In Donald Trump's America people are now going hungry: Food banks seeing a profound need

Going Hungry in Trump’s Economy

Donald Trump said the “American dream is back.” Rural Arizonans don’t think so.  Published in The Atlantic, by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Ron Brannon’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were recently reduced. When the balance hits $0, “I just go without,” he said. (Jesse Rieser for The Atlantic)

Driving through Arizona on a Saturday morning, I saw a line of cars nearly a mile long stopped along a high-desert highway. I slowed, thinking there had been an accident. Then I realized that all of those people were waiting in line for food.

Weeks later, I went back to the area and met Kandy Soto. The retired administrative aide and courtroom clerk had once been a regular donor to her local food bank. But when I met her last month, she was a recipient of other people’s generosity, preparing to fill a bag with groceries that her family could no longer afford. Soto told me that the cost of canned vegetables seemed to creep up nearly every time she went to the store. After checking prices against her budget, she might buy some cheap fish fillets or canned meats, but beef or poultry were out of the question. Sometimes she left empty-handed.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When she voted for Donald Trump two years ago, Soto counted on him to fulfill his promise to “make America affordable again” following painful spikes in inflation under Joe Biden. She wonders what kind of life Trump and his family are living, because she sees no signs of the roaring economy he talks about. Her own family has had a run of bad luck: Her husband had to stop working after injuring his neck and requiring surgery. Then they learned that their modest retirement income made them ineligible for public assistance. All the while, prices for gas and groceries climbed. The situation grew so dire a few months ago that the 66-year-old Soto had to set aside any feelings of shame and drive 20 miles to the Community Cupboard Food Bank in Prescott. “It takes an older pon a lot of giving up to do something like this,” she said.

In the surrounding county, Yavapai, Trump took 66 percent of the vote on his way to winning Arizona two years ago. 

In 2016, he staged a final campaign rally here before Election Day. Trump is counting on the region to help blunt what polls forecast to be a Democratic rout next month, and will hold a rally Wednesday in Bullhead City, about 200 miles to the northwest. 

But Donald Trump's grip appears to be loosening, and the state of the economy explains why.

The toll of rising prices has been especially acute in Arizona. About half a million residents have lost their food stamps since the summer of 2025, because of changes in Trump’s signature tax legislation, which limits assistance and penalizes states that make mistakes when they grant benefits. The law is still being phased in, and Arizona was among the first states to enact the changes.

Nearly everyone I spoke with in the area last month, including Trump supporters, said they feel worse off than they were before the 2024, election. Unemployment in Arizona stood at 3.8 percent in August 2024; this August it was 4.9 percent, according to federal data. 

Many people I spoke with in the county said they are working, but their paychecks haven’t kept up with increased prices for gas and food. Almost all told me they are angry about Trump’s decisions to start a war and spend hundreds of millions of dollars ornamenting a capital city they will never see. They were incredulous to hear him claim that their lives have improved with him in office. Many said they are also disillusioned with Congress and with both political parties. They lamented the corruption they see as endemic in the government and in large corporations, and denounced billionaires, whom they view as capitalizing on their pain.

People told me they are anxious about many things: future employment opportunities, feeding their children healthy meals, keeping small businesses running, affording car repairs. 

Trump has said that “the American dream is back.” But not for the people I spoke with in Yavapai County.

Victoria Dombrowski has found a way to help her family in this economy: the barter system.

She lost 💲800 a month in food stamps after state officials, who administer the program, took aggressive action to comply with new eligibility requirements mandated by the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Dombrowski, a stay-at-home mother of two young children, told me she had completed the renewal paperwork and had made it all the way to the end of the process, which included an interview with a caseworker about her financial situation. But, even after waiting on hold for days and enlisting help from a nonprofit group, she couldn’t get through to staff at the Arizona Department of Economic Security. “And so I just gave up,” she said. 

So, I met Dombrowski at a dollar store, where she now shops because she can no longer afford Walmart.

Dombrowski’s husband works at an auto-parts store, but his income isn’t enough to support the family. So she occasionally began picking up boxes of free food that were offered in the community. But more often than not, she said, the food was expired or the offerings were sugary desserts that didn’t give her kids the nutrition they needed. “My fridge is still empty,” she said.
Dombrowski once prided herself on making her family hearty home-cooked food, such as meatloaf and potatoes. Since losing food aid, she has had little choice but to serve cheap microwavable meals. She and others have started bartering for services. For her son’s birthday this summer, she trimmed a dog’s nails; in exchange, a friend brought animals to her home for a petting-zoo-themed party.

Across Arizona, food banks are seeing profound need. They served, on average, 626,881 people monthly in 2024; about 786,366 Arizonans have used a food bank each month this year, according to the Arizona Food Bank Network. Wages aren’t rising as fast as expenses, and more Arizonans continue to lose their food stamps due to changes from the tax bill.

The Community Cupboard Food Bank in Prescott recently received a call on behalf of 17 veterans in the community who had “no food, whatsoever,” Jim Phelps, the organization’s executive director, told me. Workers made an emergency haul one night, packing a Tesla with two loads of food to distribute. Ron Brannon was one of the people waiting for something to eat. Brannon, a tall and lanky disabled Army veteran, told me that if he worked really hard at it, he could stretch his Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits until the tenth of each month. His monthly total was recently cut to

💲60, and when his balance hits 💲0, “I just go without,” the 68-year-old said. Sam Riske, a 32-year-old former military police officer who wore her baby in a carrier as she waited in line for food delivered by the Community Cupboard, told me that she’s been trying since February to get answers from state officials about the status of her application for temporary cash assistance for low-income families. This summer, she said, her family lost about 💲780 in monthly food benefits because she didn’t keep up with her eligibility paperwork. To make ends meet, she has taken up dog sitting. Her partner has taken odd jobs.

