What’s happening with food stamps in the US?

Let's face it though, ICE agents would probably do the job for a free dinner anyway, fucking fascists.

I hope you do too…that’s a lot of money to manage without!!

Not to mention all the government employees who have lost their jobs this year. I can count maybe 10 friends, all very educated professionals with master’s and PhDs, who have had their departments completely disbanded. All of them working in health, housing, disability and foreign aid. Probably some of them now needing to rely on government assistance because they’ve lost half or all of their income since January.

Me too!

My family are lucky in a sense - we got our PCS orders in hand just before the shutdown started. So we aren’t affected by the pause/cancellation of people’s PCS moves…..BUT we’ve got a lot of shit to pay for during the course of our overseas move! 2 cars to buy and insure once we get there, deposit to pay on our new place, 3 sets of school uniform to buy. Might be a tad bit of a squeeze with no paycheck in mid-November 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

Plus the other $200million + that’s being spent on building his gilded ballroom 🫠

A good friend of mine was in DC last week, and the first day she was there, you could see all the construction. The next day, they’d put up enormous screens so nobody can see anything through the fences.

I really really hope we get back pay 🥲

Crazy to possibly be able to get away with not paying people back pay and yet expecting the to work.

Well the whole situation is crazy but wow.

And all while he's set to take $230,000,000 from his own justice department (or, rather, the American taxpayer) for "compensation".

According to news sources, some are getting paid, some aren’t.
Theres approximately 21,000-ish enforcement agents currently employed, and the latest numbers say that 19,000-ish aren’t getting paid - same as every other government employee.
The ones who are getting paid are the ones currently working on the large-scale enforcement ops - like Chicago.

Thank you for your informative posts @WhatIsTheCharge. Does the shutdown mean ICE employees won't be paid?

Yeah.
When it happened last time under Trump, we got back pay.

This time?
I’m more likely to believe that Elvis is going to knock on my door.

Also I read that usually when people don’t get paid it’s backdated once the shutdown is over so they do get it eventually, but this time Trump is saying that he may not honour that.

Yes but at least the democrats (and, to their credit, some republicans) want to see the files released.

I'm pretty confident Trump has been involved in some of the more heinous crimes, though. It's hard to explain away things like the FBI questioning Epstien on whether he had "socialized" with Trump and underage girls, Trump's extraordinary intervention with Ghislaine Maxwell (and moving her to a cushy prison) and general attempts at concealment, plus the court claims filed (with supportive witness statements) - then dropped, seemingly under some pressure - re. his alleged forcible rape of a minor.

Obviously there are others who are under real suspicion, but the strongest evidence of guilt seems to be in relation to Trump.

For the workers that are still working but not getting paid- do they then get back paid when the mess is sorted or they just working completely for free right now?

My DH is convinced that that’s why Trump has only called in National Guard so far and not active duty military in places like Chicago, DC and Portland……
Anyone who thinks active duty servicemen who currently don’t know if they can pay their rent or feed their children on Monday will show up and blindly do as they are told, are on glue.
Base Commanders and direct chains of command seem to be doing what they can to protect their people though. Even with Hegseth’s ridiculousness spewing down the chain every other day, most of the people responsible for enforcing the dumbfuckery are like “Sure buddy, we’ll definitely do that” while laughing at him.
Lose the respect and control of the people who have all the guns and you’re fucked 🫠👍🏻 The military do what that do because usually there’s a pretty decent financial incentive to do it. Not anymore there isn’t.

They seem confident they'll still be able to pay the active military, and Trump seems keen to prompt unrest (as part of his election suppression efforts).

It might ultimately come down to whether the military continue to remain willing to do his bidding, if things escalate.

I voted yabu because you are clearly not being unreasonable and no aibu question therefore this isn’t an aibu thread!

The Epstein files are just a sideshow. The actual battle is over the affordable healthcare act. There are currently government subsidies to make it possible for people to afford to buy the now required health insurance on the open market. The republicans want to stop those subsidies. The democrats want them to continue. Without the subsidies, health insurance will become completely unaffordable and people will just have to pay the small annual fine for being uninsured instead.

They will then leave illnesses untreated until it becomes an emergency. At that point hospitals are required to treat them enough to stabilize them regardless of ability to pay. Hospitals will then pass the cost of treating those patients on to the patients who are paying. Thus those of us who do pay for our healthcare will have to pay even more.

since they can’t agree on a budget, the government shuts down and essentially everyone except the elected officials responsible for the mess don’t get paid. Essentials workers like air traffic controllers and military still have to show up to work without a paycheck. So they have the expenses of working like childcare and transportation, but no money coming in.

republicans control both the house and senate. They could push through the budget. They could authorize food stamp spending. They don’t want to take responsibility.

right now they are holding the poor hostage in a way. We can give them healthcare or food.

Either choice has a massive impact on the economy as a whole. Food stamps spending not entering the economy is going to hurt all of us and disrupt the supply chain in general.

Who would want to work for a government agency if this can happen unexpectedly.
Crazy system.

Everyone is in those files.
Both sides of the aisle - republican, democrat and everything in between.
I’m not saying every single one of them is a paedophile……but what I am saying is that if you follow the money, it will lead you to all of them.

Well they CAN stay shut down indefinitely…….

But if that happens, the country will descend into carnage.
We can feel it bubbling on the surface already - people will start stealing because they have no other choice to feed their families.
People will die because they have no access to healthcare.
The military aren’t being paid - they can’t arrest everyone for refusing to soldier if people stop showing up to work 🤷🏻‍♀️

I suspect they wouldn’t care, until they lost their healthcare and jobs.

Yes, those who are not troubled by what is happening in the US, may soon be very troubled if the wannabee, Trump lover, gets his party into power.

There are rumblings among US politicians that congress won't go back at all this year.
Must be something really bad in those files.

Or can they just drag this out forever.