The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse.
I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Understandable why grocery stores might be scared off. A store caught violating the prohibition could be denied ability to accept SNAP benefits in the future. In low-inc areas where SNAP shutdown will have biggest impact, getting thrown off SNAP could mean a store is no longer financially viable.
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Apologies, but I searched to make sure this wasn't rage bait.
Nope, it's right there on their website under the category of retailer notices.
I could puke at this state level cruelty
www.fns.usda.gov/snap/ebt/ret…— PorkanoQue (@porkanoque.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Meanwhile USDA Sec Rollins is trying to change the subject —the subject being Trump's decision to withhold food aid from 40M people—by claiming the admin is focused on rooting out SNAP fraud.
To be fair, no one can fraudulently receive benefits if no one receives benefits, period— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
===
The Christianists, of course, are pleased at the thought of other people suffering…
single moms are the hold-this-shit together people in our society and nuclear families are fraught with drunk dad beating the shit out of anything in their path. we like healthy families in this house.
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 5:40 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,347: Schrödinger’s German Patriots
Aziz, light!
It’s my conviction that unless these people are raptured we will be stuck with them for eternity.
What a world we live in, where mass delusions have such power and protection.
eclare
Just when you thought this administration could not get any more cruel.
J. Arthur Crank
How does one hold someone who legitimately needs help “accountable”? Christ, what an asshole!
NotMax
Did anyone here have the intestinal fortitude to watch the pustule-in-chief on 60 Minutes?
Could not bring myself to do so.
Quaker in a Basement
I think I recall that Jesus was clear on “punishing the adulteress.”
NightSky
So according to Ms Rollins, Sec of Ag, they uncovered “massive fraud” in the states that complied with their SNAP data request… i.e., the “red” states during the Trump admin are the source of “massive fraud”. Hmmm. Maybe this doesn’t mean what she thinks it means…
piratedan
gawd help us, we might be actually feeding people and wouldn’t that be a goddamn travesty.
Socolofi
@NightSky: Yup. It would be a great Democratic talking point if it were true. ;)
Of course, last I checked, fraud was a felony, and every time somebody from the GOP says massive fraud, there are zero prosecutions.
Hmmm….
eclare
@NotMax:
Nope.
Jay
bsky.app/profile/marcelias.bsky.social/post/3m4ov3xlwfs2f
Jay
bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3m4onba3gdc2o
bsky.app/profile/iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social/post/3m4p5pdz6jc2p
Mai Naem mobile
How is it even legal for tfg and his assholes to tell a private company how to run their business,? What happened to the free market and private business rights?
danielx
There have been all too many moments in the last couple decades and before that, truth be known, that I’ve thought “this is beyond parody”.
But I have to admit the last couple of days have gone off the scale. Like, better that a hundred people go hungry than one person gets – what, an extra hundred bucks? Yes, I’m spitballing, but ballrooms and marble bathrooms (definite safety hazard, btw) while forty million people are going to get hungry?
That’s the outrage de jour. No, wait, I forgot the order to resume nuclear testing. No, then there was the business about blowing fishing boats out of the water because reasons….
We’ve passed surreal. I do not think there’s a word to describe this thing, this zeitgeist, where we are now.
sab
@Mai Naem mobile: The govt can cut a private business off from receiving SNAP payments from the govt. Receiving govt payments is not a free market thing.
eclare
@danielx:
You have summed up the times we are living in pretty well. Don’t forget the Gatsby party the night before millions lost SNAP.
Jay
@Mai Naem mobile:
@sab:
In a Democracy, a private company can offer discounts for a variety of reasons. I get a discount at Safeway, the Liquor Store, Save on Foods, Petro-Canada, Canadian Tire, Mark’s Work Warehouse, West Jet and a bunch of other places just for being a “member” or a good customer.
In a Facist State ,……………………well
Those discounts for former SNAP customers, could be offered just out of the goodness of their hearts of the store owners, but it is being done in a Facist state
So there are consequences.
cain
@eclare:
This entire thing is formulated to defy the court. The court says you have to pay these people their benefits. But the Trump administration is now saying no because they found massive fraud and they gotta stop that first.
Jay
@cain:
If they found fraud, (they didn’t), based on which States complied, massive SNAP Fraud is only happening, (as can be proven, it can’t, just more lies) in Red States.
A great “attack” angle for the Democratic Party.
eclare
@cain:
I know. I also read one comment that I thought summed up the current situation pretty well: cavalierly murdering fishermen with no due process, no war resolution, no evidence, well he can do whatever he wants, there are no rules. Courts tell him he has to restore food benefits to Americans? All of a sudden he is a bureaucratic stickler, gotta check with legal multiple times, not clear what the court meant, etc.