Outside a popular carnicería in Prescott Valley where federal officials carried out immigration-enforcement operations this summer, a woman who declined to give me her full name out of fear of drawing attention to her situation complained of high food prices and a shortage of laborers that has squeezed her family’s roofing company. But all of that is the least of her concerns, she said as she loaded groceries in her car. Her husband was recently deported, and she’s just trying to make it through the day, running her household and managing employees. “It’s hard right now,” the 37-year-old said. She isn’t counting on anything to get better anytime soon. Inside of the meat shop, banda music blared. A manager politely asked me to leave, explaining that the immigration operations had made customers fearful. Business had been down since then, and she didn’t want the presence of a reporter to make it worse.

Many Republicans I talked with said they supported those immigration crackdowns, even though they brought pain and fear to many people in their community. Dawn Zimmerman, a cosmetologist who owns a studio in Mayer, Arizona, told me that Trump, whom she voted for in 2024, is “doing a lot.” But with out-of-control costs, she added, people are “freaking out.” Prices for hair products have exploded, she said, and her clients are now buying them for less at big-box retailers or online. Fewer people are coming to get their hair done. But she is reluctant to raise prices, because so many clients are older or on fixed incomes. Zimmerman didn’t vote in the primary election, she said, but does intend to vote in November. 

When I asked if she planned to support Republicans, she was noncommittal: “It’s hard right now because there’s a lot of—there’s more deceit.” I asked what she meant. She cited Trump’s tendency to offload blame for why people can’t see “how good the country is doing”—and how disconnected he seems from her pain.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Previously, as a reporter at The Washington Post, she investigated the people and organizations attempting to sow doubt in American elections and institutions and wrote about the human toll of political division. Before that, she spent more than two decades at The Arizona Republic.

A strong correlation between Nazism and Trumpzi fascism

I became an Austrian citizen before I ever set foot in that country.
Echo New York Times essay by Jessica Grose

In 2020, a law went into effect that allowed descendants of Austrians persecuted by the Nazis to apply for citizenship. The process was incredibly smooth for me, because my family had a detailed testimony of my maternal ancestors’ oppression.

The University of Vienna has records of my grandparents’ expulsion from medical school in 1938, the year Jews were stripped of their citizenship after the Anschluss. 

My Opa was able to leave soon after, and my Oma followed in early 1939. My grandfather had tutored an American boy in the early ’30s and secured a coveted visa because that family sponsored him.

The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance had the information about my Opa’s parents. They were deported from Austria, along with nearly 1,000 other Jews ✡️, to a ghetto in southeastern Poland in 1941. It is unclear how they died — whether they withered from illness or malnutrition, whether they were among the hundreds shot in the ghetto, or whether they managed to make it to a concentration camp before they perished in late middle age. All we know is that the ghetto was liquidated in 1942, and they did not survive the war. 

My Oma’s parents were able to flee to Switzerland and got out just in time.

In spite of all of this, my grandparents loved Vienna. They spent the majority of their lives as American citizens and were grateful to build a life here, but they considered themselves Austrian until they died. Oma and Opa even took offense if you insulted or misperceived their homeland. This always confused me. I wanted to ask: How could they defend a place that tried to destroy them? A country that dragged its heels in making amends? Unlike Germany, it took Austria until the 1980s before it began to meaningfully reckon with its role in the Holocaust. But I never pressed. Like many refugees, my grandparents did not want to talk much about the past.

I wished that my grandparents had been alive for me to ask for their blessing in receiving citizenship as a kind of reparation. I wanted this gift from the Austrian government to mean more than a dark-red passport printed in a language I don’t understand. I have been thinking about all of this unceasingly since this past summer, when my parents sold some land my grandparents owned and, with it, the worldly connection to them in America.

The only answer to any of these questions came from an oral history my brother did with Oma in 2005. She was willing to talk about her pain in this context, knowing it would be kept for posterity. Oma did not seem bothered by the fact that she never got to finish medical school. Opa, who was a year ahead of her, served as a doctor in the U.S. Army and became a family physician, supporting his wife and children well.

“Between the First and Second World Wars was a wonderful time to grow up in Vienna,” she told my brother. My Oma said it was intellectually stimulating, exciting and bohemian — the city of Freud, Mahler and Kraus. The Alps are only about an hour from Vienna, and we have grinning photos of them hiking and skiing in the ’30s. “It really was antisemitic, but somehow it was gemütlich,” she said, using the German word for cozy or comfortable.

Success Can Make You a Scapegoat

Why did Vienna feel like home to my grandparents, when their own parents had not even been born in the city❓ When I read the historian Douglas Smith’s new book, “The City Without Jews: Life and Death in Nazi Vienna,” I began to understand my grandparents’ relationship to their home country more deeply.

Through the diaries, letters and family history of Mignon Langnas, a Jewish nurse and mother of two who was one of a few thousand Jews to remain in Vienna through the Nazi occupation, Smith traces how Jewish life came to flourish in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Under Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, legal discrimination against Jews was abolished in 1867. Waves of antisemitic pogroms in Eastern Europe around this time meant Jews in my great-grandparents’ generation flooded into Vienna, which was already a multiethnic center made up of Hungarians, Croatians, Italians, Slovenians and Poles. “The empire’s Jews felt safe and secure,” Smith writes. Some historians, like Smith, posit that Jews were the “only true ‘supranationals,’” in Vienna because, unlike the Poles or the Slovenians, Jews had no national homeland “distinct from and predating the empire.”

Smith explains how successful Jews were in Vienna. They assimilated into Germanic culture — in my teen years, my Oma gave me a dirndl that had been my mother’s — and made up a bulk of the city’s physicians, financiers, journalists and artists. 

Jews✡️ fought valiantly for the empire during World War I, and some became decorated war heroes despite the loss. Austria was hacked out of the larger empire in the aftermath of the war, creating a tiny alpine state that “nobody wanted,” with an economy in free fall, Smith writes.

