Tag: news

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Trump 2.0 just released its National Security Strategy (NSS).

It can be read in full here, but for those with limited time, the present piece will summarize its contents. The new NSS reconceptualizes, narrows, and reprioritizes US interests. Focus is placed on the primacy of nations over transnational organizations, preserving the balance of power through optimized burden-sharing, and the US’ reindustrialization that’ll be facilitated by securing critical supply chains. The Western Hemisphere is the top priority.

The “Trump Corrolary” to the Monroe Doctrine is the centerpiece and will seek to deny non-hemispheric competitors ownership or control of strategically vital assets in an allusion to China’s influence over the Panama Canal.

The NSS envisages enlisting regional champions and friendly forces to help ensure regional stability for preventing migrant crises, fight the cartels, and erode the aforesaid competitors’ influence. This aligns with the “Fortress America” strategy of restoring US hegemony in the hemisphere.

Asia is next on the NSS’ hierarchy of priorities. Together with its incentivized partners, the US will rebalance trade ties with China, compete more vigorously with it in the Global South in an allusion to challenging BRI, and deter China over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Trade loopholes through third countries like Mexico will be closed, the Global South will tie its currencies more closely to the dollar, and Asian allies will grant the US greater access to their ports, etc., while ramping up defense spending.

As for Europe, the US wants it “to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation” in order to avoid “civilizational erasure”.

The US will “manage European relations with Russia”, “build up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe” in an allusion to the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative”, and ultimately “help Europe correct its current trajectory.”

A hybrid set of economic and political tools will be employed to this end.

West Asia and Africa are at the bottom of the NSS’ priorities. The US foresees the first becoming a greater source of investment and destination of such while the second’s ties with the US will transition from a foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth one centered on select partners. Like with the rest of the world, the US wants to keep the peace through optimized burden-sharing and without overextending itself, but it’ll also still keep an eye on Islamist terrorist activity in both regions too.

The following passage sums up the NSS’ new approach:

“As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.”

To that end, the balance of power must be maintained through pragmatic carrot-and-stick policies in conjunction with close partners, which includes securing critical supply chains (especially those in the Western Hemisphere). This is essentially how Trump 2.0 plans to respond to multipolarity.

The grand strategic goal is to restore the US’ central role in the global system, but if that’s not possible and it loses control of the Eastern Hemisphere to China, then Plan B is to retreat to the Western Hemisphere, which will be autarkic under the US’ hegemony if it succeeds in building “Fortress America”.

Trump 2.0’s NSS is very ambitious and will be more difficult to implement than it was to promulgate, but even partial success could radically reshape the global systemic transition in the US’ favor.

Started in 2012, Giving Tuesday, which takes place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, is a day which aims to encourage people to do good.

Described as “a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity”, the goal of Giving Tuesday is to encourage people to donate time or money or to use their voice for a good cause.

While generosity may seem like a complicated concept to quantify, for over a decade now, the Charities Aid Foundation has been providing an overview of generosity around the world with its World Giving Index.

This international study examines populations in more than 100 countries according to three main aspects of generosity: charitable donations, volunteering and willingness to help strangers.

As in previous years, Statista’s Valentine Fourreau notes that the most generous country is not one of the richest in the world.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 2024 Indonesia again tops the ranking, with a score of 74. The volunteer rate in the country (65 percent) is nearly three times higher than the global average (24 percent), and nine out of ten Indonesians made charitable donations in 2023 (year the data was collected).

In second place among the most generous countries is Kenya, with a score of 63, while Singapore and the Gambia both obtained a score of 61.

This ranking, whose top 20 remains fairly similar from one year to the next, reflects certain religious and cultural characteristics.

Notable examples include the influence of Islamic charity in certain Muslim countries such as Indonesia (with zakât, or ‘legal alms’), and that of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand (ranked 14th) and Myanmar (ranked 19th), an ancient branch of Buddhism that values offerings and charitable donations.

Anglo-Saxon and Protestant countries, with their long tradition of philanthropy, are also well represented.

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Across the American political spectrum, support for the State of Israel is steadily eroding. With the long-running, staggeringly expensive redistribution of American wealth and weapons to one of the world’s most prosperous countries under unprecedented threat, Israel’s advocates inside the United States are growing increasingly desperate to suppress the facts, opinions, questions and imagery that are causing this sea change. 

Pro-Israel forces have long worked to limit and shape US discourse to Israel’s advantage. However, the intensity and novelty of what’s taking place in 2025 — from the government-coerced transfer of a social media platform to pro-Israel billionaires, to the jailing and attempted deportation of a student for writing an opinion piece, and more — deserves the attention of every American who values free expression, an enlightened electorate, and independence from foreign influence.

Many Americans know that Congress and President Biden teamed up in 2024 to force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest its US operation of the popular video-sharing app TikTok, yet few realize this unusual intervention was motivated in large part by a desire to serve the interests of Israel. 

Though politicians pointed to the supposed Chinese menace lurking inside the app — while revealing their lack of sincerity by continuing to use it themselves — the catalyst for the extraordinary TikTok ban’s passage was a sea of viral content illuminating Israel’s rampage in Gaza, casting Palestinians in empathetic light, and questioning the legitimacy of the political philosophy that is Zionism. 

The idea that passage of the ban was largely about Israel is no conspiracy theory. American politicians who supported the compelled divestiture of TikTok have candidly said so themselves. Sharing a stage with Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2024, then-Senator Mitt Romney said: 

“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature. You look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts, so I’d note that’s of real interest to the president, who will get the chance to take action in that regard.” 

Similarly, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told a webinar that pro-Palestinian student protests were “exactly why we included the TikTok bill…because you’re seeing how these kids are being manipulated by certain groups or entities or countries to foment hate on their behalf and really create a hostile environment here in the US.”

