Latest news with #LindseyNicholson
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Ugly Side Of The Big Beautiful Bill
Children Going Hungry To Subsidize Gains For The Wealthy Bilingual sign on door of frozen food aisle, We accept SNAP food stamp cards, Walgreens, Queens, New ... More York. (Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) As Congress debates the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," many headlines focus on tax cuts and deficit projections. However, for millions of families who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the reality is not just ledger sheets, but whether they can afford food for their children. Behind the rhetoric, this bill proposes the largest cuts to SNAP in history, shifting costs to states and tightening eligibility in ways that will leave low-income households, especially those with children, paying more and eating less. The bill, which passed the House on May 22, includes approximately $267 billion in cuts to SNAP over the next decade, marking the most significant reduction ever to the program. These cuts are not just numbers on a spreadsheet: they translate to real, immediate consequences for families already struggling to put food on the table. Key provisions include: SNAP is the nation's most extensive nutrition assistance program, serving more than 42 million Americans. Recipients are among the most vulnerable in our country, with nearly 80% of participating households including a child, elderly adult, or person with a disability. The proposed changes will disproportionately harm families of color, older adults, and parents, especially mothers, who are already balancing work, caregiving, and tight budgets. Data from Springboard to Opportunities' 2025 white paper, Filling the Gap, shows that food insecurity rates are already alarmingly high among the low-income families who are served by SNAP. The report documents that 72% of surveyed households experienced food insecurity in the past year, with parents frequently skipping meals to ensure their children could eat. The report warns that any reduction in SNAP benefits would exacerbate already precarious household food budgets, leading to increased reliance on food pantries and other emergency resources. One mother who relies on SNAP says she doesn't know how she'll feed her children if the proposed cuts go through. 'It would definitely create a noticeable strain on my ability to provide food and groceries for my family,' said Makaria Gibson. 'I'd have to buy less food overall or sacrifice healthy options like fresh fruit, vegetables, and different types of meats, which tend to cost more…It'll also increase stress, especially when you're trying to keep meals nutritious for your kids.' Research consistently shows that SNAP reductions lead to higher rates of food insecurity and poorer health outcomes for children. Families who lose benefits are significantly more likely to report both household and child food insecurity, with ripple effects including increased stress, worse health, and greater developmental risks for children. While proponents argue that shifting costs to states will improve efficiency and reduce fraud, the reality is that most states cannot absorb these new financial burdens. States facing budget shortfalls will be forced to cut eligibility, reduce benefits, or create waiting lists, leaving families with fewer resources, just as food prices remain high. Moreover, the bill's cuts to SNAP and Medicaid are being used to fund tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit higher-income households, while the bill is projected to raise the national debt by an additional $3.8 trillion over the next decade. It is simply fiscally irresponsible. This isn't just about numbers on a spreadsheet — it's about children going to bed hungry, seniors skipping meals, and working families falling through the cracks. Cutting SNAP at this scale doesn't balance a budget — it breaks our social contract. The question isn't whether we can afford to feed people. It's whether we can afford not to.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What the No Tax on Tips Act Means for Workers and Businesses
Man selecting 20% tip while using a handheld credit card scanner at a restaurant in Queens, New York. Credit - Lindsey Nicholson—UCG/UniversalMillions of American service workers—from bartenders and barbers to delivery drivers and nail techs—are one step closer to keeping their tips tax-free. In a rare show of bipartisan unity, the Senate has unanimously passed the No Tax on Tips Act, a sweeping proposal that would overhaul how tipped income is taxed in the U.S. If signed into law, the bill would exempt up to $25,000 in tips from federal income taxes. The bill, a signature campaign promise of President Donald Trump, now moves to the Republican-controlled House, where it enjoys broad support. 'We are one step closer to eliminating taxes on tipped wages for hardworking Americans,' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement following the bill's Senate passage. 'Working Americans— from servers, to bartenders, delivery drivers, and everything in between— work hard for every dollar they earn and are the ones who deserve tax relief, not the ultra-rich.' The effort to eliminate taxes on tips quickly gained traction during the 2024 campaign, with polling indicating majority support for the proposal across the country, though Americans are mixed on the potential outcomes of the policy. The idea has also drawn criticism from a number of economists and labor advocates. Here's what the bill would mean for workers and businesses. The No Tax on Tips Act would revise the IRS Code to eliminate the income tax on tips. Employees who 'traditionally and customarily received tips on or before December 31, 2023,' would therefore be exempt from paying taxes for up to $25,000 earned tip income. That includes waiters, bartenders, and delivery drivers. Beauty service workers—such as barbers, estheticians, and nail technicians—would also benefit, though the full list of eligible occupations would only be listed by the U.S. Treasury Secretary 90 days after the bill's passage. To qualify for the tax deduction, employees must have earned less than $160,000 for the 2024-2025 tax year. Should the bill become law, this income qualification will be adjusted for inflation. The exemption would impact only a small fraction of the country's workforce. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that some 4 million people worked in tipped occupations in the U.S. in 2023, representing about 2.5% of all U.S. workers. Others, such as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), estimate tipped workers to make up a slightly higher percentage of about 5% And despite the proposal's broad appeal, economists say that curtailing taxes on tips may harm workers in the service industry. Already, 37% percent of tipped workers do not pay federal income tax because they earn so little. Experts fear that the new policy would incentivize employers to keep base wages stagnant. The tax change may also affect their eligibility for other programs, such as the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, or reduce their contributions to Social Security. The No Tax on Tips Act could further impact the nature of tipping culture in the U.S. Experts warn businesses could potentially encourage tipping requests, or make them mandatory, in order to pay their workers less. Research shows that 72% of Americans already feel they are being asked to tip workers more frequently, per a Pew Research Center report. The No Tax on Tips Act also expands the business tax credit for the portion of payroll taxes that businesses might previously have paid on certain employee tips. The National Restaurant Association voiced its support for the bill in January, praising the potential benefits for workers and saying they could have a positive impact for employers as well. 'Eliminating taxes on tips would put cash back in the pocket of a significant number of workers in the restaurant and foodservice industry and could help restaurant operators recruit industry workforce,' the organization said in a statement. 'Tax policy plays a major role in the success of the restaurant industry, so we'll continue to work with Congress on this and other common-sense tax policy that will stimulate investments and improvements in restaurants of all sizes and help operators make greater investments in their workforce and communities.' Contact us at letters@
Forbes
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
The Superpower (aka Soft Power) Of DEI
Diverse, Inclusive, Accepting, Welcoming, Safe Space for Everyone signage outside Forest Hills ... More Jewish Center, Queens, New York. (Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) I am a proud, naturalized American citizen. I was the 1980s equivalent of a 'dreamer' immigrant, someone brought to America as a child with undocumented status, who subsequently obtained legal citizenship. Thanks to President Reagan, no less. My parents brought me here from war-torn Sri Lanka, in hopes of a better life. So, I know what it means to live with a constant, gnawing fear, fear that your nation of choice, the land where you have pinned your future and identity, might reject you, and fear that your nation of origin might not welcome you back. This year, since the Trump Administration launched its two-front war on immigration and DEI—'diversity, equity, and inclusion'—has been quite a ride, to put it mildly. I would say it has been a roller-coaster ride, but there have been no peaks. One of the things that makes America truly exceptional throughout the world—its core principle of assimilating immigrants who strive for a safer, freer life—has been denigrated for the sake of short-term political gain. As someone who has spent a lifetime as a public voice for social justice, I have been chagrined to see how even bland, neutral words can be quickly weaponized for cultural warfare. President Trump and his appointees, sadly, have been all too effective in making the mere acronym 'DEI' radioactive and divisive. He has extended the reach of this poisonous view into realms far beyond the realm of executive orders, even Disney cartoons and French companies. Most shocking has been the realization that a U.S. president could propound a Big Brother-type list of censored words and get away with it. Even so, as a student of soft power, I have wanted to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. And, to my surprise, the news is complicated but not all bad. Soft power initiatives—of which DEI is surely one of the most prominent—are more durable because they gather strength and reach gradually, from the bottom up, not by diktat or force. And guess what? In this case, soft power is more than standing its ground. To be sure, in a shockingly short period of time a number of high-profile institutions and corporations have cravenly and publicly caved to Trumpian demands to scrub their websites and operations of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. But this number has been dwarfed by those who have not so much as batted an eye either publicly or in their operations. Trump's war on DEI has revealed not how weak and ill-founded the ethics of diversion, equity, and inclusion have been, but how deeply (and wisely) embedded in America's body politic they have become. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - JUNE 29: People walk through the gate on Harvard Yard at the Harvard ... More University campus on June 29, 2023 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admission policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Constitution, bringing an end to affirmative action in higher education. (Photo by) America's soft power success story of 2025 will be: DEI is dead, long live DEI. Take Apple, the pinnacle of American commerce at a world-leading valuation of more than $3 trillion. Amid the white-hot competition in mobile phones and artificial intelligence, you would think Apple would be the first to be wary of displeasing the U.S. government and buckle under to threats surrounding DEI. Not so. Apple doubled down, explicitly rejecting a proposal to abandon its principles. Others who have likewise gone on the record in defense of DEI: Coca-Cola, Costco, Delta Airlines, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft (also valued at more than $3 trillion), Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry's. Harvard University, the oldest higher education institution in the United States and the one with the largest endowment by a wide margin, has been firm in its response to Trump's anti-DEI demands. Its answer: nope. A recent review of almost 400 DEI programs in higher education institutions found that the ratio of those standing pat versus those eliminating DEI programs is roughly 24-to-1. If you think the Pentagon's frenetic and petty effort to remove photos, paintings, and videos lauding diversity is worrisome, just recall the television advertising during the March Madness basketball playoffs. America's recruiting advertisements are panoramas of young men and women of every conceivable ethnicity performing vital military functions with pride and professionalism. Why? The U.S. military faces a harrowing recruitment crisis. It needs (wait for it) diversity and inclusion—more than minorities need the military. Minorities are already overrepresented in the military relative to the general U.S. population. 