Because they had so successfully integrated into Viennese society, many Jews thought the Nazis would not be able to take over the country. A new constitution had been enacted in Austria in 1934 that gave Jews equal protection under the law. My Oma’s relatives assured her that Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, would keep them safe. “He’ll straighten everything out. Nothing is going to happen,” they said.

Though there were many poor and struggling Jews ✡️ in Vienna — my grandfather’s family among them — Jews’ outsize success compared with their raw numbers made them an easy scapegoat for Austria’s woes. “They were accused of stoking unemployment, of taking jobs from the native-born Viennese, of worsening the scarcity of food and fuel, and of turning a housing shortage into a crisis,” Smith writes.

In the end, Hitler was able to easily trample over von Schuschnigg, annexing Austria in March 1938. “The city’s non-Jewish inhabitants had changed in an instant,” Smith’s book recounts. “The world had been turned upside down. Life had become new and terrifying. ‘You felt like a rat,’ Karl Gruenwald, ten years old at the time,” said.

One of the things my Oma talked about with my brother was how painful it was when her Catholic friends looked through her on the street. Her so-called friends turned away when Jews were beaten and humiliated. She felt scared of her own shadow. In 1938, when my grandmother was in her 20s, she witnessed her own elementary school being turned into a prison where thousands of Jewish intellectuals and professionals were tortured.

When Freud, who thought he would be safe in Austria until the very end, was forced to leave for London, he summed up the refugee experience this way: “The feeling of triumph on being liberated is too strongly mixed with sorrow, for in spite of everything I still greatly loved the prison from which I have been released.”

This Place Should Be Gemütlich

After reading Smith’s book, I came to feel that my grandparents’ love for Austria was a form of resistance. By refusing to concede their Viennese identity, they were insisting that they belonged. By accepting the gift of citizenship, I am digging out my dirndl and saying: I belong too.

This insistence is particularly resonant in this moment in the United States. Comparisons to Nazis are often used recklessly. But after reading Smith’s book, I find it hard not to see parallels with how popular right-wing “intellectuals” think it’s fair game to discuss “the Indian question” and whether it’s a “problem” that South Asians are going to the University of Texas and thriving there, cheering on the football team while wearing cowboy hats. “Some Republican state officials have repeatedly accused immigrants of taking jobs from Americans,” my newsroom colleague Amy Qin notes in an article about rising racism toward the South Asian community.

This dangerous rhetoric, which suggests that white Christians are the only true Americans, is not used just against Indian immigrants. You hear it when Vice President JD Vance says that Angie Nixon, who is running for U.S. Senate in Florida, should “get the hell out” of the United States if she is a socialist, adding, “You don’t belong in America if those are your views.”

You see it used against Muslims, especially those who are critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinian cause. 

Donald Trump has repeatedly gone after Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat in Michigan, calling him “Mohammed” and claiming that he is a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer.” You see it in ICE aggression and Trump’s desire to end birthright citizenship and the administration’s attempt to build a case against Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota in the hopes of denaturalizing and ultimately deporting her.

And there has been a resurgence of bald antisemitism in the past decade. Most recently, young Republican activists in several states have had group chats leaked that reveal sympathy for Hitler and vile anti-Jewish sentiments. 

Antisemitism exists on the left as well. Jews are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than any other group, despite our tiny numbers overall.

As the economy shows few signs of improving, and Trump enters the back nine of his presidency, we should note the historical precedent. Any whiff of the great replacement theory should be roundly condemned. We are all Americans; no group belongs here more than any other. Put another way: This place should be gemütlich.

End Notes

I do not usually believe in signs from the universe, but I received a sack full of my grandparents’ letters and documents the week that Smith’s book came out. My Opa wrote these letters to my Oma during World War II. The documents include everything from my grandparents’ grammar school records to my Oma’s attempts in the 1990s to get reparations for the property the Nazis stole from her family. I’m going to continue to go through this material over the next several months, and I may relate those explorations in this newsletter. 

A few years ago, I visited Vienna and attempted to write about receiving Austrian citizenship. But I abandoned it because I kept sounding like I was stoned — What even is a country, man? — because borders shifted so much in that pre- and postwar era. But I read many fascinating books as I was trying to work through my ideas, including “I Belong to Vienna,” by Anna Goldenberg, whose Jewish ancestors, like Mignon, were able to remain in Vienna throughout the war. Another essential read if you are interested in Austrian history is Stefan Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday,” a memoir of growing up in Vienna under the Hapsburg empire. And, finally, don’t miss my Opinion colleague Sarah Wildman’s beautiful “Paper Love,” about her Viennese Jewish grandfather and the love he left behind when he fled Austria.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The New York Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

Republicans' and Senator Susan Collins supporting rear rather than the American Constitution

To the Editor or the New York Times:

Re “Public Officials Are Living in Fear as Threats Mount” (front page, Oct. 11):  

Your here investigation describes more than a security problem. When threats force elected officials to alter their family lives, spend millions on protection or leave public service, intimidation begins to weaken democratic institutions themselves.

Fear is a hallmark of authoritarian rule, but a democracy can also be eroded when threats make people afraid to speak, serve or disagree. The danger extends beyond politicians to election workers, journalists, educators, public servants and ordinary citizens who may decide that silence is safer than participation.

Those insulated by wealth, influence or powerful employers may feel less exposed. They should not mistake their relative security for the health of the country. A society is not free simply because some people can live comfortably; it is free when citizens can express dissent without intimidation and public officials can perform their duties without fearing for their families.
Political threats must be condemned ❗regardless of the target’s party or ideology. Protecting those who serve the public is not a partisan cause. It is a defense of democracy itself. \

From: Nageswara R. Madamanchi in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Donald Trump failed to improve the lives of middle class Americans. His leadership consists of fraud and corruption

Opinion letter published in Lancaster OnLine:

Donald J. Trump is a master grifter. We all know it. Some of us protest against it. Some of us vote against it. Some of us purposely ignore it and vote for him — 😡😡😡again and again and again.