Of course, mere divestiture wouldn’t guarantee that TikTok would start suppressing anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian content in the United States. To have the desired effect, the buyer — who required White House approval — would have to be an ardent supporter of Israel. That’s just how things played out. In September, President Trump approved the sale of TikTok’s US operations to a joint venture led by Larry Ellison, the founder of tech-titan Oracle and the fourth-richest man in the world. 

Ellison has expressed his “deep emotional connection to the State of Israel” and has been a major benefactor of the Israeli Defense Forces, via donations to IDF-supporting organizations. He spent at least $3 million on Marco Rubio’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, after being assured by Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations that Rubio would “be a great friend to Israel.” There are other Israel-favoring billionaires in the consortium now controlling TikTok’s American presence, among them NewsCorp head Rupert Murdoch and investment trader Jeff Yass. 

Americans were propagandized into fearing Chinese control of TikTok users’ data. Now that data will be controlled by Oracle, a firm whose founder has described Israel as his own nation, said “there is no greater honor” than supporting the IDF, and invited Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a seat on the board. It’s also a firm with strong business ties to the Israel government, and a firm whose Israel-born executive vice chair and former CEO last year declared, “For [Oracle] employees, it’s clear: If you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here.”

A few months before the TikTok divestiture was finalized, the company installed former IDF soldier and self-described “passionate” Zionist Erica Mindel as TikTok’s hate speech manager in July. Weeks later, and just days before the transfer of TikTok’s US operation was approved, the platform posted new guidelines on Sept 13 about what’s allowed on the platform. 

Soon after the change, users and content creators began sharing examples of content being deleted by TikTok, with the platform exploiting its vague new rules about “conspiracy theories” and “protected groups” to reject negative content about Israel — wielding the threat of demonetization of repeat offenders. In a recent appearance on the Breaking Points podcast, Guy Christensen, who has 3.4 million TikTok followers, shared his experience: 

“What all these videos have in common that have been removed since Sept 13 are that I am talking about Israel, I’m talking about AIPAC’s influence, I’m talking about Larry Ellison and the attempt to put TikTok under Zionist control — I’m criticizing Israel in some way. It’s the same thing I’ve heard from my audience, my friends who are creators. Ever since Sept 13, they’ve had the same exact experience. Videos that are more informational and critical of Israel get removed.” 

In a late-September meeting with pro-Israel social media “influencers,” Netanyahu hailed the transfer of TikTok’s US ownership. “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield with which we’re engaged, and the most important ones are in social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one.” Expressing hope that, by “talking” with Elon Musk, his X platform could be reshaped to be more Israel-protective too, Netanyahu added, “If we can get those two things, we can get a lot.”

NEW – Netanyahu mission-briefed American influencers today, stating TikTok is the “most important” weapon in securing Israel’s right-wing support: “Weapons change over time… the most important ones are the social media,” he said. “The most important purchase that is going on… pic.twitter.com/EeszHlcZmN

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 27, 2025

Ellison’s TikTok takeover is troubling enough, but that wasn’t his only media move this year. He also financed his son David’s takeover of Paramount Skydance, the media company that controls many movie and television properties, including CBS. David Ellison quickly installed as head of CBS News Bari Weiss — a self-described “Zionist fanatic” who took a gap year before college to live on an Israeli kibbutz. 

Weiss’s history of wrangling over the bounds of acceptable speech vis-a-vis Israel goes back to her sophomore year at Columbia University, when she was part of a group of students who claimed they were subjected to intimidation by Middle East Studies professors over the students’ Zionist views. A university panel found only one of the supposed incidents represented unacceptable conduct. 

Both outside observers and network insiders are braced for Weiss to nudge the outlet’s reporting to Israel’s benefit, and there are early indications validating worries about her bias. Citing executive sources inside CBS, the Wall Street Journal reported that foreign correspondent Chris Livesay, who was set to be laid off as part of a downsizing move that preceded Weiss’s arrival, sent Weiss an email expressing his affinity for Israel and claiming he was “bullied” for his beliefs. Weiss intervened and saved Livesay from the layoff. Other correspondents told the Journal that Livesay’s claim about bullying was bogus. 

Compounding the expectations that CBS News is about to become a de facto Israel PR outlet, the network’s new ombudsman — the arbiter of editorial concerns — also has strong Zionist credentials. The New York Times describes Kenneth Weinstein as a “firm and vocal champion of Israel.” On X, Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal notedthat, “during a 2021…event with Mike Pence, Weinstein touted his Israel lobbyist creds, describing how he’d been groomed by the Tikvah Fund, the Likudnik training network which will award Bari Weiss its Herzl Award this November.” (The Likud Party is the Israeli party led by Netanyahu.)

Here’s how Glenn Greenwald summed up the TikTok and CBS moves:

The minute the American public starts turning against Israel and the US financing of that country, the world’s richest and most fanatical pro-Israel billionaires start buying up large media outlets and TikTok, then install Bari Weiss and an ex-IDF soldier to control content: https://t.co/wjJbliKRmO

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 20, 2025

The transfer of TikTok into Israel-friendly hands isn’t the only example of intensified US government intervention in America’s public square on behalf of the tiny Middle Eastern country. Much of the Trump administration’s war against anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian speech has focused on college campuses. In the most alarming such move in 2025, the Trump administration has arrested, jailed and attempted to deport foreign students for merely voicing their support for Palestinians or opposition to the Israeli government. 

The most atrocious example — which Stark Realities examined in depth earlier this year — centers on a 30-year-old, Turkish Tufts University PhD candidate who was arrested on a Boston street and whisked away to a dismal Louisiana prison, just for co-authoring a calmly-written Tufts Daily op-ed urging the university to formally characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and to sell the school’s Israel-associated investments. 

This cruelly despotic tactic is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation. In a policy paper, the think tank urged pro-Israel groups and the US government to characterize pro-Palestinian activists as “effectively members of a terrorist support network,” and then use that characterization to target activists for deportations, expulsions from colleges, lawsuits, terminations by employers, and exclusion from “open society.”

