Of course Trump & Co. have no problem with people going hungry

So far it doesn't look like they're going to back down on this.

The Agriculture Department (USDA) is restricting key flexibility in SNAP (food stamps) that the President and Congress gave states in the Families First Act of March to help them manage an applications influx due to COVID-19 and the recession — saying states must return to “normal operations,” even though current circumstances are anything but normal.

SNAP responded quickly, as it’s designed to do, to the sharp rise in unemployment and food insecurity, especially among households with children. Caseloads jumped by more than 6 million people or about 17 percent nationally between February and May, as household incomes fell precipitously. SNAP could manage this unprecedented increase largely because Families First allowed USDA to let states temporarily change their SNAP procedures to make it easier for people to receive food assistance while state SNAP agencies operate remotely.

...as COVID-19 hot spots continue to flare up and some areas that began reopening reverse course, individual states continue to see rising need for SNAP. States that may have hoped the crush of SNAP applications was temporary are now planning for a long period of increased need while facing budget shortfalls and long-term economic uncertainty. - Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Fucking asshole from Minnesota has Trump trying to kick millions off food stamps

Revolting. Despicable. And I haven't been able to bring myself to see whether Minnesota's corporate "news" media is deifying this prick.

Three million poor people could be booted from the food stamps system under a Trump administration regulatory proposal issued Tuesday.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is aware the proposal will shrink grocery budgets for that massive share of people. It just cares more about making a conservative millionaire in Minnesota happy...

Enter Robert Undersander, a Minnesota retiree with a net worth north of $1 million. He and his wife applied for and received food stamps, intending to serve as living examples of the Republican argument that the program is systematically rotten. Had Minnesota not gotten rid of the asset-limit component of its eligibility test for SNAP, Undersander claimed, people like him never could have fleeced taxpayers.

Undersander’s story quickly went viral in conservative media circles after he published an op-ed in his local paper recounting the stunt. When Democrats convened a House Agriculture Committee hearing this June in anticipation of the kind of regulatory assault on BBCE that Perdue unveiled Tuesday morning, Undersander didn’t make the official witness list but became the star of the show anyhow, after Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) recounted the Minnesota millionaire’s story. - Think Progress

A Farm Bill looks to be done - Update

We apparently won’t see the whole thing until next week, after it’s been scored by the CBO.

The tentative deal was reached after House Republicans agreed to dump new, stricter laws around SNAP, which have been a major bone of contention in their chamber. Bloomberg reports that those provisions will be left out of the final bill. That would reconcile the House bill with the Senate bill, which did not impose new restrictions on SNAP benefits. - New Food Economy

There’s some detail here, from AgWeb. Conservation Reserve Program acreage will get a little bump from 24 to 27 million. From the article linked above it looks like other major conservation programs will also be at least maintained. As far as what else is or isn’t there for the conservation/environmentalist crowd, like me, we’ll find out.

Update: Traitor Trump has been making triumphant claims. Reality check:

Once again Trump is taking what’s basically an agreement to negotiate and hailing it as a HUGE deal that is definitely 100 percent settled in his favor. In addition to his usual level of bluster, he’s trying to convince a very specific audience here: farmers, a key part of Trump’s base that’s been hit hard by Trump’s trade war. He tweeted Monday morning that “Farmers will be a a very BIG and FAST beneficiary of our deal with China. They intend to start purchasing agricultural product immediately. We make the finest and cleanest product in the World, and that is what China wants. Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” 

Farmers should be taking note that the amount of U.S. products the White House says China will be buying is “not yet agreed upon,” a real red flag when you’re dealing with Team Trump. Especially since, for all his insistence that “We are dealing from great strength,” it sure looks like Trump wants a deal, any deal. And as we’ve seen, Mr. The Art of the Deal is a crappy dealmaker even when he hasn’t telegraphed to the world how desperate he is. - Daily Kos