Here is a reminder of a few of Trump’s grifts and failures:

• Self-promoting advertisements paid for by taxpayers.
• Massive cryptocurrency windfalls.
• “Big, beautiful” tariffs.
•  An unnecessary and illegal war with Iran.
• Undermining the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicaid.
• Eliminating the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order.
• Cutting taxes for wealthy Americans.
• Making it harder for veterans to find jobs and/or access to healthcare.
• Cutting some aid to rural America and small farms.
• Slashing some job training programs.
• Cutting some funding to housing, small businesses and energy programs.
• Reducing or eliminating pollution standards.
• Cutting clean water projects.
• Weakening anti-bribery and anti-corruption safeguards.
• Propping up the coal industry.
• Attacking voting rights.
• Expanding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (evil ICE) and widening its scope.
• Weakening some safeguards surrounding background checks and gun purchases.
•  Withholding some Title X funding.
•  Cutting public education funding and services.

I haven’t even touched on what Trump has done to the Department of Justice, to national security and to other areas. And his administration has increased the federal debt by more than 💲4 trillion since January 2025.

Trump wants us to pretend he is on the ballot. We don’t have to pretend. Figuratively, he is.

So, to independents, Republicans and Democrats, I say: Run, walk or crawl to the polls. Vote for democracy this November. Vote for Democrats❕ We cannot survive two more years❕

From: Anne Pyle in Warwick Township, Pennsylvaia

Donald Trump and his cult of enablers have desecrated our American democracy and must be voted out of office

Echo opinion letter published in Lancaster OnLine:

This is what I believe:  I see you, Donald Trump — a disingenuous man through and through. Lewd, crude, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, with not a single socially redeeming value attached to your name. 

All the fake political promises you make fall away like ash in the wind, and the darkest truth is this: You never intended to keep them. Serial lying 🤥🤥🤥will always be in your makeup; it is the engine of your politics. Those promises were never commitments. They were temporary vote-getters for Americans who still believed — perhaps naively — that our presidents, in the end, would choose the right thing.

Instead, we ahve witnessed and watched you foment a riot against the police who defended the U.S. capitol on January 6,  and then pardon the very individuals who ransacked the U.S. Capitol, an act that will forever stain the history of American democracy. 

This stain that will not wash out. And those who remain silent — or worse, twist themselves into knots trying to explain away that day — will find their names printed beside yours in the history books. A ledger of cowardice, complicity and moral failure. A record of those who stood by while the country trembled, unable to speak when the moment demanded courage. 💢

Donald Trump, you and your cult of enablers and sycophants have led our people astray. You have debased the office. You have diminished the heart and soul of America for the whole world to see. And the country will be left to reckon with the wreckage you leave behind.  Heaven help us all.

From: Pete Begley in Morristown, New Jersey

Vote Blue❕

Global climate change is causing the return of dengue fever painful viral infections

For a state whose government officially doesn’t believe climate change is real, Florida remains our nation’s busiest climate-change laboratory.

Echo report published in The Mercury News, by Mark Gongloff (San Jose, California)

The latest test for the Sunshine State is an outbreak of dengue fever, the largest in the U.S. since the 1940s. The numbers are relatively small: 485 cases as of the latest count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), largely concentrated in Tampa’s home county. But any case of the disease — sometimes called “break-bone fever” because of how it makes sufferers’ bones feel — was rare in the U.S. not long ago.

It’s too soon to attribute this particular episode to climate change because Florida can certainly be hot enough for a dengue outbreak under any circumstances. But a warming planet is making broader swaths of the planet friendlier to disease-carrying mosquitoes, which spread dengue fever. Florida’s experience today will be an example for places at higher latitudes in the near future.

The Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes that spread dengue are most dangerous in sustained temperatures of 26 to 31 degrees Celsius (79 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a study published this week in the journal Science Advances by researchers from Monash University in Australia. 
These insects also love high humidity and rainfall (athough, they can also deal with drought because it means people keep more open containers of water).

Florida has always been hot and humid. And the U.S. struggled repeatedly with dengue-like outbreaks before World War II. 

Florida’s dengue fever outbreak is a national warning

But, a global effort to end yellow fever quashed many mosquito-borne illnesses here for generations. Dengue didn’t return to Florida until 2009, when a handful of people caught it in Key West.

Since then, the state has been the mainland’s runaway dengue leader, with 606 locally acquired cases and nearly 4,200 travel-associated cases between 2010, and 2025, according to the CDC. 

Second on the list is California, with nearly 2,600 mostly travel-related cases. None of them approach Puerto Rico, with more than 42,000 cases. But there’s plenty of time to start gaining ground.

As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Lara Williams has documented many times, global heating has expanded the territory of the mosquitoes that carry dengue, malaria, chikungunya, Zika and other diseases. Dengue was endemic to just nine countries 50 years ago. Now it’s in 140. A hotter planet is also boosting the numbers and range of ticks that carry Lyme, encephalitis, anaplasmosis and other horrors. All of these are vectors by which climate change attacks human health and economic well-being beyond the usual floods, wildfires and heat waves.

And the hotter the planet gets, the more land these pests can conquer. Even under less-than-extreme greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios, the number of humans at risk of dengue will be 2.3 billion greater in 2080 than in 2015, according to the Monash study. That means 6.1 billion people, roughly the entire global population in 2000, will be regularly exposed to the disease by 2080.

Yet, human behavior and climate-change effects also reinforce each other. The steady rush of people into hot places like Florida and Texas helps explain the recent and expected future rise in dengue exposure, the Monash study noted. The (justified) end of widespread DDT spraying gave mosquitoes another tiny toehold.