Priorities are crystal clear.
Balconesfault
And we’re reminded why, despite all his publicly stated criticisms of Trump, McConnell has.supported him in every election.
JCJ
@Mai Naem mobile: It sounds like the rules for CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) regarding medical billing. Charging a Medicare patient more or less than a non-Medicare patient is fraud.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: I really don’t think there is much snap fraud, If any. There are signs in every grocery about what constitutes fraud, and what will happen to you. It’s not good.
@eclare: The Newsweek article about snap reported that trump said, that once the court gives him a plan on how the government is to proceed, he’s glad to help. That no Americans should go hungry (yeah, right).
I take that as a thinly veiled ‘fuck you ‘ to the courts, and to snap recipients. All that needs to happen is to lift the block, so the contingency funds can tip into the regular account, and then press go. (however that works.)
I suspect funds for days 1-3 of the month might require some manual entry, a lot of extra work at the office. The last number of one’s social security number, is the day of the month one typically gets the account loaded. It loads at midnight, so it’s already late for the folks who get theirs on the 3rd.
This crap about fraud sounds like a way for them to
fuck aroundcause more delay. If there’s suspected fraud at the White House, can food suppliers refuse to deliver, then?Jay
@JCJ:
As one of the posters pointed out.
Technically, there are no longer any SNAP recipients,
So, if Store A decides to give a discount to Customer A, it should be none of the USDA’s fucking business.
But, it’s not. because you live now in a facist system.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
There is a little SNAP fraud, less than 3%,
it’s mostly (99%), about $1.2 million, almost all on the Corporate end, not on the EBT holders end.
YY_Sima Qian
@eclare: Lately there has been a book that has been the talk of the town among think tank/policymaking/public intellectual circles, Dan Wang’s Breakout, which argues that the US is a “lawyerly state” & that the PRC is an “engineering state”. That is the framework from which Wang analyzed the relatively strengths & pathologies of the two political economies.
In the age of Trump 47, however, I would say the US is a mobster state, the EU is the [weak & disunited] lawyerly state, & that the PRC is the engineering state.
MAGA wants rule by law, not unlike other authoritarian regimes (including the PRC), & not rule of law. & even that is a very weak commitment. Even rule by law that is at least transparent & consistent, even if unfair & immoral (see aspects of Singapore), is better than what the US is turning into.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: That seems so true.
Twenty-five years ago I wa visiting friends in a (nameless) foreign country and they laughed at Americans. ” We have our religion, but you Americans worship your law. It is more important to you than any other value.”
At the time I thought that was true and I was proud of it. Now it is not true at all. Power, money, influence is all we have.
I am not a doomer. We can still fight it, but wow. What a rapid decline.
sab
It looks like 1 in 8 American families are going to be hungry this Thanksgiving.
Gretchen
I just saw that the VA will no longer classify men’s breast cancer as service-related so may refuse care. The Biden administration added breast cancer as possibly service-related by toxin exposures to reproductive organs and cover it. Trump people say men’s breasts aren’t reproductive and dropped it, like it’s gender affirming care or something.
Suzanne
I know I said the other day that I was trying to reduce the loathing that I feel, more out of a drive to protect my own peace than anything. But this freeze on SNAP has just made me livid with anger.
If you have neighborhood social media, I know it’s annoying, but it’s a good way to see if any of your neighbors need help.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yes this. I would go further though. The worship of ‘Law’ and the ‘Courts’ in the US betrays a disdain for and distrust of, ordinary democratic politics to deal with what are, at the end of the day, political disputes. Of course a democracy needs Courts and the rule of law in order to ensure stable governance.
But disputes about how to live, who deserves rights and how the pie is to be divvied up, are political disputes, properly considered. Not legal disputes for overweening Courts and lawyers to determine.
The US suffers from a deficit of democratic politics, not a ‘divided polity’.
In this it’s not dissimilar to the PRC.
sab
@Suzanne: As we all know: not all families are functional. Many are nasty and vindictive. Parents actually kick gay and trans kids out on the streets to survive in their early teens. This pastor sounds like one of them. Like Dobson who beat his dachsund. Who beats a dachsund? They weigh about five pounds. A harsh word won’t suffice? How manly are you, needing to beat tiny dogs and disown adolescents?
Suzanne
@sab: I have been so fired up this weekend about this. Who fucks with people’s food?!
sab
@Aussie Sheila: Jim Crow was actually democratic politics in its part of the world. A functinal rule of law sets of standards that limits the worst features of democratic rule. Jim Crow was a worst feature of unrestrained by law norms of democratic rule.
I am old enough that I remember when Australia was racist as hell. No people of color need apply, whether from Asia or Africa or even your own native inhabitants.
