This has come down today:
The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown.
The Democrats are already attacking it for the cruelty that it is, but at least to me it is somewhat more ominous. Lots of people who were stupid enough to vote for Trump are on food stamps, and this step will just further alienate these people from the Republican Party. Despite what the Republicans want the media to believe and/or endlessly repeat, by and large the American people blame the Republicans for what is currently happening. Trump, and by extension the Republicans generally, have reached new lows in polling and last weeks elections demonstrated that the tide is turning rather dramatically. And while I’m sure someone on Fox will come up with a way to blame Democrats for this latest bit of cruelty, even though there is no logical way you can do that, given that it is an arbitrary act on the part of a Republican controlled government, very few of the affected people will believe it.
So we have a situation in which the Republican Party is needlessly alienating its own potential voters. There are only two reasons they would do that. The first is that they are unbelievably stupid and don’t see the potential harm to their own electoral prospects.
I’d like to believe that is the reason they are doing it, but personally I think the second reason is more likely. They expect, with the help of gerrymandering, a complicit Supreme Court and other devices, to steal enough elections to keep control of the government despite what the majority of voters might want. I would hope that the Democrats in Congress and Democratic leaders nationwide would be aware of this distinct possibility and do what they can to prevent the fascists from doing away with what’s left of our democracy. They should keep in mind that the Republicans have been accusing them of stealing elections for years, and it is a proven fact by now that when Republicans make accusations they are really making confessions.