As Trump has issued executive order after executive order and his billionaire bureaucrats have cut the federal workforce by tens of thousands, millions more are waiting anxiously for the pain to begin. While those who have lost their jobs are already feeling the emotional and financial stress of their loss, the rest of us know it’s coming even if it hasn’t hit yet. We might not have to wait much longer.
Food banks and kitchens that serve millions are starting to feel it. In early March the Trump administration cut the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, a $500 million federal program that helped purchase foods from local producers to go to food banks. Since then, food banks have been making due with lower quality items, odds and ends, and dwindling supplies of staples they already had.
Schools are already feeling it. In early March the Trump administration also cut the $660 million Local Food for Schools Program. The state of New Jersey alone will lose at least $26 million in federal aid used to provide fresh food for school statewide, and other states will see similar losses.
Schools are also already feeling the effects of Trump’s education cuts. As a result of cuts to pandemic aid, Baltimore City Schools will lose $48 million in federal aid that it has already spent and had expected to be reimbursed for. When faced with this sudden loss, the district cancelled all tutoring and after school programs that had been funded using that aid, and may cut 12,000 spots for student summer learning. The state of Maryland as a whole may lose $400 million in total education funding from the federal government.
And in late April the Trump administration proposed to do away with Headstart, the program administered the Department of Health and Human Services that provides preschool learning, food and health screenings for 500,000 poor students nationwide, many Black and Hispanic. New Jersey stands to lose $197 million in funding for Headstart programs in the coming years.
And there are even bigger cuts to bigger programs on the way, including to programs like Medicaid that help tens of millions of poor, disabled, and elderly.
As the summer rolls around and parents and children can’t find daycare, or can’t get free lunches through a summer program, or can’t even find a school-based summer program or summer school, it will be because of these cuts. When people who live on the streets, or even workers who have recently lost their jobs, can’t afford groceries and need to get cheap food from a food pantry find there is little or no food left, it will be because of these cuts. When small farmers whose local farms no longer get large purchases from the USDA or their local or state departments of education, and suffer financially, it will be because of these cuts. And when a little further in the future, millions of poor and elderly and disabled people lose Medicaid coverage for vital supports or medical care, it will be because of these cuts.
The Trump administration is openly proclaiming its priorities. It wants to extend and preserve tax cuts for the billionaires and other capitalists well into the future. The only way it can afford to do so is by taking things away from us. The connection is clear. As always, they want us to pay for their needs, or the crises they cause. It’s class warfare, plain and simple.
We need to recognize it as such and organize ourselves to fight!