So don’t expect me to respect your lectures on pure democracy. Y’all are not perfect either. And when you swung bad you were very bad.
sab
@Suzanne: I am sitting here looking at my budget and deciding how big a check I can write to the foodbank. And invites out to husband’s single friends for Thanksgiving, It seems like such a pitiful effort. And my dog has decided she will only eat cat chow and milkbone biscuits so we have a 40 lb bag of perfectly good dog chow to donate. But just pitiful donations looking at the needs.
My neighborhood is not rich. I remember when my neighbors in 2008 had to surrender their children’s pets to the pound when they lost their houses. This is that brutal
There is no safety in a world where parents cannot protect their children and their pets. And these assholes want us to live in a world where our kids know that is the deal.
Barney
“single moms who fornicated etc.” – ignoring the huge number of people on SNAP who aren’t a family that started with an unmarried woman (oh, the horror!!!), that guy is desperate to bring in Magdalene Laundries for the USA. We’d see how far the compassion of families and churches lasted, and what “holding them accountable” would mean from misogynists like him.
Derelict
Back in 2010, I ran the local radio station. I had a Republican politician on for an interview, and with the economy still reeling from the housing crash, the subject of people struggling came up. He went off on a mini tirade about people being lazy and how they should get to work instead of sucking up benefits.
So I asked about a single mother I knew who had two kids, no access to daycare, and was barely surviving on the meager handouts from the state. “Well, she shoulda thought about that before she went and had those kids!” he said.
I pointed out that when she had those kids, her husband was still alive. He’d been killed in Iraq, and that’s how she came to be a single mother. It had never dawned on this knucklehead that there are lots of ways to end up being a single parent other than being a wanton slut.
Aussie Sheila
@sab:
Australia changed its laws regarding the treatment of indigenous people finally and forever in 1967. As to discrimination laws generally including immigration, the changes began in 1965. Are the results perfect? No, particularly with respect to Indigenous peoples and their rights. After all, an important Constitutional referendum touching on those issues was lost two years ago.
However Jim Crow in the US South doesn’t demonstrate a surfeit of democracy. It demonstrates that the US federal government either couldn’t or wouldn’t, enforce Reconstruction after the 1870s.
I can assure you that no Australian federal government would ever permit its lawful and Constitutional writ to be overridden by State governments.
Ever.
sab
@Barney: Lots of SNAP are elderly poor. Also too mothers escaping abusive spouses (my stepdaughter. Her ex is a terrifying meth head.)
sab
@Aussie Sheila: Are you pro democracy or pro rule of law. Jim Crow was what they wanted. Rule of law was imposed from above per constitutional strictures.
Which side are you on? I cannot tell.
Trump is neither. That’s a pure power grab by working the flaws in the system. Basically the electoral college.
Matt McIrvin
Strange, they didn’t mention the mechanism by which Democrats were making them do this.
Rusty
It doesn’t matter how children came to be, born of love, sexual assault, a drunken one night stand, failed birth control, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if an adult is healthy or ill, Dem or Rep or non-voter, addict or sober, their race, their religion, it doesn’t matter. It matters they are hungry. It doesn’t matter how they get fed. Government, private, church, it doesn’t matter. But if at the end they aren’t fed, and you are OK with that, then that is crap Christian theology. It is ignoring the Gospels. As a pastor friend put it, you call yourself a Christian. So what.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: I sound strident against your system ( pure majority rules.) 180 dgree shifts in changes in government.
But I am realizing that our American guardrails were just a fiction if we let them capture the Supreme Court. And they have.
It will be interesting to see how these Catholic extremist justices justify their views when the American pope says their take on Catholicism is wrong.
sab
@Derelict: Wow. Reality intrudes.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: Jim Crow was what the majority of the White Southerners wanted. However, if the Black population had equal rights, as was guaranteed by the US Constitution (including the Amendments post Civil War) & per principles of democratic politics, I think there might have been enough for a majority to end Jim Crow, particularly if some of the White poor was willing to form a coalition w/ the Black population to overthrow the entire stratified & ossified class society & political economy of the Southern states.
Jim Crow was an affront to both democratic politics & rule of law as stipulated by the US Constitution, to prevent such a coalition from ever forming, by disenfranchising the African Americans, & could only be overthrown by external (to region) intervention.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I will say “Constitutional Originalism”is something unique to the US as far as political philosophy & legal theory are concerned, taking on the logic of religious fundamentalism to ostensibly civic documents & institutions.
Matt McIrvin
@Gloria DryGarden: And how ANY of that requires them to order private businesses not to voluntarily offer special discounts to affected recipients is beyond me.
Matt McIrvin
@Derelict: I believe the traditional model for widows is that you’re supposed to go to your church community and ask for support from them, then obtain another husband from the congregation after a decent period of mourning. Otherwise it’s just another form of wantonness.
