Trump freezes $1 billion in food aid given to local schools and food banks to help low-income families
The Department of Agriculture has slashed over $1 billion in funding aimed at helping schools and food banks purchase from local farmers, according to a nonprofit.
'Multiple states' were recently notified of these cuts, the nonprofit School Nutrition Association said in a statement Tuesday.
'With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,' said the group's president Shannon Gleave. '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. 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.'
An estimated $660 million in funds through the Local Food for Schools program for 2025 will no longer be available to support childcare institutions and schools, the group added.
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education confirmed it received a notice of termination from the USDA on Friday of the second round of Local Food for Schools grant funding, an award of $12.2 million, claiming that they 'determined this agreement no longer effectuates agency priorities and that termination of the award is appropriate,' the state's governor Maura Healy said in a Monday statement.
'Donald Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer 'priorities,' and it's just the latest terrible cut with real impact on families across Massachusetts,' said Governor Healey. 'There is nothing 'appropriate' about it. Trump and Musk are continuing to withhold essential funding in violation of court orders, and our children, farmers and small businesses are bearing the brunt of it.'
The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which provides food to food banks and organizations that reach underserved communities, was also included in the cuts, Politico reported.
A USDA spokesperson told the outlet that funding 'is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.' The spokesperson added: 'These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency. LFPA and LFPA Plus agreements that were in place prior to LFPA 25, which still have substantial financial resources remaining, will continue to be in effect for the remainder of the period of performance.'
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Disappeared people frequently include political opponents, protesters, human rights defenders and community leaders, students and members of minorities, Citroni said. Related: "We Don't Import Food": 31 Americans Who Are Just So, So Confused About Tariffs And US Trade 'Typically, enforced disappearances are used to suppress freedom of expression or religion, or legitimate civil strife demanding democracy, as well as against persons involved in the defense of the land, natural resources, and the environment, and to fight organized crime or counter terrorism,' she said. Enforced disappearance functions as a tool of terror in two ways, said Oscar Lopez, a journalist based in Mexico City working on a book about the origins of forced disappearance during Mexico's 'Dirty War.' 'First, the victim is deprived of due process and often subjected to torture as well as the psychological hell of not knowing what's going to happen to them and possibly fearing for their life,' he told HuffPost. 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'This can mean burying them in unmarked graves, cremating their remains, or, as happened in Latin America, throwing their corpses out to sea,' he said. Where have enforced disappearances happened before? Related: AOC's Viral Response About A Potential Presidential Run Has Everyone Watching, And I'm Honestly Living For It Lopez pointed to a few examples: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared. In nearby Chile, more than 1,000 people went missing under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, while in Guatemala, some 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. In North Korea, instances of enforced disappearances and abductions date back to 1950. 'There are more recent instances of enforced disappearance, too,' he said. 'In Syria, for example, it's estimated that 136,000 people were disappeared under the Assad dictatorship.' But enforced disappearances aren't always carried out directly by state agents. said Adam Isacson, who leads border and migration work at the Washington Office on Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared each by irregular groups in Colombia and Mexico, operating with the tacit permission or even assistance of government officials. 'Sometimes, as with the anti-communist paramilitaries in Colombia and death squads in 1980s El Salvador, the officials colluded with the groups out of some ideological alliance,' he said. 'Sometimes, as with corrupt Mexican cops who assist organized crime, they do it because they profit from it.' Could what's happening in the U.S. now with immigrants be considered 'enforced disappearances'? In spite of existing court orders and legal challenges, the Trump administration continues its deportation policy in El Salvador, in partnership with the county's President Nayib Bukele. Venezuelan migrants have been targeted in particular for deportation, many on unproven allegations of gang affiliation. That said, Trump has also repeatedly said he's 'all for' looking for ways to detain U.S. citizens in foreign jails. Should we be calling what's happening now 'forced disappearances'? A report released by the UN in April suggests yes. The incommunicado detentions appeared to involve 'enforced disappearances, contrary to international law,' the report said. 'Many detainees were unaware of their destination, their families were not informed of their detention or removal, and the U.S. and Salvadoran authorities have not published the names or legal status of the detainees,' the UN experts wrote. 'Those imprisoned in El Salvador have been denied the right to communicate with and be visited by their family members.' Isacson agrees that we should be calling a spade a spade here. 'The only difference between that and what was done in 1970s Chile or Argentina is that loved ones have more reason to believe that their relatives are still alive and haven't been killed,' he said. But even that certainty is not complete, he said: 'Can you say with 100% confidence that Andry Hernandez ― the gay Venezuelan stylist that disappeared two months ago ― is still alive right now? He probably is, but you absolutely cannot guarantee that, and no one will confirm it.' The raids and deportations have certainly struck fear into American communities ― another classic characteristic of enforced disappearances. The Trump administration has openly said that its goal is to try to make life so difficult for immigrants that they 'self-deport.' Fear of being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where inmates never see the light of day, plays into that goal, said Rod Abouharb, an associate professor of international relations who researches forced disappearances at the University College London. 'These raids send out a chilling effect on those individuals who may be undocumented and even those who are legally in the United States: that they may be caught up in one of these raids, disappear into the prison system, and deported to a third country they may have no connection with,' he told HuffPost. What can regular citizens do in response to enforced disappearances? The best thing Americans can do to object to efforts like this is to draw as much attention as possible to individual cases, Lopez said. 'Whether that's by holding protests, creating online petitions or posting on social media, ensuring that a person who the government has tried to disappear remains visible and in the public discourse can be a powerful way to draw national attention to their plight and the plight of others like them.' he said. Isacson thinks it's important to encourage senate and congressional Democrats who've stood up and made headlines, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.). Back in April, Van Hollen pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― a Salvadoran native living in Maryland who was deported in March to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. 'Democrats will actually help themselves politically if they keep making a lot of righteous noise about this,' he said. Americans should write to Republican moderates who seem quietly uncomfortable about forced disappearances and might be persuaded to action, Isacson said. 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