Trump Freezes Help For Kids In Five Blue States To Punish Them For Being Enemies

[erronis]

https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-freezes-help-for-kids-in-five
Doktor Zoom

The Trump administration announced this week it's withholding some $10 billion in social safety-net funds in five blue states, claiming without evidence that there's massive fraud. Hundreds of thousands of kids from low-income families are likely to be affected, but that's OK because Donald Trump is big mad at Minnesota and Somalis. And because they're blue states, so why not pretend that the alleged day care scandal in Minnesota is endemic to all large states with Democratic majorities? Besides, help to poor families was already targeted by Project 2025, so insisting there's vast fraud is as good a pretext as any.

The funding freeze applies to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, none of which are likely to ever vote for Trump or elect GOP majorities, so they're effectively not really part of America anyway. The five states will lose about $7 billion in funding for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the cash assistance program that's already been slashed again and again over the years. Another $2.4 billion is being frozen from the Child Care and Development Fund which helps low-income families pay for day care, along with $870 million from block grants for a variety of children's programs.

Low-income families across the five states are likely to be harmed by the funding cuts, which is the point. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie summed up the administration's attitude perfectly, writing on Bluesky, "It is the policy of this government to treat democratic-led states as conquered territories and the people therein as something like hostiles or even enemy combatants."

. . .

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon insisted, in fact-free Trump Boilerplate Style, that it was a crisis that blue states brought on themselves by being just the worst, claiming in a statement that "For too long, Democrat-led states and Governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch." Notice that there isn't a single bit of evidence there.

. . .

[AnnaLee]

1. Yea, when I lived in CA, the 5th graders had 4-FRAUD clubs. ntp

[erronis]

2. I remember the 4H clubs, but not the 4F ones

At least not at that early an age...

[underpants]

3. Dokter Zoom slips in an oldie but a goodie 😃

Hundreds of thousands of people losing funding they rely on in order to go to work and put food on their families is harmful,

[erronis]

4. Good catch - a bushism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism#Examples