That means people also have the means to fight back, as we learned with yellow fever. Decades of education and billions of dollars of investment in prevention and treatment have helped slow the scourge of malaria, the global incidence rate of which fell by more than a third between 2000, and 2016, while the death rate fell by 60% (though population growth means the number of malaria cases is still rising). Increasing urbanization and economic well-being also help curb that disease.

“Houston should be a malaria zone,” Columbia University professor Jeffrey Shaman, a climatologist and infectious-disease specialist who studies mosquito-borne diseases, told me. “It’s swampy, warm, and has lots of opportunities for mosquitoes to do their thing. But they don’t, and the reason is development.”

But the Aedes mosquitoes actually thrive in urban environments, Shaman and the Monash study pointed out. Fighting dengue will require different weapons.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Monash University’s World Mosquito Program and other groups have programs to infect and release mosquitoes with a bacteria called wolbachia, which can curb bug populations, at least temporarily. The Environmental Protection Agency has been sitting for months on a Google request to release infected mosquitoes in California and Florida. But Donald Trump last week ordered his government to speed up any efforts to rein in all the mosquito- and tick-borne diseases terrorizing boggy Washington, DC, and eventually the rest of the country, which could help.

Florida is already running its own experiments. Lee County, home of Fort Myers, has been releasing wolbachia-infected mosquitoes since 2017, the Miami Herald reported. It’s also using radiation to sterilize male bugs and delivering them to unsuspecting mates by plane and drone. The county currently has just 11 dengue cases, though it’s 120 miles south of Tampa.

Wolbachia isn’t a perfect solution and isn’t effective everywhere. People also tend to get weirded out by the idea of Frankensquitoes buzzing around, as the Florida Keys discovered when it proposed using genetically modified bugs to curb populations.

The best approach, then, is all of the above, as Williams has written. That starts with slowing down mosquito-friendly global heating. And it includes surveillance and warning systems to go along with bacteria, radiation, drones, (safe) pesticides, mosquito-eating fish and whatever else is handy. People need to get in the habit of drying out bird baths and other water containers where mosquitoes breed.

Anything that gives humans and mosquitoes fewer chances to interact is worth trying, Shaman said. “That’s the name of the game for controlling outbreaks.” And if it works in Florida, it’s worth trying anywhere.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.  Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Maine health harmed by H.R.1 "Big Beautiful Bill" causing patients and Medicaid beneficiaries to lose insurance coverage but gives tax cuts to the rich

Maine Writer note:  Senator Susan Collins voted to support H.r. 1

The cruelty of cutting MaineCare | Column
Maine families are already under incredible financial stress and do not need to further bear the costs of tax cuts for the wealthy.


Danny Muller Giving Voice
On Thursday, Oct. 1, over 1,000 immigrants across the state lost their MaineCare (Medicaid) coverage due to H.R.1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Those losing access to healthcare include victims of sex trafficking and abuse, and U.S. military veterans — all of whom are in the U.S. with permission from the federal government. People have already had medically necessary procedures like transplants canceled because they cannot pay for the necessary follow-up care. These draconian cuts to coverage for immigrants also prevent them from purchasing plans on the health insurance marketplace.

When health insurance is stripped away from high-needs populations, research repeatedly shows that they put off timely care, instead waiting until their condition becomes severe. This puts unnecessary and increasing pressure on Maine’s emergency services, where, as we all know, healthcare infrastructure is already under enormous strain. These healthcare cuts hurt our neighbors, our coworkers, and our friends, and they have the potential to hurt each of us, when we need access to care in an emergency.

Maine Equal Justice has been calling attention to these changes, and Alex Carter, MEJ’s senior policy advocate stated “I think one of the greatest myths about so many of these changes is that it’s about saving money, but when people go without necessary healthcare and treatment, the long-term effects of that are much higher, healthcare costs and a much higher burden on our healthcare system … There is no good rationale other than cruelty.”

These are only the first wave of cuts to health insurance coverage, with many cuts scheduled to take place after the midterm elections, at the beginning of 2027. Beginning in January, tens of thousands more Mainers will lose health insurance to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, almost all of whom are U.S. citizens. The Maine Center for Economic Policy estimates around 29,000 Mainers will lose MaineCare in 2027. They estimate 5,966 people in Cumberland County, 4,088 in York County, 1,922 in Androscoggin County, and 441 in Sagadohoc County. Rural areas will be hit the hardest across the state. Thirty-four to 44% of all Mainers receiving MaineCare in our other 12 counties are estimated to lose coverage. The state of Maine’s own estimates are even higher, stating that over 31,000 people across the state will lose their health insurance in 2027.

The changes in H.R.1 that cut access to essential food and medical assistance also shift costs to the states. The state of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the increased cost to Maine for MaineCare will exceed

💲5 billion over the next 10 years.

Maine families are already under incredible financial stress from existing healthcare costs, and do not need to further bear the costs of tax cuts for the wealthy by paying higher taxes. According to Consumers for Affordable Health Care’s 2026, statewide survey:

• Two out of three Maine households reported adverse financial impacts because of medical bills, including struggling to pay for basic necessities such as food, heat, or housing, needing to take on additional debt, or having to rely upon savings.
• Six out of 10 households stated a major medical event would be a financial disaster.
• Four out of 10 households reported they have lost sleep worrying about medical costs.

The robber barons responsible for the Big Beautiful Bill are creating a future financial crisis for our state and they are burying working families, it is as simple and as cruel as that.

It can be incredibly maddening and frustrating to watch the intentional dismantling of systems designed to take care of those who are most vulnerable and most in need. Those who work in healthcare, or those who are sick, or are taking care of a sick loved one, must face these frustrations every day.

There are things that can be done by each of us. We need to take collective care of each other while holding those in power accountable. Before and after the upcoming elections, Oasis Free Clinics will continue to provide no-cost, patient-centered care to adults in Maine. We continue to need clinical and administrative volunteers. To meet the growing needs, we hope you can learn more about what we do at Oasis Free Clinics and why we do it: We believe healthcare is a human right. Support for Oasis, and for Maine’s other free safety net clinics, is increasingly needed. We hope you can consider adding your support at this critical moment.

