President Jeb Bush Will Kill Food Stamps And Welfare, Substitute Them With Man-Woman Marriage
“Marriage matters when it comes to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity,” Jeb Bush says.
Jeb Bush has unveiled a new policy statement that would kill the top federal programs that provide food and financial support for some of the most-needy families – including children – in America. The Republican former Florida governor announced Friday that as president, he would eliminate the federal food stamps program known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
Combined, these programs serve an estimated 50 million Americans with about $90 billion in support annually and are credited with literally helping to keep Americans alive, housed, clothed, and fed. If anything, we should be investing more dollars, not less, into these vital programs.
In 2015 overall, SNAP provided about 46 million people an average of $126.83 per month (yes, per month, not week).
In March of 2015, about three million children were the beneficiaries of TANF.
In short, Bush would literally take food out of children’s mouths, and substitute those federal programs with ones that promote heterosexual marriage.
“Marriage matters when it comes to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity,” Bush’s new policy states. “Children raised in married, intact families do better than children raised in single parent families on a whole host of measures, including graduation rates, criminal justice involvement and earnings as adults. But too often in discussions of poverty, this vital issue is left out of the discussion. It won’t be in my administration.”
An intact family is defined as “a nuclear family in which membership has remained constant, in the absence of divorce or other divisive factors,” generally referring to biological, i.e., male and female parents who marry and raise children. Bush didn’t need to include the “intact” distinction, but chose to.
“As president, I will join with other political leaders, educators and civic leaders to promote marriage as the most reliable route to family stability and resources,” Bush continues.Â
Despite Jeb Bush’s repeated claims that he is his own man and would not be the same president that his brother was, this new policy of promoting (heterosexual) marriage is exactly what President George W. Bush did, to the tune of $500 million, at minimum. And it failed.
WATCH:Â Jeb Bush Says ‘There Are No Radical Christians’
A 2007 study concluded:
Government marriage promotion efforts emerged from and reinforce the work of rightist fatherhood groups and Christian Right organizations.
The arguments in favor of marriage and fatherhood promotion as a cure for poverty are ultimately ideological in nature. There is no solid evidence from the social sciences that marriage results in a higher income for poor women.
Government marriage promotion experiments are funded at the expense of proven poverty relief programs.
Government marriage promotion initiatives are intertwined with the dramatic erosion of Church/State separation under the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiatives.
The arguments for government marriage promotion programs often reflect racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes, and the programs themselves disproportionately target communities of color – especially African Americans.
Bush also claims, wrongly, that the federal welfare system he would kill, “penalizes work, hurts families and creates countless opportunities for graft and abuse,” and “trap families in perpetual poverty.”
“In the place of these failed programs, states will be given Right to Rise Grants. These grants will allow states to meet the needs of poor families, in the way that makes most sense in each state.”
Jon Green at AmericaBlog rightly notes that states would have the option to not set up these grant programs at all.
With SNAP and TANF dead, tens of millions of Americans, including children, would literally be left starving to death.
Green adds, “the poor won’t starve Bush argues, if only they get their sexual houses in order and shack up with the right people.”
“Gutting one of the most successful anti-poverty programs we currently have and replacing it with Catholic social teaching is a nice effort, but it’s likely too little, too late to put him back in contention,” Green concludes.
Bush, it should be noted, is the son and great-grandson U.S. presidents, comes from tremendous wealth, and has never displayed any understanding of what eliminating these programs would do.
A few months ago, his campaign flailing, Jeb! announced a rebranding and retooling initiative known as “Jeb Can Fix It.” It failed.
For the sake of the lives and well-being of tens of millions of Americans, so should Jeb Bush’s campaign for president.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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