'Diversity' isn't a nightmare for national security; it's one facet of our beautiful, compelling American dream. As for gender inclusivity, take a look at the numbers, sports fans. The fastest-growing sports franchise in the world is the WNBA. America has not reached the end of the DEI era. In so many ways, it is just beginning. Two of America's largest states—California and Texas—are already 'majority-minority,' i.e., minorities collectively make up more of the population than non-Hispanic whites. By the end of President Trump's term, the entire age group of Americans under the age of 29 will be majority-minority. By the time an American child born today graduates from college, around 2045, the entire nation will be majority-minority. If anyone thinks Generations B,C, and D—or whatever generations to come might be called—will be less in favor of diversity, equity, and inclusion, think again. Social acceptance of racial, gender, immigrant, and gay/lesbian issues continues to trend upward, especially among the younger generations. Eight in 10 Americans favor laws that protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing. America will face many debates over its treatment of racial, ethnic, and gender identity in the coming years. Some may be more heated and more violent than those we are witnessing now. But one reality is clear. DEI as a core principle and a soft power movement has not been silenced. It is the voice of the future.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Food Safety Was Slipping in the U.S. Then Came Mass Layoffs
Boar's Head deli meats recall notice at a deli counter in a Queens, New York grocery store. Credit - Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Even before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) eliminated 10,000 jobs on April 1, people who watched the agency closely were concerned about food safety. Under a Biden-era reorganization, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cut millions of dollars for state-level food inspections, effective this year. Inspections of facilities were not keeping up with Congressional directives; the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in Jan. 2025 urging the FDA to 'strengthen inspection efforts to protect the U.S. food supply.' And advocates were concerned because major parts of the landmark 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act—including rules that farmers must monitor the water they spray on vegetables for manure—were being delayed or rolled back. 'We have always had a problem with having adequate funding and staffing for the level of complication that is food safety in the U.S.,' says Darin Detwiler, a food safety advocate whose toddler son died of E. coli poisoning in 1993 during an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants. This lack of funding has coincided with a number of food illness outbreaks in the U.S. in recent years—including, in 2024 alone, an E. coli outbreak linked to slivered onions at McDonald's that killed one person, an E. coli outbreak linked to organic carrots sold in grocery stores (which also caused a fatality), and a listeria outbreak linked to Boar's Head deli meat that resulted in 10 deaths. Then came the job cuts. At the FDA, 2,500 people were laid off, including workers in the Human Foods Program, who are tasked with ensuring food safety, and scientists at a product safety lab in San Francisco that tests foods for bacteria. Also gutted were communications staff at both FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who helped coordinate response to outbreaks and informed both consumers and businesses about recalled food. And hundreds of workers at CDC's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice lost their jobs; the organization coordinated government response to an outbreak of lead poisoning in 2023 linked to cinnamon applesauce pouches. Read More: Are Artificial Food Dyes Safe to Eat? In the month before the layoffs, the Trump Administration also cut two longstanding committees focused on food safety: the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection. The first was studying which babies might be at risk from the deadly bacteria found at an Abbott Nutrition infant formula plant; the second was looking at ways to use technology to improve food safety inspections. Now, safety advocates say, there is little doubt that the already-strained protocols for food safety in the U.S. are going to lead to more sickness. 'People will get sick, or worse, because the people who are charged with keeping our food safe were fired,' says Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, a health advocacy group. HHS did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a recent press release, it said that the restructuring will save taxpayers $1.8 billion and will implement a new agency priority: 'ending America's epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.' Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that no 'frontline jobs' like inspectors were impacted by the layoffs. But advocates say that frontline workers aren't the only ones responsible for food safety. Inspectors are supported by teams of people working in labs and offices who assist them with data, coordination, and science, says Faber. That includes people who perform surveillance of outbreaks and respond to them, and who work with manufacturers, consumers, and retailers and tell them that their food is contaminated and should be thrown away. 'It's an early 20th-century notion that protecting inspectors from being fired is how we keep food safe,' he says. 'But your food is not safe because someone with a clipboard walked through a food-manufacturing facility.' Even if, as the Administration argues, frontline workers are the linchpin to keeping food safe in the U.S., inspections of facilities have long fallen behind what is mandated by law. The last time FDA inspected the number of domestic food facilities mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act, the landmark 2011 food safety law, was 2018, according to a 2025 GAO report. (The U.S. is supposed to hit this target every year.) In 2021, FDA did not inspect about 49% of high-risk facilities by the date it was supposed to; in 2019, that number was just 7%, according to the GAO. This is partly because the FDA does not have enough trained staff to conduct these inspections, according to the GAO report. In July 2024, the FDA had 432 inspectors, but nearly one-quarter were eligible to retire. It takes two years to train a new investigator. States perform a number of inspections in collaboration with the FDA. About 90% of inspections of produce facilities are done by states, and 50% of inspections of manufactured food facilities are done by states, according to Steven Mandernach, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, a nonprofit advocacy group. But funds for those inspections have been cut dramatically this year because of a Biden-era reorganization that went into effect this year, he says. State 'rapid response' teams that were tasked with moving quickly during outbreaks saw their budgets cut by around 60%, he said. States saw budgets for produce inspections cut by about 40%. And funding for states' manufactured food programs infrastructure and training was cut by about 50%. Read More: Why Some Food Additives Banned in Europe Are Still on U.S. Shelves 'I think the penalties for the food eaters is that we're going to have slower responses to food safety events, whether it be recalls, outbreaks, those sorts of things,' he says. 'We're going to have less monitoring of facilities. We're probably going to end up with less trained individuals out there doing the inspections. All of those things are bad overall for the system." State food safety departments are now scrambling to redistribute funding, says Katherine Simon, director of the food and feed safety division at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. In Minnesota, her department will have to cut back on administrative staff, she says, which will eventually make inspectors less efficient; the amount of time inspectors spend at any one facility will likely decline. People look to government jobs for stability, and one of Simon's biggest concerns is that the big funding swings make it difficult to commit to staffing year after year. The instability could motivate longtime experts to seek employment elsewhere, she says. Most of all, she says, amid these funding cuts, the food industry is changing at a rapid pace, making it difficult to keep up. 'It's really turning back the dial, and we are at a critical stage,' she says. Simon is also worried about the cuts at the CDC office that helps respond to outbreaks and implement preventative food safety practices. When states figure out that there's a local outbreak that is sickening people, they often reach out to the CDC's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice for assistance, she says. That's what happened in North Carolina after the local health department found elevated levels of lead in children's blood and discovered that all the children had eaten WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches. It's what happened in Flint, Mich. after the local health department found that water was contaminated by lead. But the Division of Environment Health Science and Practice was gutted by the April 1 layoffs, with only a few top leaders remaining, says Megan Weil Latshaw, a professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University. State health departments tend to be woefully underfunded, she says, so they call in the CDC to help. Now, they won't be able to anymore. 'We had a system in place that was there to monitor food safety and air quality and lead poisoning, and now that system is being decimated,' she says. Around 144 employees, almost the entire division, were laid off, according to a tally by former workers. Read More: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other's Care The Division of Environmental Health didn't just coordinate after outbreaks. It also performed key research that led to food safety improvements, says Hal King, managing partner at the consulting firm Active Food Safety. The department researched best practices for food safety in restaurants; one of its successes was discovering that having a manager in charge of food safety improved conditions. Restaurants are now required to have a manager in charge of food safety. It evaluated the success of having letter grades for restaurants. It also researched ways to improve food worker behavior, such as persuading people to wear gloves when handling food or washing their hands after going to the bathroom. Most recently, it had conducted research in eight states about how to keep sick workers from transmitting illnesses to customers. The research had come up with some promising interventions, says a former CDC employee, but the fate of that research is now unknown because the employees coordinating it were laid off. (The employee did not want to give their name because they say they hope to get their job back.) Food safety advocates celebrated Congress passing the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011, the first major change to laws policing food supply chains since 1938. It created mandates for how often facilities should be inspected, and also required facilities to be able to better trace the sources of contaminations in food. But many of the provisions of the law that food safety experts lauded have been delayed or rolled back. The food traceability rule, for example, was designed to ensure better recordkeeping, and was set to go into effect in Jan. 2026. But on March 20, 2025, the FDA announced that it was postponing the compliance date by 30 months after heavy lobbying by the grocery industry. 'The faster we can identify the source of an outbreak, the more lives are saved,' says EWG's Faber, but the postponement will make it harder to identify the source of food outbreaks. And a rule that farmers test their irrigation systems for pathogens, checking to see if the water they use to grow crops has traces of manure in it, for example, was switched to an 'honor system' test in May 2024, says Faber. What's most concerning about many of these cuts, food safety advocates say, is that the repercussions may not be apparent on paper. It may look like the country has fewer foodborne illnesses, or that fewer facilities are failing food inspections. But that doesn't mean the U.S. is healthier. It might just mean, they worry, that sicknesses caused by food safety are going unseen and undetected. Contact us at letters@