Supporters of Israel have long attempted to stifle critics of the Israeli government by smearing them as antisemites. In 2016, that kind of mislabelling was codified in a definition of antisemitism that’s now being embraced by governments, universities and other institutions in the United States and around the world: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism.”

Some elements of the IHRA definition are reasonable, but others irrationally conflate criticism of the State of Israel with hatred of all Jews. For example, the IHRA definition says it’s antisemitic to “claim that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” or to merely “draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” 

Other, vague elements of the definition are open to creative interpretations, facilitating bogus accusations of bigotry against Israel’s critics. For example, the IHRA says it’s antisemitic to “apply double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” The IHRA also says it’s antisemitic to make statements about the “power of Jews as [a] collective,” which can put someone who talks about the enormous influence of the pro-Israel lobby squarely in the crosshairs. 

Similarly, the IHRA says it’s antisemitic to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” a definition that could ensnare people who — right or wrong — advocate for the State of Israel to be replaced by a new governing arrangement for the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, those who want speech to be policed on Israel’s behalf frequently point to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as inherently antisemitic. 

As I wrote in an earlier article (“No Country Has a Right To Exist”): 

Those who support the State of Israel are free to present a case that it’s a just arrangement for the 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians “between the river and the sea.” However, painting those who demand a new arrangement as inherently immoral, genocidal or antisemitic is ignorant at best and maliciously misleading at worst. 

Doing its part to vilify Israel’s critics and mislead the public and policymakers, the Anti-Defamation League has employed expansive definitions in its numerical tracking of antisemitic incidents — statistics that are unquestioningly quoted by journalists and cited by pro-Israel politicians. 

For example, in early 2024, the ADL claimed that, in the first three months after the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and the IDF’s brutal assault on Gaza, antisemitic incidents skyrocketed 360%. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said Jews faced a threat “unprecedented in modern history.” However, the ADL admitted that it was counting as antisemitic incidents all protests that included “anti-Zionist chants and slogans.” 

Of course, exaggerating the scale of antisemitism does more than facilitate efforts to suppress criticism of Israel: It also helps the ADL justify its existence and boost its fundraising. The ADL’s over-counting is nothing new. In 2017, the ADL claimed antisemitic incidents in the United States had soared by 86% in the first quarter of the year, and major media outlets ran with the story. However, much of the increase springs from the ADL’s decision to include a huge number of bomb threats phoned into US synagogues and schools by a Jew living in Israel.

The IHRA definition is at the forefront of a broad campaign to suppress candid discourse about Israel and Palestine on college campuses, with multiple state governments ordering public schools to use it to determine what can and can’t be said. 

Bard College’s Kenneth Stern, a lead drafter of a 2004 antisemitism definition that was subsequently adopted by the IHRA, has spoken out against the weaponization of the definition to stifle discourse at universities. “The history of the abuse of the IHRA definition demonstrates the desire is largely political—it is not so much a desire to identify antisemitism, but rather to label certain speech about Israel as antisemitic,” Stern wrote at the Knight First Amendment Institute. 

Even at schools that haven’t adopted the IHRA definition, activists and scholars who are critical of Israel and empathetic to the Palestinians are being subjected to countless false accusations of antisemitism, and universities are being sued by pro-Israel students who claim the schools tolerate antisemitism. 

A Stark Realities analysis of an 84-page complaint filed against the University of Pennsylvania found nearly every alleged “antisemitic incident” was merely an instance in which Penn students, professors and guest speakers engaged in political expression that proponents of the State of Israel strongly disagree with. Eighteen months later, a federal judge agreed. “At worst, Plaintiffs accuse Penn of tolerating and permitting the expression of viewpoints which differ from their own,” Judge Mitchell Goldberg wroteas he dismissed the case. 

Courtroom victories, however, can only do so much to counter the chilling effect of campaigns that vilify students, professors and institutions as antisemitic. That’s especially true when university cash flows are threatened. 

Major pro-Israel donors have withdrawn or threatened to suspend donations to various schools, and those threats have been credited with forcing out university presidents like Penn’s Liz Magill. Donor pressure has also led schools to adopt the problematic IHRA antisemitism definition, shut down chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, and strip Israel-critical professors of chair positions. 

The greatest financial pressure being exerted on universities, however, is coming from the Trump administration, which has not only suspended billions of dollars in funding from various universities that are supposed hives of antisemitism, but has also filed lawsuits and hammered schools with fines. Many of them are surrendering, paying the government large sums and making policy and staffing changes. Last week, Northwestern agreed to pay $75 million to the federal government for its alleged failure to fight “antisemitism.” Earlier, Columbia agreed to a $200 million fine payable over three years, and Brown will surrender $50 million.

There are other avenues by which government force is being tapped to squelch criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinians. Dozens of states have passed legislation that bar individuals and businesses from contracting with the state if they boycott or divest from Israel. That led to a bizarre spectacle in which hurricane-battered Texans applying for emergency benefits were asked to verify that they do not and will not boycott Israel. Comparable federal measures have been introduced, but not yet enacted. 

Another proposed federal bill is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition when evaluating accusations that colleges tolerate antisemitism — essentially codifying a Trump executive order. It sailed through the House in 2024 by a 320-91 vote, but stalled in the Senate this year amid bipartisan concerns about the definition. Seven amendments had been attached in committee, including one clarifying that criticism of the Israeli government isn’t antisemitism. 

Tellingly, champions of the bill said amendments like that were poison pills that would render it un-passable.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Join thousands who benefit from ad-free, monthly insights at starkrealities.substack.com

* * *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge

Concerning nations surveyed in Statista’s Consumer Insights, Americans were among those most worried about food and water security.

Indeed, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, while for most European nations, worry about the topic peaked during the coronavirus pandemic and the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, concern has remained elevated in the United States into 2025.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Food and water supplies were not considered a particular issue among developed countries for a long time. But the data illustrates how that is starting to change.

As many as 1 in 5 respondents in France said that food and water security was one of the biggest challenges their country faced in 2025.

