SNAP taken from 776,000 kids and counting

Trumpers are f*ckng proud of this.

As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people…

But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children. - ProPublica

Corporations shamelessly buy exemption from taxes

This is far from startling to anyone who has been paying attention.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that at least 88 of the nation’s largest corporations paid zero federal corporate income tax in fiscal year 2025, despite reporting a combined $105 billion in US pretax income.

The federal income tax for corporations is 21%, meaning that these 88 companies collectively avoided $22.1 billion in taxes for FY 2025. On top of that, they collected $4.7 billion in tax rebates, bringing their total tax breaks to about $26.7 billion…

Using data from OpenSecrets, which compiles and publishes campaign finance and lobbying data, we found that from the 2020 election cycle through the 2024 cycle, these 88 companies have spent nearly $852 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. - Public Citizen

Trump oil lease sale is a pitiful bust

On a related note, Big Oil hasn't for the most part been doing what Trump wants in Venezuela. (The linked article's good, though the headline's misleading.)

The oil lease sale on (June 5) raised just $3.7 million, resulting in five leases between two small Alaskan companies, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). That’s less than the price of some Manhattan penthouses. While previous, successful lease sales in other BLM-managed areas of Alaska, New Mexico, and Texas suggested the oil industry remained interested in drilling on public lands, Big Oil snubbed this sale.

Environmental organizations and some Democratic lawmakers celebrated the blow to the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel-focused “Unleash American Energy” agenda. Still, they warned that the new leasing threatens to destroy globally significant wildlife habitat. - Gizmodo

Trump has wrecked local food/small farm initiatives

This administration is a pitiful failure in every conceivable way.

In March 2020, as pandemic lockdowns began, Americans accustomed to the most abundant, available food supply in history encountered empty shelves in supermarkets. With international supply chains scrambled, the narrative around “local food” shifted from “yuppie pipe dream” to “food security necessity.”

…While the (Biden) administration did little to upend the structure of the dominant commodity agriculture system, officials started listening to farmers and advocates that operate outside of it. They talked about the need for not just efficiency, but also redundancy and resilience, in case of another crisis.

In collaboration with lawmakers in Congress pushing through huge pandemic relief packages, Biden’s USDA then made historically large investments in new programs intended to support small farms and local food systems…

“The last administration was making a concerted effort to try to level the playing field to some extent for those smaller farmers, and a lot of farms and local food systems ramped up in response to that influx of funding,” said Farm Aid’s Tremblay. So, when things changed, many had already made investments they couldn’t simply cancel. Now, they’re stuck. - Civil Eats

Getting a righteous deal on a used EV

Useful tips.

The market for used EVs is surging; their average cost of $35,895 is now competitive with that of used gas cars (average $34,799)...

Figure out what range you actually need, based on how much you typically drive and how frequently you’ll charge, recommends Desiree Moore, program manager at Drive Clean Colorado, a state program that aims to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles…

InsideEVs, U.S. News & World Report, and Recurrent, a company that aggregates data on vehicle battery health, are a few of the sources that list their top used EV picks, which will give you a sense of the best range for your buck…

But the most important EV research might be what you do in person. ​“Drive as many as you possibly can, because there’s such a difference in driving style and acceleration and turning radius — all of the things that you would expect from any used car,” said Andrew Garberson, Recurrent’s head of growth and research. - Canary Media