Friday, October 31, 2025
SUPREME COURT CLASH – JUSTICE JACKSON DESTROYS TRUMP’S ARGUMENT IN SECONDS
GA SNAP Payments Ordered During Government Shutdown, Courts Say | Atlanta, GA Patch
GA SNAP Payments Ordered During Government Shutdown, Courts Say
Two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration must continue funding SNAP using contingency funds during the government shutdown. The rulings came after the USDA planned to freeze SNAP payments, citing funding limitations. The rulings are likely to face appeals, but they protect millions of families, seniors, and veterans from losing food assistance.
It wasn't immediately clear how quickly the EBT cards that GA beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling.
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Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump's administration must continue to fund SNAP to Georgians and other recipients, the nation's biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown.
The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November.
The rulings came a day before the U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown.
Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday cast blame on Democrats for the lasting shutdown, specifically Georgia-based U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. The governor has been adamant about Congress ending the stalemate.
“In the latest example of D.C. Democrats putting bad politics over the people they claim to care about, Senators Ossoff and Warnock and others in their party are denying hundreds of thousands of Georgians the SNAP benefits they need to feed their families,” Kemp said in a news release.
“Their repeated failure to reopen the federal government will be felt at kitchen tables all around the state, right as we approach the holidays. While they waste time playing the blame game, my office is in contact with food banks, nonprofit organizations and community partners across the state to hear feedback on how the shutdown is affecting them and to assess current demand. But the only way to quickly and effectively resolve this issue is for Democrats to vote to reopen the federal government immediately."
Kemp told reporters he was worried that if he spent Georgia's $14 billion surplus to help with the loss of SNAP, the funding may not get reimbursed. The feds have said they are not required to return money to states if they step in and aid the impending crisis.
RELATED: Kemp Rejects Idea To Spend $14B Surplus To Fund SNAP Amid Government Shutdown
The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation's social safety net — and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally.
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.
The administration said it wasn't allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic officials argued that not only could that money be used, but it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion is available for the cause.
In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled from the bench in a case filed by cities and nonprofits that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds, and he asked for an update on progress by Monday.
Along with ordering the federal government to use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, McConnell ruled that all previous work requirement waivers must continue to be honored. The USDA during the shutdown has terminated existing waivers that exempted work requirements for older adults, veterans and others.
"The court's ruling protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight and upholds the principle that no one in America should go hungry," Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said of the Rhode Island decision.
There were similar elements in the Boston case, where U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in a written opinion that the USDA has to pay for SNAP, calling the suspension "unlawful." She ordered the federal government to advise the court by Monday as to whether they will use the contingency funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits for November or fully fund the program "using both contingency funds and additional available funds.
"Defendants' suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments," she wrote. "This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program."
It wasn't immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.
The rulings are likely to face appeals.
States, food banks and SNAP recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries. Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.
The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the debit cards used in the program.
At a Washington news conference earlier Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of SNAP for long.
Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a "disgusting dereliction of duty" by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of health care funds.
A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four's net income after certain expenses can't exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children."
Thursday, October 30, 2025
Revealed: ICE violates its own policy by holding people in secretive rooms for days or weeks | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | The Guardian
Revealed: ICE violates its own policy by holding people in secretive rooms for days or weeks
"Guardian analysis finds ICE increasingly keeps people in holding rooms with little oversight, as some facilities see a 600% rise in detention length
US immigration officials have been increasingly detaining people in small, secretive holding facilities for days or even weeks at a time in violation of federal policy, a Guardian investigation has found.
These holding facilities – located at ICE offices, in federal buildings and other locations around the country – are typically used to detain people after they have been arrested but before they are transferred or released. In many cases, they consist of small concrete rooms with no beds and are designed to only be used for a few hours.
Previously, ICE was prohibited by its own internal policies from detaining people for longer than 12 hours in these holding facilities. But in a June memo, the agency waived the 12-hour rule, saying people recently arrested by ICE can be detained in the holding rooms for up to three days.
There is extremely limited oversight of ICE holding facilities nationwide, leading to concern among advocates about unknown troubling conditions inside.
The Guardian analyzed data on ICE holding facility book-ins, first published by the Deportation Data Project, that cover a period from September 2023 until late July of this year, the most recent month for which it is available.