The proportion was similarly high in the United Kingdom and Italy (23 percent), while it had fallen a little lower again in Spain (16 percent) and Germany (13 percent).

As wars (trade and kinetic) continue to disrupt international trade and affairs in recent years, the constant chatter about climate change shifting droughts and destructive fires more top of people’s minds, and inflation (groceries becoming more expensive), more people are seeing how these and other issues can affect the security of their food and water supply even in richer countries.

In the United States, shifts in government benefit programs by the Trump administration might also add to peoples’ feeling around food security.

Authored by James Varney via RealClearInvestigations,

On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance repeatedly chastised the Biden administration for allegedly losing track of some 320,000 minors who had crossed the border unaccompanied. “Our government, under the policies of Kamala Harris, has lost thousands of innocent children to sex trafficking, to drug trafficking, to human trafficking,” Vance said.

One year later, the fate of most of those children remains unknown. While the Trump administration has all but stopped the crush of migrants that occurred during Biden’s term, neither the government nor the nonprofits that were largely responsible for resettling this vulnerable population of unaccompanied minors have been able to tell RealClearInvestigations where they are living.

Experts say it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of unaccompanied minors remain off the grid because their parents, guardians, and caregivers do not want to draw the attention of immigration authorities. But they also acknowledge the likelihood that some of the migrant minors have been picked up by human traffickers and forced into exploitative labor and sexual roles – a criminal trend that’s on the rise in the U.S. 

This story has been forgotten as politicians and the media have turned their attention away from immigration after Trump virtually closed the southern border. But the recent shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan refugee who had collaborated with the U.S. special forces has brought the issue of a broken immigration system back to the forefront. 

Nearly half a million unaccompanied minors under the age of 18 were apprehended at the border between 2021 and 2024, overwhelming the immigration system. Taxpayers spent more than $23 billion on a network of government agencies, construction companies, and nonprofits charged with finding them a safe place to live while sponsors were sought. 

Now the entities that took the money are unwilling to address the whereabouts of the minors. Nor are they forthcoming about how they spent – or misspent – the funding that was supposed to avoid the very problem the nation faces of missing migrant children.

“They don’t want to talk about it,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. “Those groups are the very ones that were pressing to release the unaccompanied kids faster.” 

The Biden Migrant Surge

The problem of unaccompanied minors began when Joe Biden took office and embraced more lax policies at the border.  During Trump’s first term, an average of 43,707 minors annually crossed the border alone; the figure dropped to 15,381 when the pandemic emerged in 2020. In 2021, however, that figure skyrocketed to 122,731, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2022, the number hit an all-time high of 128,904 before tapering off to 98,356 in 2024. These numbers represent the unaccompanied minors that were encountered by U.S. officials and do not include “gotaways,” so the actual total is significantly higher.

All told, the average annual number of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. under Biden was nearly double the highest single prior year of 2019, ICE figures show. More than half of those who came each year since 2019 were 16 years old or younger, with nearly a quarter aged 12 or younger. 

This year, monthly data indicates the problem of newly arriving unaccompanied minors has virtually disappeared. In October, the average number of “children in care” was 2,244.

“Sealing the border had made a huge difference,” said Laura Lederer, a former senior advisor on trafficking in persons for the State Department. “Stopping illegal immigration is essentially a human trafficking prevention program.”

Rise in Human Trafficking

For undocumented minors already in the U.S., they are at risk of falling victim to predators who can take advantage of their separation from family and caregivers. Recent press accounts have described horror stories, with minors allegedly exploited from North Carolina to Los Angeles. Precise figures on victims of sexual trafficking or forced labor are impossible to find because the illegal operations are underground.

“For everyone we know about, there could be two, three, or even four times more,” said Lederer, a leading American researcher on human trafficking. 

The process of illegal immigration, which has been a cash cow for smuggling organizations, also claims victims. Minors may fall prey to groomers or recruiters and be forced to function as lookouts, guides, or spies, according to the Department of Defense’s Combating Trafficking in Persons unit.

Even federal agencies involved in finding minors are tight-lipped about their operations. In recent weeks, a Memphis Safe Task Force, led by the U.S. Marshals Service and including teams from ICE and Customs and Border Protection, has rescued 116 juveniles. How many of those were unaccompanied minor border crossers is unclear. The U.S. Marshals Service did not respond to questions.

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has been following the issue for years. Federal whistleblowers at his hearings have described a haphazard system for caring for unaccompanied minors, in which information is not shared among federal agencies, contractors, and law enforcement. Last year, Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) whistleblowers said that contractors would release minors to sketchy, unverified partners, suspicious strip-mall businesses, and, in one Michigan case, in an open field.

Prompted by those reports, Grassley sent referrals to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding potentially criminal behavior by more than “100 suspicious sponsors” last year. But the Biden-Harris administration failed to fully respond to two-thirds of the subpoenas issued by law enforcement. In the last four years, there were more than 65,000 reports of possible illegal acts ignored or dismissed, of which roughly 7,300, or 13%, involved human trafficking, according to an Inspector General’s report.

The Trump administration claims it has processed some 28% of the backlog, leading to 36 investigations accepted for prosecution, seven indictments, 25 arrest warrants, 11 arrests, and three convictions.

Blaming the Problem on Paperwork

When Vance spoke about the exploitation of unaccompanied minors in the October 2024 vice-presidential debate, he took his 300,000 figure from a recent report from the DHS’s Inspector General. Within hours, left-wing groups and press outlets sprang to the Biden administration’s defense, downplaying the severity of the situation and insisting the huge number “lacked context.”

Some pro-immigration groups said it was merely “a missing paperwork problem,” according to the Acacia Center for Justice’s Unaccompanied Children Program. It was a “premature” conclusion that they were lost, said the American Immigration Council, while the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights said they were not “effectively lost.”

RCI reached out to all three of those groups repeatedly, asking how they assessed the current situation with unaccompanied minors and whether it has improved under Trump. Only the Acacia Center responded, and then only to repeat its point about paperwork.

“This figure stems from gaps in ICE paperwork, not actual disappearances,” the center’s Deputy Chief of Programs Michael Corradini said. “Many children were never issued Notices to Appear in immigration court, so their absence from court records does not mean they are missing.”

But Vance’s total was not inaccurate, according to the inspector general’s report. It found that, in addition to the 32,000 cases in which no address was given for where the minor went, there were another 43,000 cases where the minor failed to respond to a summons to immigration court, and 233,000 cases where neither addresses nor phone numbers received a response. In other words, more than 300,000.

The $23 Billion Network that Flopped

Since the DHS was created, most of the unaccompanied minors have been handled by the ORR. That agency, in turn, will release the minor to a sponsor, and it is at this point that the government often loses touch with the immigrant, several experts told RCI.

Neither ORR nor those agencies above it – the Administration for Children and Families and the Department of Health & Human Services – responded to multiple requests for comment.

Through ORR, taxpayers spent $23.1 billion on unaccompanied minor-related grants and contracts during Biden’s term, according to usaspending.gov. The office relies on a sprawling network to house the migrant minors and put them together with sponsors. Contracts and grants related to unaccompanied minors comprise the biggest chunk of the office’s spending each year, accounting for more than 91% in FY2021. 

Construction companies like Rapid Deployment Inc., of Mobile, Ala., were paid at least $3.5 billion, and nearly $200 million went to the defense contractor General Dynamics of Connecticut. Much of the funding went to nonprofits, religious charities, and non-governmental organizations that operate foster homes and release the minors to sponsors. Consulting companies, lawyers, and universities also benefited.

Despite the big outlays of money, it seems no group of officials kept tabs on the minors. 

Congress has identified some misspending in the program. North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop said last November that more than $100 million was obligated, and nearly $40 million spent, for an unaccompanied minor home in Greensboro, N.C., that never housed anyone.

At least one major vendor, Southwest Key Programs Inc. in Texas, has been sued for mistreatment of minors. As the largest housing provider for unaccompanied children, the group received at least $2 billion over just three years, from FY2021 to FY2023, according to government records. Last summer, the Justice Department sued Southwest Key, alleging that for years “multiple Southwest Key employees subjected unaccompanied children in their care to repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct and a hostile housing environment, including severe sexual abuse and rape.”

Federal tax returns for some of these nonprofits show that the ORR contracts and grants proved very lucrative. Southwest Key, for example, went from reporting revenues of $417.8 million in 2020 to more than $900 million in 2023 and 2024. In those last two years, the Austin-based nonprofit’s CEO, Anselmo Villarreal, was paid more than $1.1 million, while dozens of top executives received annual pay packages ranging from $250,000 to $700,000. In those same two years, Southwest Key spent 76% of its nearly $1 billion in revenue on “salaries, other compensation and benefits,” according to tax returns collected by ProPublica.

Endeavors, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, was paid more than $2 billion, including a $1.3 billion contract in FY2022, and at least $720 million in the other three years of Biden’s term. According to an audit, the nonprofit had minuscule revenues from 2011 to 2020. In 2020, when the nonprofit reported $52.5 million in revenue, it had 10 executives making six figures, topped by CEO Jon Allman at $317,301. In 2023, those in the Endeavors’ C-suite fared even better, with CEO Charles H. Fulghum pulling down $638,472 and three other executives making between $390,000 and $493,000, tax records show.

Another San Antonio nonprofit, Compass Connections, grew exponentially through unaccompanied minor-related government deals worth nearly $700 million. Compass reported less than $300,000 in revenue for the years 2019 to 2021. Then Compass caught fire, reporting $192 million in revenue in 2023 and $434 million the following year. In 2023, its Chairman Kevin Dinnin received more than $1.3 million in compensation from Compass and related organizations, tax records show.

Southwest Key, Endeavors, and Compass didn’t respond to requests for comment on the services they provided. Other groups that received much smaller sums, such as the Vera Institute for Justice and the Los Angeles County Fair Association, also declined to reveal anything about how they helped the undocumented minors. 

This prodigious spending appears to have come to a halt in FY2025, which ended last month. In that year, the ORR spent $51.9 million.

Sen. Grassley has also been stonewalled by these same groups when he sought information on their services, according to his office. Concerned about possible waste and fraud, Grassley wrote to two dozen contractors twice in 2024, and while some did not respond at all, those that did “provided incomplete and obstructive responses.”

“It really is horrific, what’s been going on,” said Lederer, the former government advisor. “Unfortunately, we usually only learn about it when a child is rescued or is hurt badly. The people that facilitated all this have circled the wagons about what went very, very wrong.”

The fact that Syria’s head of state got his start working for ISIS, and was a founding member of Syrian al-Qaeda, continues to produce embarrassing headlines. 

One full year after former president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown and fled to Moscow, Canada has very belatedly removed President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s militia group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, according to a Friday statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry. As part of the new action, Syria has also been removed from its list of state sponsors of terrorism (a list the country had been on over many years of the Assad government).

Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, founded and for years headed up the terror group HTS in Idlib province. HTS is the group that took control of Damascus after the collapse of the Syrian army in December 2024.

“Following extensive review, the Government of Canada has removed Syria from Canada’s List of Foreign State Supporters of Terrorism under the State Immunity Act, as well as removed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the List of Terrorist Entities under the Canadian Criminal Code,” the ministry said.

The US was the first to act, having lifted a $10 million bounty on Sharaa within the months after he seized power, followed by a full US delisting.

The Canadian foreign ministry further said that the decision was “not taken lightly.” It stated, “These measures are in line with recent decisions taken by our allies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, and follow the efforts by the Syrian transitional government to advance Syria’s stability, build an inclusive and secure future for its citizens, and work alongside global partners to reinforce regional stability and counter terrorism.”

So Canada seems to be admitting that HTS is indeed linked to al-Qaeda, and was properly designated in years past as a terror group, but that now it is merely going along with its allies the UK and US which removed the legal designation earlier.

The ministry still sought to stress that Canada “remains committed … to counter global security threats, such as those posed by Al-Qaeda” and ISIS (Daesh).

President Sharaa and his HTS fighters – many which now fill up top government positions – have lately been trying to make a show of ‘counter ISIS missions’. However, it is Alawite, Christian, and Druze communities which have suffered repeat attacks by Sharaa’s Islamist forces in recent months. 

Western countries have moved to normalize HTS, but nothing fundamentally has changed in their hardline Islamist ideology…

Video footage shows journalist James Longman advising rebels in Damascus, Syria, about the ISIS logo on their uniforms.

One of the rebels attempts to explain that the emblem does not represent ISIS, while the man wearing it is seen quickly removing the symbol. pic.twitter.com/qhZpkJiozJ

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) December 16, 2024

Various reports have also noted that in some cases HTS members sport ISIS patches, and do little to try and hide it. Still, mainstream outlets like CNN haven’t covered this much, and have by and large ‘moved on’ from coverage of Syria, now with Assad out of the way – as the Western powers had long sought in fueling the proxy war for regime change.

Via The Cradle

Over the past four years, the Ukrainian government “systematically sabotaged” oversight of the country’s state-owned companies and weapons procurement processes, “allowing graft to flourish,” a freshly published New York Times investigation has revealed.

The investigation details how the government of Volodymyr Zelensky sidelined outside experts from the US and EU serving on advisory boards responsible for monitoring spending, appointing executives, and preventing corruption.

“President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kiev even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around,” the NYT report says.

The investigation was published amid a corruption scandal centering on close associates of the Ukrainian president. Anti-corruption authorities have accused members of Zelensky’s inner circle of embezzling $100 million from the state-owned nuclear power company, Energoatom.

“Mr. Zelensky’s administration has blamed Energoatom’s supervisory board for failing to stop the corruption. But it was Mr. Zelensky’s government itself that neutered Energoatom’s supervisory board,” the NYT writes.

The investigation also found that Zelensky sidelined the supervisory boards of the state-owned electricity company Ukrenergo and Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency.

European leaders have justified funneling billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to Ukraine despite knowledge of the systematic corruption and theft plaguing the country. “We do care about good governance, but we have to accept that risk,” said Christian Syse, the special envoy to Ukraine from Norway.

Detective Ruslan Magamedrasulov from the NABU, who was jailed in July due to accusations by the SBU of attempting to sell technical info to Russia, has been released.

Today, during the appeal hearing, the judge ruled to free the NABU detective from custody without any preventive… pic.twitter.com/9LOCV8NqKy

— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 3, 2025

“Because it’s war. Because it’s in our own interest to help Ukraine financially. Because Ukraine is defending Europe from Russian attacks,” he added.

Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned late last month amid the Energoatom corruption scandal and just hours after police raided his home. Ukrainska Pravda reported that he had left for Israel, of which he is a citizen, just hours before the raid.

Yermak is widely considered the second-most-powerful official in the country, with influence over domestic politics, military issues, and foreign policy, Axios noted.

For everyone who still believes the bedtime stories that Zelensky and Yermak have nothing to do with top-level corruption in the energy and defense sectors — you might want to read the latest interview with NABU detective Ruslan Magamedrasulov.

Zelensky’s loyal attack dogs… pic.twitter.com/oZvNMSjpyy

— Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta) November 19, 2025

Businessman Timur Mindich, who co-founded the entertainment company Kvartal 95 with Zelensky, allegedly led the embezzlement scheme. Mindich also escaped to Israel, where he enjoys citizenship, hours before a separate raid on his luxury apartment by police from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

“Timur had an apartment with golden toilets that was in the same building as Zelensky’s,” a former Ukrainian government official told Fox News.

While the U.S. ended federal Prohibition in 1933, local restrictions on alcohol still persist across the country to this day.

As Visual Capitalist shows in the map below, based on work by Wikipedia user Mr. Matté, many counties remain “dry,” banning the sale of alcohol entirely, or “moist,” allowing only limited sales.

Where Alcohol is Still Restricted

The data, crowdsourced from local government sites and media reports, reveals that alcohol restrictions are concentrated in the South, particularly in states like Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Arkansas stands out the most in the map above, with a patchwork of red and orange counties indicating either total bans or partial restrictions on alcohol sales. In fact, the state has long struggled with outdated liquor laws, where even grocery stores in “moist” counties may be prohibited from selling wine or spirits.

Alcohol Status: It’s Complicated

Here’s what the terminology means:

• Dry county: No alcohol sales allowed by law

• Moist county: Alcohol sales are partially restricted (e.g. allowed in restaurants but not in stores)

• Wet county: Alcohol can be sold without county-level restriction

Even within “wet” counties, individual towns may choose to remain dry, and in “dry” counties, specific towns or establishments can apply for exemptions, creating a legal maze for consumers and businesses alike.

Declining Dryness Over Time

According to the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association, the number of dry counties has dropped significantly since the mid-20th century. In Texas, for example, only three dry counties remain.

Nonetheless, the persistence of these regulations reflects longstanding cultural attitudes and the influence of local referenda. While national consumption of spirits is rising, especially in certain states, the map shows that alcohol availability is still very much a local matter.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Americans are spending less on spirits…besides tequila on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Michael T. Flynn LTG USA (RET),

The American people have just taken their first full breath after surviving an attempt to smother the Republic through a Marxist-inspired cultural campaign carried out largely through the administrative state, media, academia, and politicized elements of the national security bureaucracy. Most citizens did not fully perceive it while it was happening. Many in the intelligence community either passively accepted it or actively furthered it. The architects of this project are not finished, but their effort has been damaged and delayed. It is only by the grace of God that the country has endured to this point.

