1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Around 42 million Americans — including roughly 16 million children, 8 million seniors, and hundreds of thousands of veterans — are in imminent danger of going hungry. Why? Donald Trump and congressional Republicans engineered a government shutdown — now the longest in our nation’s history — so they could make Americans pay even more for healthcare. But with the federal government shut down, the critical Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — which many refer to as “food stamps” — is also out of money. However, years ago, Congress established a reserve fund specifically to keep SNAP going during emergencies — even manufactured emergencies that result when one political party throws a temper tantrum and shuts down the entire federal government. Two different federal judges have ruled that the administration must follow the law and use the reserve fund to keep SNAP going. But, for some reason, the administration is fighting those rulings — literally going to court and arguing that it has some “right” not to feed people. The cruelty on display here is beyond appalling. We’re talking about roughly one out of every eight people in this country — the richest country the world has ever seen — at serious risk of going hungry. If we made just slightly different choices as a society, nobody would be hungry, and the greediest among us could still have far more than their fair share. But here we are. All the Trump administration has to do to help millions of Americans avoid going hungry is follow the law. Instead Republicans are willing to let people starve while they hold the government hostage trying to jam through a budget that would deny people healthcare. This is what Republicans are telling the American people: If you don’t let us jack up the cost of healthcare, we’re going to let millions of you go hungry. Neither Trump nor the Republican Party has the human decency or political savvy to understand that doubling down on their cruelty after their significant losses on Tuesday is cruel, stupid, and self-defeating.