You can find out about our Brunswick clinic, at 331 Maine St., by visiting oasisfreeclinics.org

Danny Muller is the executive director of Oasis Free Clinics.

Donald Trump turns up his racism rhetoric to bolster the maga cult base close to mid term elections

Boston Globe opinion by Renée Graham, opinion columnist, associate editor.

Trump makes racism his closing argument for the midterms
His hate-filled rhetoric will become more vile as Donald Trump becomes more desperate.

The federal agents who searched the home of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Monday in Washington, D.C., were looking for one specific thing — a concrete reminder for Donald Trump’s disgruntled white supporters as to why they first fell in love with him more than a decade ago:

Racism.

Without question, Trump’s immigration policies already leave no doubt that in his administration, the “worst of the worst” primarily means Black and brown people. But as he tries to energize Republican voters weeks before the midterm elections, Trump has ramped up his racist attacks.


At his rally in Ohio on Monday, Trump claimed to know nothing about the search of Omar’s home conducted by Homeland Security agents. But, as usual, he disparaged the congresswoman, long a target of his ire, whom he called “a disaster.”

“She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other,” Trump said. 

Omar was born in Somalia and became a US citizen in 2000. “And she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right.’ She’s got a constitutional right. She’s telling us about the Constitution. And she comes from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.”

His followers chanted “Deport, deport” — which did nothing to lower their gas and grocery prices or make health care more affordable but did boost the racist ideas they share with their president.

Once, the Department of Justice generally avoided such public investigations of candidates within 60 days of a primary or general election.

Hours after her home was searched, Omar, who has been an outspoken Trump critic, posted on social media, “I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

Nor will Trump, even as support for his fellow Republican politicians sinks under the weight of his failing presidency.

Gutter racism has always been the tie that binds Trump to his followers. That’s been the case since his first day as a presidential contender in 2015 when he denigrated Mexican immigrants. As a candidate, he proposed a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; a week into his first White House term, he issued an executive order that banned travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

During the 2024, presidential campaign, Trump amplified disgusting lies out of the far-right cesspool that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of their neighbors.

Now Trump is making different, but no less vile, claims about Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. At that same Ohio rally where he insulted Omar, he called El-Sayed “a jihadist,” only because the Michigan-born contender is Muslim.

At a rally in Syracuse, N.Y., last week, Trump targeted Letitia James, the New York attorney general. He called her “disgusting” and “a dog.” James was recently appointed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul as a special prosecutor to investigate a former Cornell University student’s allegation that she was gang raped by seven members of a since-banned fraternity in 2024.

James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump in 2024, is a Black woman, and Trump seems to have deep animosity for Black women, perhaps because no other group has voted as overwhelmingly against Trump — more than 90 percent — in his three presidential campaigns.

But Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t just generate the applause he so desperately craves from his followers. It also brings potentially dangerous ⚠ ramifications.

In January, as Omar held a town hall with constituents in Minneapolis, Anthony Kazmierczak, identified in published reports as a Trump supporter, ran toward the congresswoman and sprayed her with a syringe filled with what turned out to be apple cider vinegar.

At the time, Trump said Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” Kazmierczak later pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to 14 months.

Often, when Trump supporters speak of their disappointment with the president, they’re talking about his bungling of an inherited economy that The Economist called “the envy of the world” in October 2024. But it’s Trump’s devotion to racism and white supremacy that seems to keep his already awful approval ratings from plummeting into single digits.

That’s why Trump keeps churning out the same hateful mendacity. It’s his siren song that steers the MAGA faithful away from facts and voting in their own best interest and straight toward continuing to support his worst-of-the-worst presidency.

Donald Trump continues the administration causes more cruel inhumane war against legal immigrants

Editorial echo published in The Sun Sentinel and the New York Daily News 

Donald Trump’s ever-cruel administration is wrongly trying to put up even more roadblocks to block legal immigrants from getting green cards.

A coalition of cities and state, led by New York Attorney General Tish James and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is correctly fighting back. Cities and counties in Florida, where this cruel provision could lock tens of thousands of families into desperate poverty, should join their battle.

The change is to the so-called public charge rule, which expands a standing immigration law that was intended to restrict immigrants from getting permanent resident status if they have become reliant on public assistance programs like food stamps, Medicaid and housing assistance.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is proposing a rule that gives immigration officials much more latitude in determining what can be considered a “public charge,” including (potentially) public-school education and food assistance provided to American-born children and other American citizens living in their households.

Under the proposed rule, immigration authorities could use that information to deny permanent resident status to an otherwise deserving immigrant. A 2018, analysis shared by the Florida Policy Institute predicted that the state could lose as much as 💲400 million in federal money under the new rules.

In lawsuits filed in Manhattan federal court earlier this month, one by states and another by cities, New York State, New York City and their partners are asking judges to say no.

It is far too much of a stretch to expect Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign on, but Broward and Palm Beach counties and their related cities should consider joining it.

The use of public charge determinations is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it has been part of federal law since before the U.S. existed independently.

What’s different here is that the administration wants to expand this analysis beyond its original purpose as a tool to determine if someone was likely to become fully dependent on the government to whether they are subjectively likely, at some point in the future, to end up using the same public benefits that all Americans are entitled to anyway.

But, it’s an impossible standard that requires, in part, proving a negative.

James and Mamdani are right: This policy would cost taxpayers billions in lost federal revenue, which we would inevitably have to help make up.

Beyond the monetary cost, it will cost our communities dearly as fear drives people from programs that they need, whether or not the rule actually goes into effect in its current form.

