The President Doesn't Care if Children Starve

How do you live in a country with a president who lets its children go hungry on purpose?

Not because of wartime rationing. Not because we’ve run out of food.

But because the president is emotionally unstable, and manufactured a crisis. And now Congress is either too afraid of him or doesn’t care enough about their oaths of office to stop the fallout.

And if Republicans in Congress don’t find some moral courage, renewed sense of duty, or even the faintest flicker of basic human decency, then on their watch, this will become the first time in U.S. history that SNAP benefits and food stamps, will lapse for all recipients during a government shutdown.

Forty-one million people will suffer because of this. That’s how many rely on SNAP every month to feed their families.

One in eight Americans. One in five children. Over 22 million households. Nearly half of those families include someone who works. More than a third include someone with a disability.

We’re not talking about laziness or handouts. We’re talking about parents who already trade off meals so their kids can eat. We’re talking about working-class families who survive on $181 a month because it’s the only thing standing between their children and hunger. We’re talking about neighbors, veterans, cancer patients, starving in the richest country on Earth because one man’s ego is more important than the well-being of the people he was elected to serve.

This isn’t a political disagreement. It’s a moral collapse. We are witnessing a government that would rather starve its people than reach an agreement to end the shutdown.

And the agreement Democrats want? It’s for Americans to keep the same subsidies that make their healthcare affordable. Democrats want Americans to have access to food and healthcare.

Republicans do not care about anything but supporting Trump. They could end this today. Because right now, they are the ones allowing all of this to happen.

And how does a failing, incompetent government announce that it has decided to cut off 41 million people from receiving the food they count on? With a quietly posted notice on the USDA website, riddled with lies, of course.

“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”

This wasn’t a statement for the American people. This was propaganda, written for MAGA, not for those of us still paying attention.

This was a strategic message laced with the kind of culture war language that gets them cheering for their own starvation as long as it “owns the libs.” Because the Democrats never voted to defund SNAP.

And Trump knows it. He’s said it out loud, “smart people don’t like me,” he bragged. “I love the poorly educated.” This message was for them. His own base. The ones with families facing empty cupboards. The MAGA workers rationing dinners. He wants them to suffer, and then blame Democrats for the pain he himself caused.

We’ve seen this kind of hunger-driven collapse before. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, people starved by the millions. They lived in makeshift shantytowns called Hoovervilles, named after the president who failed them. They waited for hours in soup lines, not because there wasn’t food, but because there wasn’t leadership. The difference then? We learned and responded. We created programs like SNAP to make sure no child in America ever had to go to bed hungry again.

But this time, when faced with Americans going hungry and starving, the president and the Republicans in Congress are the ones causing the food insecurity.

It’s not an economic crisis; it’s the people in charge intentionally starving their own.

And where is Trump while 41 million Americans teeter on the edge of hunger? He’s in Asia. At a summit. Playing statesman while the country he claims to lead starves in real time.

When Obama faced a government shutdown, nowhere near this long, nowhere near this cruel, he stayed home from this same summit. Canceled the trip. Worked the phones. Acted like the president of a democracy in crisis.

But Trump? Trump gets on a plane and leaves us here, Day 26 and counting, watching the country eat itself.

Not that his presence would make a difference. He’s shown no interest. No urgency. He refuses to negotiate. He wants the pain. He thrives in the chaos.

And normally, the Speaker of the House would step in to lead those negotiations. But Mike Johnson has made his position clear: he won’t reconvene the House. Not until Senate Democrats give in to their spending demands. Not until they pause their push to preserve healthcare. Not until they surrender the American people to even more pain and suffering.

He’s not negotiating. He’s stonewalling.

And so this is where we are: Everyday Americans paying the price for the Trump regime’s complete lack of leadership and moral character.

And hunger isn’t the only byproduct of the Trump shutdown.

At LAX today, planes were grounded because there weren’t enough air traffic controllers for them to fly safely. The FAA called a ground stop because the controllers, who haven’t been paid in 26 days, finally hit their breaking point. Controllers are “wearing thin,” Transportation Secretary Duffy admitted, as if it’s surprising that exhaustion sets in when you ask people to guide tons of metal through the sky, carrying hundreds of souls, without paying them.

At some point, they will stop showing up. Not because they don’t want to work, but because they don’t have the gas money to get there. Because their childcare fell through after they stopped being able to pay for it. Because they have to stand in line at a food pantry, too.

And we can’t ignore the mental anguish this is causing. These are professionals who have to be razor sharp, every second, with every decision. And now they’re doing it while wondering how they’ll feed their kids and make rent. How long they can keep showing up for a country that’s stopped showing up for them?

And while workers who are not getting a paycheck are still showing up, Congress who still gets paid during the government shutdown, has been on vacation for weeks. No end in sight. Because this isn’t about governance anymore. This is about obedience. This is about Donald Trump demanding loyalty, and everyone else deciding how much pain they can stomach and inflict in order to keep his approval.

It’s proof Congress no longer functions as a coequal branch of government. It exists now only when Trump and his loyalists decide it serves them. The rest of the time, it’s a void.

We’ve seen what happens when legislative bodies abandon their duty. After the Civil War, during the end of Reconstruction, Congress effectively withdrew from protecting civil rights in the South. What rushed in to fill that vacuum was white supremacist terror, the rise of Jim Crow, and nearly a century of sanctioned segregation and disenfranchisement. Power doesn’t just disappear when it’s surrendered. It gets picked up by those who are willing to wield it.

And while he executed this hostile takeover, Democrats kept showing up with civility, compromise, and faith in the process. They played by the book while the other side lit the book on fire. Time and again, they followed the rules, expecting precedent, tradition, or decency to save them. It didn’t. It hasn’t. They are starting to realize this, and that is why they must hold the line.

Because Trump and his enablers believe they’ve built a machine too cruel to stop. But history says otherwise.

This country has faced collapse before.

We came back from the Great Depression, not because the rich suddenly found generosity, but because working people organized, demanded change, and wouldn’t back down until the New Deal became law.

We came back from Watergate, when a corrupt president abused his power, and Congress stood up, held hearings, and forced accountability.

We came back from McCarthyism, from internment camps, from Jim Crow, from the 2008 crash.

We came back every time Americans decided that silence wasn’t strength and cruelty wasn’t normal.

They’re betting we’ll be too exhausted to fight back. Too desperate to resist. Too broken to remember what we’re owed. They’re wrong. We’ve been here before, and every time, we found our way back. We will this time too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather