Marble Falls       With Trump’s war in Iran, prices at the pump are way over four bucks and up 43% since the bombs burst, worries about artificial intelligence are increasing, momentum is building in opposition to data centers along with daily speculation on the coming midterms, while we are trying to remember on a regular basis what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, so who has the bandwidth to keep up with the Trump administration’s continued war against the poor enabled by the big bad budget act’s transference of costs to benefit recipients to pay for continued tax cuts for the rich?  The answer is straightforward:  almost nobody!  Furthermore, that’s what the administration is counting on!

In talking to various people, it’s easy to understand that part of the problem is that the cuts to Medicaid recipients mandated by the budget bill to hit in full force until January 1, 2027.  The expected numbers of people who will be pushed off of the rolls or who will be blocked access, despite being economically eligible will be a tsunami coming then impacting many multiple millions more.  According to an earlier report by Politico,

  Medicaid:  An estimated 10.5 million to 11.8 million+ individuals are projected to lose coverage over the next decade due to new work requirements and restricted eligibility.

  SNAP: Approximately 2.4 million to 4 million people are estimated to lose benefits in a typical month once changes are fully implemented.

It’s also already happening for food stamp recipients.  A Commonwealth report finds the scale of the pain for SNAP folks is perhaps more extensive, even as the numbers expected from Medicaid cuts are higher.

• Recipient Numbers: The projected decrease in Medicaid recipients is roughly 2.5 to 3 times higher than the projected decrease in SNAP recipients.
• Impact on Programs: While Medicaid has higher overall beneficiary losses, the relative impact is deeper for SNAP, with an estimated 36% cut to the program by 2034, compared to roughly 15% for Medicaid.
• Timing: SNAP participation dropped by roughly 2.5 million people between July 2025 and December 2025, following the immediate enforcement of new work requirements. Medicaid cuts are expected to deepen significantly between 2026 and 2028 as state-level restrictions and work requirements take full effect.

That was then, now in mid-2026, by some measures more than 4 million have already lost food stamps, according to federal data.  In short, distributed across the country, the Trump administration has already succeeded in making lower income families markedly poorer and hungrier.  It’s like a bomb went off impacting millions and nobody noticed, because it wasn’t happening to them, and they were caught in the fog of some many administration attacks and theatrics and our own impotence.

The harm in the local communities is huge though and likely to be permanent.  As Commonwealth also pointed out, while the Trump government is claiming savings to continue its wealthy tax breaks, besides their willingness to have the poor pay in hardship, they are actually also transferring the pain and cost to the states.

In 2029, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would cause state gross domestic products to fall by $154 billion, 18 percent more than the $131 billion they would save the federal government. The cuts would result in the loss of 1.22 million jobs nationwide, equivalent to a 0.8-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate. States with higher rates of poverty would likely be harmed more. State and local tax revenues would fall by $12 billion.

The administration’s assault isn’t over either.  One new rule being proposed by the White House that might push another 400,000 off the roles who receive Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities whose parents or relatives receive SNAP benefits by changing the way income is calculated or exempted in determining eligibility.  They would do so by refusing to exempt in-kind assistance from families like free rent.

Are there no limits to the draconian pain the administration is willing to inflict on lower income families?  It seems not.

Where are the protest and rage?  It’s horrid to contemplate what kind of a country we have become internationally, but part and parcel, should be the concern about who have we become domestically?   The midterms won’t fix this.  We have to do it ourselves.