Sullivan, its assistant director of marketing and communications. The organization expects to provide food to 580,000 households across the 93 counties it serves in Nebraska and western Iowa this fiscal year, the highest number in its history, she said.
“These numbers should be a wake-up call for all of us,” Sullivan said.
The South Plains Food Bank in Texas projects it will distribute approximately 121,000 food boxes this year to people in need across the 19 counties it serves, compared with an average 90,000 annually before the pandemic. CEO Dina Jeffries said the organization now is serving about 25% more people, while shouldering the burden of decreased funding and food products.
In Nevada, the food bank that helps serve communities in the northern part of the state, including the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, provides food to an average of 160,000 people per month. That’s a 76% increase over its clientele before the pandemic, and the need continues to rise, said Jocelyn Lantrip, director of marketing and communications for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada.
Lantrip said one of the most troubling things for the food bank is that the USDA commodities shipped for local distribution often are foods that donations don’t usually cover — things like eggs, dairy, and meat.
“That’s really valuable food to our neighbors,” she said. “Protein is very difficult to replace.”
Forty percent of people who sought assistance from food banks during the pandemic did so for the first time, Hall said. “Many of those families have come to see their neighborhood food bank not as a temporary resource for emergency help but an essential component of their monthly budget equation.”
About 47 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2023, the most recent USDA data available.
Bull Chief, who also runs a small food pantry on the Duck Valley Reservation, said workers drive to Elko to pick up food distributed by the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. But sometimes there’s not much to choose from. In March, the food pantry cut down its operation to just two weeks a month. She said sometimes they must weigh whether it’s worth spending money on gas to pick up a small amount of food.
When the food pantry opened in 2020, Bull Chief said, it helped 10 to 20 households a month. That number is 60 or more now, made up of a broad range of community members — teens fresh out of high school and living on their own, elders, and people who don’t have permanent housing or jobs. She said providing even small amounts of food can help households make ends meet between paychecks or SNAP benefit deposits.
“Whatever they need to get to survive for the month,” Bull Chief said.
Pinched food banks, elevated need, and federal cuts mean there’s very little resiliency in the system, Hall said. Additional challenges, like an economic slowdown, policy changes to SNAP or other federal nutrition programs, or natural disasters could render food banks unable to meet needs “because they are stretched to the breaking point right now.”
A proposed budget resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in April would require $1.7 trillion in net funding cuts, and anti-hunger advocates fear SNAP could be a target. More people living in rural parts of the country rely on SNAP than people in urban areas because of higher poverty rates, so they would be disproportionately affected.
An extension of the federal 2018 Farm Bill, which lasts until Sept. 30, included about $450 million for the Emergency Food Assistance Program for this year. But the funding that remains doesn’t offset the cuts, Hall said. He hopes lawmakers pass a new farm bill this year with enough money to do so.
“We don’t have a food shortage,” he said. “We have a shortage of political will.”
Its like every elite has forgotten history and how the Great Depression provided the crack in the social narrative of Natural Rule and gasp Socialism/Communism got a foot in the door – all self inflicted.
Every social ill is just going parabolic for those not in the 20% and worst is the worship of anti social elites and stuff like mega yachts and homes – so late stage Rome.
No I don’t think the elites have forgotten anything. Did muppets rise up during the Great Depression? The answer is a big fat NO. Joining the elites and emulating the Joneses have always been the real American Dream, if some people got trampled along the way, then it’s just for the greater good. When will Americans accept that the New Deal was just an aberration in the history of the US?
“Did muppets rise up during the Great Depression?”
Why, yes, they did.
The Bonus March of 1932 is a “memory holed” event in America’s history.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
An “army” of suffering veterans gathered in Washington to make their grievances known to Congress. The Administration of the time, Herbert Hoover to be exact, ended up sending in the Army, under the command of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one Douglass MacArthur, to “clear the rabble out.” With the able assistance of his two subordinate officers, one Dwight Eisenhower and one George Patton, early model tanks were sent into the demonstrator’s shanty town on Anacostia Flats and burned the “rioters” out. Many historians cite this event as the deciding factor in the public’s repudiation of the “business as usual” policies of the Republican Administration and the landslide election of Franklin Roosevelt under a “reform” platform in late 1932.
Pro Tip: One does not “join the elites” and “keep up with the Jonses” when one and one’s family and closest companions are all hungry. All one cares about under such circumstances is getting food “on the table” at home. If one has to “liquidate” some elites to accomplish it, well, so be it.
Stay safe.