The American version of the cultural revolution is distinct from the Maoist model that ravaged China in the twentieth century. It did not coalesce around a single charismatic revolutionary figure. Instead, it spread along the arteries of bureaucracy, higher education, corporate structures, and activist networks. The long march through the institutions, as described by Antonio Gramsci, became the operational template. Rather than Red Guards filling the streets under the orders of an identifiable supreme leader, the United States experienced a coordinated convergence of agencies, NGOs, foundations, media outlets, and activist fronts, all advancing the same ideological project under different labels.

Because federal agencies differ widely in size, mission, culture, and internal resistance, this revolution unfolded unevenly. It never achieved total dominance in a single decisive stroke. Instead, it advanced by fragmentary gains and suffered fragmentary defeats. Wherever the ideological project captured an HR department, a training pipeline, a public school system, or a central media platform, it encountered resistance in state governments, independent media, individual courts, and networks of citizens who refused to comply. This piecemeal quality of implementation slowed the collapse and gave the American people time to see what was happening and respond.

Even as these battles played out in public, darker currents moved beneath the surface. We now assess that thousands of religious and conservative federal employees were quietly identified and referred to a little-known federal entity, the Pre-Trial Services Agency. Accounts and initial documentation indicate that this agency may have been used to catalog individuals solely on the basis of ideology and religious conviction, under the pretext of January 6, and vaccine-related non-compliance. The intention appears to have been not only administrative removal but also potential criminalization. This matter demands immediate, transparent investigation by any future administration that claims to be serious about the rule of law.

To understand the broader context, it is necessary to define what we mean by the concept of the welfare state. We are not merely describing traditional social programs. We refer instead to a constellation of fully funded professional activist groups that present themselves as separate causes but in reality form a single revolutionary bloc. Over the last decade, organizations under the banners of antifascism, racial justice, radical feminism, abortion on demand, certain LGBTQ plus factions, environmental extremism, and gun control advocacy have shown remarkable cohesion. They share donors, staff, narrative frameworks, and street-level tactics. Their membership overlaps. Their messaging is synchronized. They rapidly support one another’s campaigns and protests.

These groups present themselves as grassroots movements. In reality, they function much more like a professionalized revolutionary caste. Their core is composed not of ordinary citizens but of trained activists who treat agitation as a full-time occupation. They are funded through a mix of private foundations, wealthy donors, and, in some cases, federal and state resources. They serve as the street and digital arm of a broader ideological project whose goal is not reform but transformation. They are bound together by a worldview that is explicitly revolutionary and implicitly Marxist, even if many of their foot soldiers do not use that language.

Within this structure, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plays a central role. DEI is not a harmless corporate fad. It is a cultural and psychological weapon system. In practice, DEI training and enforcement operate as a mechanism for behavioral conditioning, using guilt, struggle sessions, and the constant threat of social or professional punishment to bring individuals into line. The language of microaggressions, privilege, and systemic bias functions as a soft form of ideological policing. It compels people to monitor their speech, second-guess their instincts, and submit to an ever-expanding set of forbidden words and mandatory rituals.

This is not inclusion. It is coerced conformity disguised as virtue. The outcomes within institutions are fear, silence, and self-censorship. People learn quickly that specific questions cannot be asked, certain facts cannot be stated, and certain perspectives cannot be acknowledged without risking their careers. This is not an accidental side effect. It is the point. If you can compel people to lie about obvious realities in public, you own them. DEI is therefore best understood as a domestic application of political reeducation, aligned with Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches to cultural change.

Red washing is the term we use for the systematic erasure of material that exposes Marxism’s history, tactics, and consequences. When civics and traditional American history are removed from curricula and replaced with grievance narratives, the ground is prepared for a new ideology. When the record of socialist atrocities is buried or dismissed, whole generations lose the ability to recognize patterns that their grandparents would have seen immediately. This did not happen accidentally. Higher education, media, and entertainment became primary targets for this rewriting of memory.

By 2020, the United States had been subjected to decades of this cultural reshaping. The country entered that year already weakened and divided. The combined impact of a global pandemic, a Chinese Communist Party information campaign, and unprecedented civil unrest brought the country to a state of exhaustion. Law enforcement was undermanned and demoralized. The medical system was stretched to the limit. Schools at every level were shuttered or reduced to screens. The basic functions that distinguish a first-world nation were placed under siege.

These conditions were ideal for revolutionary actors who understood the Bolshevik concept of the spark. In Mao’s China, youth brigades became instruments of chaos once police authority had been stripped and traditional structures weakened. In the United States, policies calling for the defunding and delegitimizing of police, combined with political protection for rioters, produced something similar in spirit. The rolling riots of 2020 were not a spontaneous eruption. They were a conditioning phase, designed to hollow out public confidence, normalize political violence from the left, and set the emotional stage for a more targeted crisis.

That crisis came on January 6. Here, the doctrine of moderated violence is essential to understand. This tactic seeks to provoke an adversary into a desperate or unwise act that can then be weaponized to justify a crackdown. For a year, Americans watched their cities burn and were told it was mostly peaceful. Then, in a single day, a protest on Capitol grounds was framed as an insurrection, an existential threat to “democracy,” and the moral foundation for a years-long campaign of arrests, surveillance, and persecution. The left’s riots stopped instantly. The narrative flipped overnight. That abrupt shift reveals design, not coincidence.

January 6 was the planned inflection point that allowed the bureaucratic and activist alliance to declare open season on conservative and religious Americans. It became the lens through which all dissent could be labeled dangerous and disloyal. The people who entered the Capitol that day, many of them peaceful and bewildered, became the pretext for a broader project aimed at remaking the national security apparatus from within.

What came next moved beyond street-level activism or cultural capture. It entered the bloodstream of the national security state. The aftermath of January 6, the collapse of Afghanistan, and the federal vaccine mandates combined into an unprecedented attempt to remake the federal workforce through coercion, intimidation, and ideological purification. Inside the CIA and across the national security apparatus, the internal revolution reached its apex and then began to fracture under its own contradictions.