As some public officials and commentators have noted, the change does not actually have to take effect to have widespread negative impact. Research has already established that Trump’s 2019, attempt at a similar rule kept people from using services they were legally entitled to, or from enrolling U.S. citizen children, whether or not it would actually have an effect on their status.

People will hear idle threats that “the government will deport you for using public benefits,” and they will act on that information, even if it’s wrong or incomplete or the benefits at issue are not germane.

Make no mistake that this is intentional fear-mongering, straight from the White House, which will keep people away from even our own state and local services.

It will be up to a federal judge whether Trump gets to enact policy by capricious decree like a king of yore. Fortunately, most judges, whomever they have been appointed by and however long they’ve served, still seem to have a concrete interest in upholding the law.

For now, everything is banking on the judges to do their job and strike down this rule down. Longer-term, it will be up to Congress to take this tool away from overzealous presidents.

This editorial was adapted from the New York Daily News. The Sun Sentinel sometimes publishes editorials that agree with our positions.

Peaceful protests in Florida against the corrupt Donald Trump administration

Echo opinion letter published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper: 

As a retired foreign service officer, I know what good staff work is. At the State Department, we made sure key leaders were never surprised.

But, Donald Trump suffers from its opposite: bad staff work.

He’s surrounded by yes-men and yes-women. No one has the courage to break through his delusional bubble and confront him with the hard facts. They tell him that the polls are lies, that everyone loves him, that he’s the best or smartest president and a shrewd dealmaker. It’s all lies, but he doesn’t know the truth.

They keep him in his bubble. It means his impulsive actions do not serve the national interest, but no one tells him that he’s destroying the very fabric of the nation.

We peacefully protest in Wilton Manors, Florida, every week. Sometimes, more than 300 show up. Trump may be in a bubble, but Americans pay the price for his mistakes. Another forever war. Inflation. Destroyed relations with allies. Deferring to Putin, Kim Jong Un, and China’s dictator.

The U.S. is a weak nation under Trump, viewed as the instigator of war, violence and chaos.

I have gone from being a loyal employee of the federal government to an anti-government activist. For any true patriot, there is no more worthwhile endeavor than challenging the lies of Trump and his corrupt cronies.

From: Michael Varga, Wilton Manors, Florida

Impeach Donald Trump: The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial gives Republicans evidence to impeach regardless of mid-term election outcomes

Echo opinion responses to The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial position calling for the Republicans to impeach Donald Trump:

As the Sunday Inquirer section described, Donald Trump’s abuses are far worse than those that led to Nixon’s resignation, and it is long past time for Trump to be removed through the constitutional process.

From: Mark Zecca, in Philadelphia

In addition to all the reasons cited in Sunday’s Inquirer demonstrating that Donald Trump is not fit for office, another factor is also his lack of compassion. 

No man or woman should ever be elected to this land’s highest office if they have no interest in governing for all.

The Trump administration and an embarrassingly compliant Congress passed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which continues to roll out the GOP’s disdain for the weakest and most underserved Americans. The legislation’s primary objective is to further humiliate our fellow citizens already leading lives defined by struggle.
Various obsessive incoherent rants are circulating about how those who support the work requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program think that we should stop giving handouts.

What many of the people with those feelings fail to acknowledge is that they themselves routinely slept in warm beds, were dressed in warm jackets, and were cared for with full stomachs before leaving for work.

The work requirements affect men and women who, in many instances, are caught in a cycle of generational poverty. For them, there has never been the money for continual, uninterrupted housing, food, or clothing. Some children may attend several different schools and are never quite able to create a path to a productive future.

So before fortunate Americans criticize those people in need of compassion, maybe advocate for the funds to help the least of our brothers instead of ignoring the taxpayer money continually spent to build monuments to honor the least trustworthy president in modern times.

From: Mary Kay Owen, in Downingtown, Pennsylvania

Donald Trump illegally offering to buy diesel from Putin is a crazy deal because it will ultimately cause harm to America's military

Trump guts diesel sanctions on Russia, helping Putin kill Ukrainians and aid Iran.

Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin

In trying to lower fuel prices, Donald Trump is helping fund a Kremlin terrorist who is not only out to destroy Kyiv but is helping Iran kill U.S. soldiers in the Middle East.

This weekend, Donald Trump publicly surrendered U.S. honor and security interests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. president demanded that Ukraine “replace” President Volodymyr Zelensky with someone willing to make “a deal” with the Kremlin to (supposedly) end the war. Yet the “deal” that Trump envisions would not end Russia’s aggression but would reward it.

It would encourage the Kremlin’s unyielding demand that Kyiv surrender to Moscow’s over-lordship. And it would fuel Putin’s war chest, never mind that he has been attacking NATO members with drones, and is helping Iran destroy U.S. bases and kill American troops in the Middle East.

In a Friday phone call with Putin, the president arranged to suspend U.S. sanctions on Russian exports of diesel in the (false❗🤥) hope this will lower U.S. fuel prices before the November midterms. Even more shocking, POTUS threatened to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with Kyiv, unless Ukraine halts attacks on Russian refineries that are meant to finally drive Putin to the bargaining table.

This all happened just as a Ukrainian negotiating team arrived in Miami to discuss with their U.S. counterparts how to overcome Putin’s constant rejection of any ceasefire.

The Ukrainians were ready to discuss a two-way ceasefire over attacks on energy infrastructure, but were totally blindsided. 

Instead, Trump unilaterally declared such a ceasefire had been reached. But, it hadn’t.

Yet when Zelensky rejected the one-sided diesel deal, Trump went ballistic and called for his replacement, as if Ukraine were a banana republic whose president could be ousted overnight.

So much for the much hyped bipartisan legislation named after the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham that was supposed to tighten sanctions on Moscow in order to force Putin to accept a ceasefire. In effect, Trump spat on his late GOP colleague and loyal supporter.

