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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Food Stamps Spared....For Now

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Friday, June 21, 2013   

BALTIMORE – A fight over food stamps brought down the Farm Bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, and anti-hunger groups are relieved.

The legislation would have stripped more than $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides help to about 770,000 individuals in Maryland alone.

Cathy Demeroto, director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, says many local families would have felt the impact.

"One in six families in Maryland struggles to put food on the table,” she says. “And so it would have been unconscionable to make that situation worse for Marylanders who are really struggling to make ends meet."

Demeroto says other provisions in the bill, such as allowing states to conduct random drug testing for the program applicants, would have punished and stigmatized low-income Americans. But she notes the long-term fate of SNAP funding is still uncertain.

"We know that the SNAP program will remain as is at least through September 30th,” she says, “and that's good news in the short term."

The SNAP program was formerly referred to as Food Stamps.





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