That’s not a popular uprising, that’s a bunch of veterans demanding “early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates.”, quoting from the link you posted. In America, the rich can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half, and I think that moment is quickly approaching. Remember how fun Black Friday used to be i.e. muppets punching each other out over the cheapest electronics, I could see the same spectacle unfolding in the near future with elites dangling the latest iPhone models for muppets to fight over. It will be super entertaining.
From the Government’s response, I’d say that they viewed it as a “popular uprising.”
Remember that the Bonus Army still tried to bring about change with essentially non-violent civil disobedience tactics. Flooding Congress with “Public Lobbyists” is about as system friendly as hungry people can get. Then the Army moved in.
When was the last time you saw the Army establish control over “K” Street?
Have you noticed that “the Rich” today seem to think that they no longer have to pay that “golden one half” to kill the other half? That’s their basic mistake. They now want it all and will end up with nothing.
Greed is its own worst enemy.
They are ignoring the advice of the Roman Emperor Tiberius here. When he saw how overzealous tax-collectors had brought back too much money from the Provinces, he shouted at them-
‘It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them.’
Instead of settling for much our oligarchs want it all – and risk losing everything-
https://xcancel.com/CelovskyDanny/status/1917583930179608894#m
“They now want it all and will end up with nothing.”
Thanks, ambrit. I hope to see this in what remains of my lifetime.
It will be a massive exercise in schadenfreude, but will probably be worth it to assist in stringing some of the Oligarchs up to light poles.
And we’ll never hear surf music again.
A second Bonus Army march was planned for 1933, but FDR established the CCC, and first enrollees were WW1 vets-who didn’t fit the requirements of later CCC employees, they wanted them off the streets.
Unlike his predecessors, Roosevelt was nobody’s fool. A wealthy man trying to save his own class from itself.
Stay safe.
a footnote is that Hoover specificaly ordered dug out doug to not cross the river and stay in DC . The army ccommander macarthur directly disobeyed a presidential order and got away with it. It took Harry Truman to ignore the press and fire mac. Once ahain it takes a D to take the principled stand to save the country while the R, hoover, ignored the disobience
>“We don’t have a food shortage,” he said. “We have a shortage of political will.”
We have a shortage of politicians and leaders that are willing to think, or care, about the welfare of this Nation’s less fortunate, or even the Middle Class (that shrinking group), and what a healthy populace can contribute to the betterment of us all.
But no shortage of those that whore themselves out to the whims of the donors and their political whims.
The present elites have lost the plot here. By focusing solely on themselves and their donor’s interests, elected officials have put a target on their own backs.
It brings to mind Dr. Johnson’s famous quote: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Let us see a few electeds fall prey to their abandoned constituents and we will, after the predictable exercise of “State sponsored coercive physical violence” has failed, see either a readjustment of policy in the existing political establishment, or a new political establishment arise.
Stay safe. Go Grey.
You’re referencing. I think, ‘The Great Big Beautiful Bullet’ theory of political reform. What goes around sometimes goes around. Stay safe. And put a smile on Young Goodman Brown’s face.
You’re right. We have been hanging out in the deep, dark woods for far too long.
From the History Rhymes Department; as skippy mentioned above, whoever is making the “hard decisions” in ‘our’ political establishment obviously has not read their history. Food “insecurity,” the seemingly more educated term for hunger, has been a triggering factor in many historical incidents of revolt and revolution. The visible trigger for the original “Colour Revolution” in Tunisia in 2010 was the self immolation of a struggling street food vendor who had been “muscled” out of business by a city employee.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_revolution
Food shortages, mishandled by the “responsible authorities, were a triggering factor in the French Revolution of 1789. Then, out of touch autocrats dug their own graves by not understanding the needs and aspirations of their own “lower” classes.
Hungry people will do “whatever it takes,” including dying, and killing their perceived oppressors, to solve their problems. Armies and police forces cannot hold down an enraged and motivated population forever.
How like the infamous “Let them eat cake” attributed to French queen Marie Antoniette is the “get used to only two Barbies instead of your usual thirty Barbies” quote from our Dear Leader recently. One can live without Barbies. One cannot live without food.
In days of yore right here on the NC comments page, we would see references to “light poles” and “guillotines.” In a perverse way, such bloody bloviation was a good sign. People were verbally “acting out” their frustrations. Now, the calls for violent resolution to the present iteration of the political dysfunction have gone quiet. That is not a good sign. It means that the middle and upper middle class (I fall well below either of those categories,) people who comment here and elsewhere on the internet are seriously considering what was earlier treated as a fantasy wish fulfillment.
