Food and despotism

Withholding food benefits is obviously morally depraved. It is also utterly despotic. The drafters of the original American state constitutions and the eventual federal constitution believed that to be legitimate, a government must be committed to and must enable individuals' pre-legal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They believed that a government that does not protect the lives and well-being of those who live under it is not owed the loyalty of those people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.  – Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

Depriving people of food is a direct assault on their lives, safety, and happiness. A government that does this displays the sort of tyrannical disregard for the well-being of people living under it that prompted the Revolutionary War and the formation of American constitutional democracy.

After the Boston Tea Party, the English Parliament passed the Boston Port Act, directing the blockade of Boston Harbor so as to force Bostonians into obedience to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts. This blockade "damaged the provincial economy, drove up unemployment, and starved the Boston people." Yet British measures meant to inflict the most basic kind of suffering on colonists had the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than knuckle under to the English Parliament, the colonies sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress, which issued the Declaration of Independence.

For the past several weeks, the President of the United States, a member of his Cabinet, and the Republican-controlled Congress intentionally blocked millions of Americans’ access to food. They deprived states of funding for November's benefits so as to pressure Senate Democrats to drop their demand that any bill to end the government shutdown also protect tax credits for health insurance. In practice, this extortionary tactic targeted blue states, which dominate the states with the highest percentages of their populations reliant on SNAP. By starving blue state residents, Republicans sought to force the Democratic Senators from those states to stop fighting for lower healthcare costs.

While the Congressional battle went on, action in the federal courts proceeded. Two lawsuits began with the plaintiffs suing to have USDA release contingency funds for SNAP that had already been appropriated by Congress prior to the government shutdown. USDA’s intransigence continued throughout the litigation. Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins refused to comply with court orders to fund SNAP while the lawsuits were resolved and attempted to claw back whatever funds had flowed briefly to the states.

In short, during the litigation, the Trump executive branch did every last thing it could to keep people hungry.

On Tuesday, November 11, the full Roberts Supreme Court joined in, extending through November 13 an administrative stay of a lower court's order to fully fund November SNAP benefits. The Roberts Court could have lifted the administrative stay and taken however long it wanted either to declare the lawsuit moot (if a law funding SNAP is enacted) or to decide the merits of the case. In the meantime, people would have been getting their November SNAP benefits. Instead, between the Trump executive branch and its pet Supreme Court, people who relied on SNAP were hung out to dry for as long as possible.

I doubt the demand on food banks will recede greatly any time soon. President Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress, and the Roberts Supreme Court have created fear and anxiety about the reliability of SNAP. People will be looking for backup and supplemental sources of food for a long time to come.

In the United States today we again live under a tyrannical government, controlled by people willing to starve Americans in order to get their way. We must see the Republican assault on SNAP for what it is: further evidence that the current federal government directly opposes pre-legal rights enjoyed by each and every person in America, rights to life and to the pursuit of happiness. We now have a government that actively subverts the safety of those living under it. We must return the control of the United States government to those who will restore its legitimacy. We must have a federal government that is for the people.