The Guardian’s analysis found that:
ICE has used at least 170 ICE holding facilities nationwide, including at 25 ICE field offices.
The Trump administration and its campaign of mass deportation has led to a near across the board increase in the time people are forced to spend in detention in holding rooms. After Donald Trump’s inauguration, the average time that people spend in detention increased at 127 hold rooms across the country.
Despite ICE’s rule change in June, the agency is continuing to violate its own policy by detaining people at these sites for multiple days at a time.
In some cases, such as a New York City holding facility located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, time in detention increased by nearly 600% on average after the June rule change.
In one case the Guardian discovered by looking through agency data, ICE documented that a 62-year-old man was held inside that same New York City holding facility for two and a half months.
The Guardian also found an additional 63 people at the site who were held there for longer than one week, between Trump’s inauguration and late July.
Across the country, ICE has been criticized for its use of holding facilities, which are not subjected to traditional audits, inspections and general oversight that larger ICE detention centers are required to face.
Now, advocates and former ICE officials are sounding the alarm that their extended use puts people in unsafe conditions, raises the risk of abuse and medical neglect, and violates due process rights. The facilities are secretive and face minimal oversight, and detainees have very little contact with family members or attorneys.
The Guardian sent a detailed request for comment to the DHS and ICE. ICE responded by requesting an extension to the deadline in order to provide the Guardian “the information needed to ensure a factual story”. Despite that communication, neither the DHS nor ICE provided a comment in time for publication.
In various instances, including in court records and when members of Congress have attempted to visit holding facilities, homeland security officials have said holding rooms are not detention centers, so they are not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as other ICE facilities. In August, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said ICE does not detain immigrants in field offices, some of which contain holding facilities, and instead say they are offices where people are processed.
However, former agency officials with extensive knowledge of conditions inside holding facilities have expressed concern at their prolonged use.
“People were not supposed to spend more than 12 hours in there,” said a former ICE official, who worked on oversight and detention issues and who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. “I actually think it’s wildly, wildly fucked up.”
The former official said that the risk of people experiencing sexual abuse or assault while in a holding room – either from ICE staff or fellow detainees – increases the longer they are held. “You’re just putting them all in there with minimal oversight,” the former official added.
An overcrowded system
People are typically taken to holding facilities after being arrested by ICE or its partner agencies, or while they are awaiting transfer to courts, detention centers or other detention spaces.
As arrests surge amid the Trump administration’s widespread immigration crackdown, officials are continuing to skirt the law by detaining people for longer than legally allowed in holding facilities. Officials are arresting more people, leading to a backlog of people to process, while they increasingly rely on the network of holding facilities. A backlogged court system and overfilled detention centers mean people are being held here longer and longer.
A data analysis from the Guardian shows that in major holding facilities throughout the country, immigration officials were already detaining people for multiple days at a time even before the memo was signed.
Advocates say ICE’s June policy change was made in an effort to move the legal goalposts and lessen any potential ramifications from the agency’s nationwide crisis of overcapacity at holding facilities, as officials have rounded up hundreds of thousands of people in its dragnet.
Language in the ICE memo supports that claim, reading that the rule was changed in order to “avoid violation of holding facility standards and requirements”, among other reasons.
Despite the rule change, however, court records, interviews and arrest data show ICE has been detaining people for longer than the three-day limit, in violation of its new policy. In the New York City holding facility, for example, located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, the average time of people detained in the hold rooms increased by nearly 600% after the June memo was signed.
The ICE official who signed the memo, which was first included as an attachment in a federal court filing in a New York-based lawsuit against ICE, justified the policy change by pointing to the major increase in immigration-related arrests by the Trump administration.
“This is ICE trying to give themselves a buffer to keep holding people in conditions they know are unsafe,” said Amelia Dagen, a senior attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “They are giving themselves an ‘out’, legally, through the waiver.”
A lack of oversight and troubling conditions
ICE’s holding facilities have come under increased scrutiny this year, as the Trump administration aggressively escalates immigration enforcement operations.