As one cowboy says to the other cowboy just before the “action” sequence in the Hollywood Western film; “It’s quiet out there, too quiet.”
Stay safe.
Maybe will be seeing more Mangione moments coming our way.
Probably but a cleverly organized response is the best response. On the other hand given our many options for collective but self directed action, let’s hear it for Mangione, Bei 55
Oh yes. I can imagine an “army” of Saint Luigis descending upon the “corridors of power” to “adjust” the social dysfunction presently afflicting the West.
As skippy says above; this is going to be an “own goal” of epic proportions.
Stay safe.
Yes, everything seems on track for a long, hot summer.
Here’s a summary of some of the activities during the Great Depression, most of which were led by the Communist Party. (The website is a Trot site aiming to start a socialist alternative to the Duopoloy.) Here’s an example:
I really like and appreciate the examples of resistance and unity that come from the ground up. in this world it ain’t coming from the top down, never did I guess.
My fear is that these times it’s a little more difficult to do that organization under the radar with the use of social media and the internet with all its avenues for the authorities to monitor. But I suppose one should never underestimate the ingenuity of those determined to do something positive.
And those farmers bidding pennies to save their neighbors’ farms held nooses during those auctions, just in case a local banker tried pull fast one.
Fun little online tool of socialist officeholders in the US Midwest during the first half of the last century.
tool
“We posted earlier on the impact of Trump cuts on food banks in New York City. This punitive policy has now become a national story.”
Can’t we stop those national stories on food cuts? Like in the same way we stop criticism of Israel? We shouldn’t allow this to upset Congress. They’re very busy working in their insider trading stock accounts.
Americans don’t just vote with Ballots and their feet, sometimes they vote with their guns.
I’d be very surprised if we don’t see violence and an extreme crackdown before the end of this year…
When you make it brutally clear to people that their lives and the lives of their children have no value, that they have no stake in Society, there are consequences.
I met earlier this week with my local Representative’s staff in Washington State in hopes I can get a legislator to ask the CBO to review a budget approach I have designed with the help of several economists that gets us off the fiscal cliff, balances the budget by 2054, reduces debt/gdp from today’s 124% to 89%, saves Social Security for 75 years, finds efficiencies in discretionary budget items, invests 3 trillion in infrastructure, adds millions of jobs, and immediately puts a lot more cash in the hands of those who need it – the bottom 89%. It’s the Unity Plan, a long term, common sense approach that will work if we ever become serious about actually solving things.
The Unity Plan: A Citizen-Driven Call for Fiscal Stability
April 29, 2025 |
The Unity Plan, a citizen-driven proposal, seeks to counter the House Plan’s fiscal recklessness (216% Debt-to-GDP by 2050, $3.482T deficit in 2026, CBO) by projecting a balanced budget by 2054, 87% Debt-to-GDP, 174M jobs, and Social Security solvency for 50–75 years, shielding 89% of taxpayers from tariff shocks ($3,998/household, Treasury). It urgently requests CBO analysis to validate these projections.
Key Features (2026, Projected):
• Revenue ($3.696T): 40% top tax rate (+$112B), $50K itemized deduction cap (+$150B), $75K standard deduction (-$786B), 25% corporate tax (+$200B), $520K Social Security cap (+$120B). No tariffs ($0).
• Spending ($6.44725T): Hold discretionary spending to 2.6% growth ($65.1B savings), $100B Medicare efficiencies ($50B drugs, $50B fraud), $150B IRS tax gap recovery, $3T infrastructure via off-budget Unity Bonds ($60B start).
• Outcomes: $2.75125T deficit, 127% Debt-to-GDP, 165.1M jobs.
Long-Term Projections (Pending CBO Review):
• 2050: $0.4T deficit, 87% Debt-to-GDP, $77.3T debt, 174M jobs.
• 2054: Balanced budget, $0.3T surplus.
• Social Security: Solvent for 50–75 years (SSA).
• Option: 1.6% Financial Transactions Tax (+$30B/year) could balance by 2053, reduce debt to $74.7T.
Why It Matters: Unlike the House Plan’s perpetual deficits and elite tax cuts, the Unity Plan aims to rebuild infrastructure, boost middle-class cash ($2,000–$10,000/year), and avoid fiscal collapse, pending CBO validation to confirm its bipartisan appeal (Treasury, SSA).
Call to Action: Urge Congress to request CBO analysis of the Unity Plan. Contact CRFB (info@crfb.org) to champion this Tacoma-led solution.