YY_Sima Qian
For those interested Dan Wang’s Breakneck, here is a review from the WSJ (gift link below):
Here is a long podcast (~ 2hrs.) that dives fairly deeply into the main themes of the book & Wang’s arguments:
Here is a critique of Wang’s analytical framework from an admirer of the book (& itself an excellent analytical work):
Here is a pithy critique on the analytical frameworks of both Wang & Pine:
lowtechcyclist
@eclare:
My thought exactly. Just breathtaking cruelty. Bad enough that they’re cutting off SNAP support when they’ve got the money sitting right there, but I never figured they’d find a way to stop other people from helping people on SNAP.
Yet here they are.
Sec. Rollins had better get full enjoyment out of this life, because Jesus says in Matthew 25 that she’s in for it in the next one.
lowtechcyclist
@Rusty:
This. In Matthew 25, where Jesus talks about when you fed or didn’r feed the hungry, you did that to him, he doesn’t say a goddamn thing about the morals of the hungry people. He just said we should feed the hungry. Period.
Paul in KY
@danielx: Agree. You couldn’t have a script of this (completely documentary) get past a Hollywood producer. They’d say it was too outrageous, etc. etc.
Paul in KY
@sab: I’m not on the Jim Crow side. Odious legislation unfairly passed by racist and gerrymandered legislatures. Also craven Supreme Courts that let it last too long.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: You don’t say…
randy khan
It seems to me that giving discounts to people who are not actually receiving benefits shouldn’t be a problem.
Ohio Mom
@Gretchen: Men do have breast tissue, albeit very small amounts, leftover from the earliest stages of fetal development, when we all start off as female.
Male breast cancer is rare, and it is usually found later because no one is doing any screening. I was under the impression that most cases are genetic but it seems reasonable to me that toxic exposure could trigger breast cancers to develop (IAN an oncologist).
At any rate, the cost of treating male vets with breast cancer had to have been not even a rounding error in the budget.
Once again, I am impressed (not in a good way) at the Trump administration’s ability to zoom in on small programs most people have never heard of. It’s the death of the administrative state by a thousand paper cuts.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: Of course, command economies “work” for certain values of “work”, for a while, anyway.
The US does that kind of stuff too – Defense Projection Act – Title III. Of course. No real economy that “works” is pure, because the world doesn’t work on purity, it works on pragmatism and incremental progress.
Huge economies have lots of moving parts. Politicians, Engineers, Lawyers, Bankers, Teachers, Scientists, etc., etc., all have roles to play.
China is still working through their real estate bubble, aren’t they?
Times of rapid change are challenging, not least when one is also trying to rapidly lift up hundreds of millions out of poverty at the same time. Missteps are unavoidable. What works there likely won’t work as well in more mature economies. What will work in more mature economies? That’s the question, isn’t it?
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: The PRC is not a command economy, but a state capitalist (or quasi-socialist) one. A pure command economy a la the USSR or pre-Reform Era PRC have proven to be unworkable.
Even for “mature” economies, what may work at one time may no longer work after a while. Nothing designed & operated by flawed human beings will be perfect, there is/will be pathologies associated w/ any political economic system. As the pathologies deepen & the flaws/distortions mount, course corrections are necessary. There is no “End of History” to be had.
As for the real estate bubble, it is still deflating in the sense that housing prices continue to drop (albeit slowly now) in most places. However, the PRC economy is still growing (whether you believe the official real GDP growth figure of ~ 5% or think it is a bit lower) despite the head winds from the still deflating real estate sector, buoyed by the various “new productive forces” & strong exports. The shift of economic gears is occurring as we speak, the high interest local government debt accumulated from the real estate boom are being restructured to becoming de facto lower interest central government debt, & the PRC central government has a very strong balance sheet & full control over its currency, & all of the public sector debt is domestic (so left pocket stated owned developers & owing money to the right pocket state owned banks).
All of this being accomplished w/o a financial crisis & a recession is an unprecedented achievement. But then, there were the extraordinary human right abuses during the hardline enforcement of the One Child Policy in many parts of the PRC, & the extraordinary human rights abuses associated w/ sending ~ 10% of the Uighur population to detention camps for weeks to months in the late ’10s, both dystopian attempts at social engineering, both crimes against humanity.
Kayla Rudbek
@sab: the Federalist Society and Opus Dei have a LOT to answer for in my professional opinion
Kayla Rudbek
@Derelict: yeah, one of the first things that’s in Acts of the Apostles, is, y’know taking care of the widows in the community…
Kayla Rudbek
@sab: I’m looking forward to Pope Leo excommunicating all of the Supine Six