Societal collapse is never a singular event. It is a process.

*   *   * 

The search term “color revolution” has been catapulted into the mainstream. Google Search Trends shows the term has soared to the highest levels since the Marxist BLM rioters began burning city blocks across Democratic-run metro areas in 2020.

Last month, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told Alex Jones that the Trump administration must address the nation about what he called a sinister regime-change plot, one operating through billionaire-funded NGOs. 

Breaking! General Flynn Calls On President Trump To Immediately Address The Nation Concerning The Color Revolution Being Fomented By The Seditious 6 And The CIA As He Lays Out The String Of Illegal Investigations And Law-fare That The Leftist Have Engaged In Since DJT’s Historic… pic.twitter.com/HYeXQwCNim

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) November 26, 2025

“People need to understand that if this operation succeeds, things will move quickly – Trump would be removed from the scene almost immediately. Elite defection isn’t an early warning sign of an overthrow; it’s the final stage before one,” DataRepublican recently warned, adding, “This is why the ‘Seditious Six’ must face the most severe penalties the law allows.”

To sum up, for the first time, the American people are beginning to learn about the regime-change efforts that Democrats and their billionaire-funded NGO network have been pursuing over the past decade. It amounts to nothing but a color revolution. Time for reforms, especially across the nonprofit world. 

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

The federal government said it would withhold Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program (SNAP) funds for states that do not report user data. 

The news came from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins earlier this week, following months of requests and investigations into instances of fraud within the program. 

Here’s what to know about the change to the nutrition program.

The Announcement 

Rollins made the announcement on Dec. 2 during a White House cabinet meeting, saying that states that have not complied with the federal request have only a few days to fix the issue.

The USDA secretary said the administration “has begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states” next week ”until they comply.“

According to Rollins, 29 Republican-leaning states have already provided SNAP data to her department. However, 21 ”blue states continue to say no” to the federal request. 

The federal response to the lack of cooperation comes months after an early May request by the administering department, calling on states to hand over data detailing how and to whom the taxpayer funds are distributed.

The USDA noted that the intent behind the request was to ensure that no fraud or abuse existed in the program, frequently referenced as food stamps. 

“President Trump is rightfully requiring the federal government to have access to all programs it funds,” said Rollins, “and SNAP is no exception. For years, this program has been on autopilot, with no USDA insight into real-time data. The Department is focused on appropriate and lawful participation in SNAP, and today’s request is one of many steps to ensure SNAP is preserved for only those eligible.”

Of the 28 states that have sent the data, all except for North Carolina have Republican governors.

Billions at Stake 

SNAP costs federal taxpayers around $100 billion per year, $94 billion of which goes to actual food benefits, and the rest is spent on administrative costs.

Administrative costs are currently shared by federal and state governments, with states covering roughly half of SNAP’s administrative expenses. That share is set to shrink soon, as the federal government plans to reduce the state contribution to 25 percent.

How much each state receives varies, as does the portion of the fund that goes to administrative costs. The state of California alone received more than $1.2 billion for SNAP administration fees, which was around 10 percent of it’s total SNAP funding allocation. 

Florida received $84 million for administration alone, which was just over 1 percent of it’s total SNAP funding. However, Wyoming received less than $9 million for administration fees, which was 12 percent of its SNAP dollars received. 

This means that in addition to the loss of nutrition support funding, billions that go to state administration fees will be lost for those states that refuse transparency requests from the Trump administration. 

The administration will likely face legal hiccups, as the attorneys general from 21 states have already been the subject of a lawsuit over concerns that the states allegedly illegally blocked the authorized food aid to certain legal immigrants.

Current Fraud 

Since the beginning of the USDA information gathering in May, there have been more than 120 individuals arrested for food stamp fraud, according to the agency’s report last month.

The USDA worked with the Office of the Inspector General, which has resulted in 63 convictions and fines and fees exceeding $16.5 million.

This is due to data from 29 states alone, which found that more than 180,000 deceased individuals were receiving food stamps, and another 500,000 people were getting twice as much as they should have been.

“We believe there’s even more fraud and abuse,” Rollins said following news of the fraud discovery.

She later added that “we have to make sure for those who really need this benefit that we are able to make sure that it’s going to the right people,” and promised “structural changes” to the program. 

The audit has led to the removal of 700,000 individuals from the SNAP program already.

According to research from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, overpayment rates climbed from 2 percent in 2012 to more than 10 percent in 2023.

“The levels of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs have never been higher,” the report reads. “Although these types of avoidable inefficiencies have always been too high, they have recently surged with the unusual degree of federal spending brought on by the global pandemic.”

That upward trend appears to have continued, as a June 2024 report from the USDA found that almost 12 percent, or around $10.5 billion, of SNAP payments were found to be improper.

During a recent interview with Fox News, Rollins mentioned one individual who was found to be receiving benefits in six different states. 

“It is time to drastically reform this program, so that we can make sure those who are truly needy, truly vulnerable, are getting what they need, and the rest of the corruption goes away, and we can serve the American taxpayer,” she said.

What SNAP Does

On average,  SNAP recipients receive around $177 a month in benefits that are delivered on an electronic card. About 42 million Americans spend that money on food items in participating stores.

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed this summer,  imposed new requirements for SNAP eligibility, including removing the eligibility for certain groups of immigrants.

In November, Rollins announced that app recipients of the program would need to meet reapplication requirements in efforts to “clean up” the food assistance program.

SNAP’s purpose is to raise the nutritional intake of low-income individuals by increasing their ability to purchase healthy food. Participants in the SNAP program have been found to have improved health outcomes, including reduced food insecurity and lower risk of heart disease and obesity.

“We really want to make sure those who are receiving this supplemental nutrition benefit—it was never meant for the long term—are really those who need it,” Rollins said in a recent interview.

“Whatever that reapplication looks like again, we’re working on that right now, but it won’t be too onerous. And for the families that really need it, we’ll make sure that they’re going to get it.”