Republicans Reveal Dark Plan to Let Kids Go Hungry to Fund Tax Cuts

Republicans are looking to gut and slash federal programs in order to afford an extension to Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan.

The extension, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and could add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit, would arrive at the expense of dozens of popular federal programs. But perhaps most egregious among the penny-pinching proposals is a plan to literally take food away from hungry children by nixing free school meal plans made available to some of the poorest families in the country.

Raising the threshold of eligibility for schools to receive the Community Eligibility Provision could save the government $3 billion over a span of 10 years, according to a menu-like list released by the House Ways and Means Committee intended to serve as cutting options for the House reconciliation package.

“The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows the nation’s highest-poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications,” the proposal reads. “Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on participation in other specific means-tested programs, such as SNAP and TANF. Currently, schools can qualify if 40 percent of students receive these programs. This proposal would lift that to 60 percent.”

It shouldn’t take much to argue that taking food away from children is a bad thing. But data shows that food insecurity has been on the rise in the U.S. for the last several decades, and it has seen a considerable spike since the pandemic, according to the USDA. It affects roughly one in seven American households, according to data from the Food Research and Action Center, affecting an estimated 47.4 million people across the country.

A 2013 survey of K-8 public school teachers by No Kid Hungry found that six in 10 teachers across the nation knew that their students were regularly coming to school hungry. Teachers in the same study reported that 80 percent of students were coming to school hungry one or more times per week and that “most or a lot of their students” relied on school meals as their “primary source of nutrition.”

And there are immediate educational benefits to supplying children with meals: A 2018 study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that students who received the subsidized lunches were far less likely to need disciplinary action, such as school suspensions. Other studies have suggested that more breakfasts and lunches could improve academic performance or their health.

Donald Trump has a set of executive orders to carry out his disturbing plans ready to go as soon as he is sworn in as president on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is ready to bypass Congress with orders on the border, tariffs, and other agenda items. In a meeting with Senate Republicans that lasted two hours, Trump said he had already prepared about 100 executive orders that push the limits of presidential authority.

It’s a worrying prospect, considering Trump’s actions during his first presidential term, which included instituting a “Muslim ban” on immigration or rolling back close to 100 environment rules. This time, Trump has set the stage for even worse with the extreme promises he made on the 2024 campaign trail, from mass deportations to taking on birthright citizenship.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration used Title 42, a public emergency order, to close the southern U.S. border. During his second term, his aides are actually looking for the threat of a new disease to justify closing the border. As for the tariffs, Trump has already proposed creating a new, unnecessary “External Revenue Service” to handle their collection and is already preparing plans to tailor the tariffs to target “critical imports.”

All of these plans, even if they are successfully implemented via executive order and survive legal challenges, will have unforeseen consequences to the economy and to American life. But Trump has been emboldened by his election victory, and believes he has a mandate to force his agenda forward. If things don’t work out the way he wants, he will find someone else to blame and claim the opposite is what he wanted all along.

Failed presidential candidate and Trump disciple Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to run for governor of Ohio, according to The Washington Post.

Ramaswamy, who is set to co-lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk, apparently plans to work with the group for a year before setting out on the campaign trail in Ohio. “Vivek’s base plan remains [the] same: to get accomplishments at DOGE and then announce a run for governor shortly,” a source familiar with the matter told the Post.

Ohio will have gubernatorial elections in 2026, and current Governor Mike DeWine is term-limited. Ramaswamy is from Cincinnati.

This surprising news comes after Ramaswamy went on a wild rant last month criticizing what he saw as a lazy, anti-intellectual white American culture, in an apparent defense of H-1B visas. He was eviscerated by the MAGA right for his views, and the DOGE co-lead has been relatively silent online since then. His only post on X in recent weeks has been a reference to Trump’s upcoming inauguration. It’s hard not to speculate that this sudden move may have something to do with that internal rift he helped fuel between tech MAGA and base MAGA.

Elsewhere in Ohio news, DeWine on Friday announced his Lieutenant Governor John Husted will replace JD Vance as one of Ohio’s senators.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of homeland security, got some heat for rattling off dubious statistics during her Senate confirmation hearing Friday. 

Michigan Senator Gary Peters noted that the hearing had considered a “fair amount of political theater,” and reminded those listening that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee endeavored to be a “fact-based committee.”

“We’ve heard a lot of numbers being thrown around here. And I don’t have time to go through and challenge those numbers; some of them we don’t even know where they came from,” Peters said. “I don’t think that’s helpful to the very important mission of confirm that you’re gonna be dealing with.

“So, I hope that in the future that we’re actually dealing with facts. You’ve mentioned many times that you want to deal with facts, and real data. And again, we’ve heard a lot here that’s not real data. And we should not operate that way,” Peters said.

Peters’s comment, though not directed at any particular person, seemed to be a way to chastise those present for providing sourceless numbers about immigration—including Noem.  

“President Trump was elected with a clear mandate,” Noem said in her opening statement. “He needs to achieve this mission because two-thirds of Americans support his immigration and border policies, including the majority of Hispanic Americans.”

But a postelection survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that just 26 percent of Americans agreed that the U.S. military should put undocumented immigrants into internment camps until they can be deported, which is exactly Trump’s plan. Not even two-thirds of Republicans support such an extreme plot, only 46 percent. Not exactly a mandate. 

Noem also rattled off a slate of numbers about immigration that didn’t seem totally sound, either. 

“Over 13,000 murderers loose in this country that have come over that border. We have had almost 16,000 rapists and sexual assault perpetrators that are loose in this country right now. Four hundred eighty-five thousand–plus people have criminal convictions that are here in this country,” she insisted

Noem appears to have gotten her numbers from DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but she is misstating some of the facts. In July, ICE reported that there were 13,000 immigrants who have been convicted of homicide, either in their home country or in the U.S., and 16,000 who are convicted of sexual assault but who were not currently in ICE detention. While Noem suggested that these individuals are “loose,” she failed to provide the essential caveat that they could already be in jail for their crimes or not “prioritized” for detention by ICE itself.

The ICE report also stated that there were 425,431 undocumented immigrants outside of ICE detention who were convicted criminals, and an additional 222,141 with pending criminal charges—not “485,000-plus.”

Much of Noem’s hearing revolved around so-called “migrant crime,” as she insisted that undocumented immigrants had been allowed to get away with rape and murder under the Biden administration—something that is simply not true. 

Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted will take Vice President-elect JD Vance’s place in the Senate, Governor Mike DeWine announced Friday, in an apparent snub to Donald Trump.

“This is an unusual situation, and it’s frankly a very heavy responsibility,” DeWine, a two-term former senator himself, told reporters at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. “I think I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to succeed in the United States Senate and what it takes to represent your state.”

“The person that is best suited to serve as the United States senator is a person who has served next to me for the last six years,” DeWine said. “I know his knowledge of Ohio, I know his heart, I know his skills. And all of that tells me that he is the right person for this job.

“John Husted will be right at home in the United States Senate.”

DeWine laid out his criteria for selecting Husted, clarifying that he “wanted someone who knew Ohio,” emphasizing the state’s agricultural and cultural diversity, and who could also understand the fundamental interplay between the federal government and the state government.

“There is so much interaction, and so much of we—of what I do, is impacted not just by the laws of Congress but, frankly, by the different rules and regulations put forward by the president and the executive branch,” DeWine continued.

“Third, I wanted someone who would go to the United States Senate and work. I wanted a workhorse,” DeWine added, stressing the state of the country’s military and national security.

“Finally, the next person who goes to the U.S. Senate, I know, would have to run and run and run,” the governor said, noting that the Ohio senatorial replacement would need to be able to win over the state’s denizens by the 2026 election.

Husted has been allied with DeWine since they ran together to lead Ohio in 2018. He also served as Ohio’s secretary of state and was in the running to replace DeWine in 2026, when the term-limited governor’s career atop Ohio politics is slated to end.

“I look forward to working with President Trump and JD Vance to make America great again,” Husted told reporters following his appointment. “I have dedicated most of my professional life to serving the state of Ohio, and stepping away as lieutenant governor is not easy.”

In the wake of the announcement, Ohio Democrats highlighted Husted’s controversial background in the state’s politics, including avoiding depositions and soliciting donations from FirstEnergy as the energy company sought to secure a bailout for its nuclear power plants—something that the Ohio Capital Journal described as the “largest corruption scheme in state history.”

“While Governor DeWine may have handed Husted a literal get out of jail free card, Ohioans won’t tolerate a career politician with a penchant for corruption and scandal,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters said in a statement. “It’s already clear we can’t trust Husted. Over the next two years, Democrats will work tirelessly to hold Husted accountable and will be contesting this competitive seat in the midterm election.”

It’s the first time that Ohio has had to fill a Senate vacancy since 1974, when William B. Saxbe left the seat to serve as the U.S. attorney general.

Vance officially resigned from the post last week. Under Ohio law, DeWine was singularly tasked with appointing his replacement. Husted will operate as senator until 2026, when a special election will determine who will serve in the role until the term expires in 2029.

DeWine was tight-lipped throughout the months-long process to fill Vance’s vacancy, but other potential candidates included Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, former state Senator Matt Dolan, Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, Columbus-area Congressman Mike Carey, and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken.

Trump threw a Molotov into the mix just days before Husted’s appointment, personally imploring Vivek Ramaswamy to take the seat if it were offered to him. Ramaswamy publicly backed out of the race to replace Vance in November after Trump announced him as a potential co-chair for the not-yet-real Department of Government Efficiency alongside world’s richest man, Elon Musk. But Ramaswamy seemingly changed his mind over the last week, meeting with DeWine to discuss the appointment. DeWine also visited Mar-a-Lago last week.

Moments before DeWine’s announcement, an anonymous source close to Ramaswamy told Reuters that the biotech executive is planning to launch a run to become Ohio’s governor.

This story has been updated.