Trump’s negotiators have already been talking with Putin’s team about big Russian business deals (that would benefit Trump’s circle of donors and supporters, of course) while demanding zero concessions from Moscow. Clearly, they just want Ukraine to bow so they can get down to moneymaking with Moscow.

And Trump’s desperation to lower diesel prices before the midterms supersedes any concerns about security for U.S. bases, NATO allies, or Ukraine.

The blinkered U.S. leader, however, has no grasp of basic economics. Lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports will have a minimal effect at the pump; the only way to lower those prices is to negotiate an end to Trump’s misbegotten Iran war.

Meantime, Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Moscow has killed any prospect of a genuine two-way energy ceasefire that would also halt Moscow’s destruction of civilian electricity grids and heating plants in Ukraine.

If Putin keeps getting freebies from his friend Donald, why make concessions❓

Lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports, as Zelensky noted, not only gives Putin “more money to inflict suffering on us” but “gives him the ability to fight even more.” To add to this insanity, on the same day POTUS encouraged Putin’s aggression, he also found time to berate the Norwegian Nobel committee for not awarding him his coveted peace prize in 2026.

Few Americans are aware of the new horrors Putin has visited on Ukrainian civilians since early September. Even fewer seem aware of the Kremlin’s tight alliance with Tehran, which gave Russia its first Shahed strike drones, the same drones Iran now uses to destroy U.S. bases and kill U.S. troops in the Mideast.

Putin has returned Iran’s favor by sharing upgraded Shahed technology with Tehran; he is also helping the ayatollahs develop new supersonic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in the Middle East theater.

To repeat, Trump’s gift to Putin will not only fund Putin’s war machine but will help Tehran kill more Americans, too.

State terror: I witnessed the beginning of Putin’s new blitz on Ukrainian civilians during a trip to Kyiv and Odesa last month and it has only gotten worse since then.

Learning lessons from its war on Ukraine, Russia now produces millions of drones and has upgraded Iran’s Shaheds with jet engines. Russia is also mass-producing cruise and ballistic missiles.

Trump facilitated Russia’s slaughter by ending almost all military aid to Ukraine and refusing to send Kyiv the Patriot interceptors that are the only weapons which destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

Yes, Patriots are in short supply since Trump wasted much of our arsenal in his illegal failing war on Iran. Yet by stiffing Ukraine, Donald Trump is aiding a Russian terrorist who is helping Iran — the very country that POTUS has labeled “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Untangle that bizarre contradiction, and you can reach only one conclusion: Trump is an open accessory to Russian terrorism that also threatens the United States.

Indeed, “Russian state terrorism” is the only adequate term to describe what Putin is raining down on Ukraine. In conversations with officials from Ukraine’s largest private electricity company, DTEK, I heard worries that attacks on the grid will cut off water supplies this winter and severely disrupt sewage systems.

Russia consistently uses terrorist methods ever since Moscow invaded its neighbor in 2022. I have witnessed shattered high-rise apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, cathedrals, libraries, and markets and heard horror stories about destroyed energy infrastructure that left Ukrainians freezing last winter.

Yet, Putin’s terror attacks this fall are dramatically worse than previous years, given Russian advances in weapons technology and production. and given Trump’s total second term toleration of Putin’s war crimes.

Last year, Russian strikes on cities occurred mostly at night, so Ukrainians could at least walk and work during the daytime. This year, strikes occur far more frequently and often in the daytime, meaning schools and many businesses can’t function because of the constant need to run to shelters.

I have kept the air alert notification app for Kyiv on my phone. It is designed so Ukrainians can punch in their city or town to get advance notice of imminent and critical air attacks. 

As I sit in Philadelphia, sometimes it dings every hour. Sometimes, in the evening, every 20 minutes.

When civilians rush to the shelters deep in Kyiv subway stations, they now have to descend and ascend stalled escalators, frozen due to Russian bombing of Kyiv’s electricity infrastructure. That means that the elderly and mothers with small kids are more likely to risk staying home.

In Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s “fortress cities” in Donbas that Russian troops have been unable to capture, the Kremlin strategy now is to make life unbearable. On Thursday, a guided Russian glide bomb targeted two buses in Kramatorsk during rush hour, incinerating 30 passengers.

Photos of the scorched bus made me recall the horrific Hamas bus bombings in Jerusalem I witnessed in the mid-1990s. Putin’s mentality is no different from that of fanatical Islamists who view civilian slaughter as a useful tool.

What is so shameful is that any patriotic president would be revulsed by such terrorist tactics. He or she would use whatever tools were available to force Putin to accept a ceasefire.

A few ways that Trump could exert pressure begin with tightening, not ripping up, sanctions against Russian oil exports as called for by the Graham Act. He could immediately green light joint U.S.-Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles, and in the meantime, encourage nervous allies to spare some of their stock with a promise of replacement from new U.S. production.

Trump could also demand that Elon Musk permit Kyiv to use Starlink connections over Russian territory so Ukraine can bring Russia to the table by more precisely targeting production sites of its drones and missiles — and its oil refineries.

I could go on, but as we know, Trump will never show Putin any backbone. The president decries Hamas but brags of his great relations with the global terrorist in the Kremlin. If this be not treason, then what is?

GOP legislators who fail to call Trump out are also complicit. For those Americans who truly oppose terrorism, the choice at the polls is clear.
In the city of Kherson, freed from Russian occupation, Russian soldiers across the Dnipro River play “human safari,” chasing desperate civilians on the street with drones that can now be targeted from longer distances. They then publish videos of the kills. Russia is now attacking cities that weren’t previously targeted, just to give civilians the feeling there is nowhere to hide. On Putin’s birthday, a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment building, killing 22 civilians (including five children) as they slept in the city of Pryluky.

Such attacks are not collateral damage; they are part of a strategy designed to break the will of the population. “This is the kind of ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Zelensky said Wednesday. “The killing of children, the killing of people.”

About such killings, Trump says not a word.