While larger immigration detention facilities are subject to oversight mechanisms, holding facilities are not because they are supposed to only be used for limited time. Attorneys are not allowed into the holding facilities; ICE’s detention standards do not apply to them; it is unknown whether homeland security watchdog agencies, like the inspector general’s office, conduct site audits at the holding facilities; and some members of Congress, who have attempted to enter the facilities to conduct congressionally mandated inspections, have been prevented from doing so because ICE says they are not traditional detention centers. ICE has conducted sexual assault audits in holding facilities in the past, but has not published a single audit since late 2024.
The DHS inspector general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“There is a total lack of oversight,” said Paige Austin, supervising litigation attorney at Make the Road New York, a non-profit organization that sued ICE for its use of the New York City holding facility. “The lack of communication and lack of access to counsel for people in these sites is a way of preventing oversight, transparency and accountability.”
Austin added that when Make the Road New York and other organizations sued ICE, the agency did not acknowledge any oversight taking place in holding facilities.
Holding facilities throughout the country, used to detain men, women and children, are designed only to temporarily detain people while they process their arrest. The rooms are in many cases small, concrete-only spaces with benches, sinks and toilets lacking privacy, where multiple people are detained at once.
People detained have complained of lights being constantly on, depriving them of sleep. They also have extremely limited contact with the outside world, including with attorneys and family members.
There is a shocking lack of oversight and ICE has put forward its own inconsistent statements about conditions, but news reports, court records and leaked videos have offered some troubling glimpses into these facilities.
In June, the Guardian reported on a Los Angeles ICE holding facility in a building’s basement, where people, including families with children, were held for days with little food or water. A recent report from the Times of San Diego said people had been held inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of a courthouse. And a story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution alleged people have been held for long periods of time inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of the agency’s own offices.
Few external observers have seen conditions inside holding facilities, but in July, the New York Immigrant Coalition published a video from inside the New York City holding facility that had been surreptitiously recorded by a detained man. The video showed more than 20 people in a brightly lit room, standing around, lying on the concrete floor or sitting on concrete benches with foil blankets. Two toilets are seen in the video, partitioned from the rest of the room by a short wall.
According to court declarations reviewed by the Guardian in a New York-based federal lawsuit against ICE, people have been held at the New York City holding facility for multiple days at a time. One person was held there for five days, another for eight, another for 10 and one person for more than two weeks.
“We spoke with multiple people who had been in there for more than a week, more than 10 days – in the same clothes, not having bathed and no access to toothbrushes,” said Austin.
In mid-September, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to improve conditions for detained migrants at the holding facility. ICE began providing sleeping mats, three meals and toothbrushes in response to the court’s order, according to Austin. The judge also required that people detained by ICE be given the opportunity to consult with their attorneys.
‘A problem of ICE’s own making’
In Baltimore, a similar case is playing out in the Maryland federal court.
Located on the sixth floor of the George H Fallon federal building, the Baltimore holding facility has five cells, total, with the three largest cells having the capacity to detain up to 35 people each. It has faced accusations of medical neglect and overcrowding, according to a lawsuit filed in a Maryland federal court. The Trump administration attempted to dismiss that lawsuit by saying that the detained immigrants who sued had already been transferred out, so the Maryland federal court had no legal jurisdiction.
According to Dagen, who is on the legal team litigating the Baltimore holding facility lawsuit against ICE, attorneys are particularly concerned about medical care in the facility.
“We have found out – through the course of this litigation – that there is no one who is a licensed medical practitioner, in any way shape or form,” Dagen said. “No nurse, no doctor on-site to assess people for the need to go to the hospital if they are having some sort of medical issue.”
In response to public criticism, ICE in mid-March began providing air mattresses to detained immigrants in Baltimore. However, court records hint at inconsistent statements from ICE: during litigation, ICE officials told the court that they were providing pre-made and ready-to-eat meals to detained immigrants inside the holding rooms. But when attorneys received a first batch of discovery documents from ICE as part of their lawsuit, they discovered supermarket receipts instead. ICE, attorneys speculate, had been making sandwiches for detained people, not the full, ready-to-eat meals like they had originally claimed.
Due to heightened pressure on ICE, members of Congress throughout the country have attempted to enter ICE field offices with holding facilities. After much prodding, some members of Congress have been able to visit select holding facilities including the one in Baltimore.
But according to a separate lawsuit filed against ICE in Washington DC, lawmakers have been denied entry into the New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Washington ICE field offices for oversight inspections. Those facilities all detain people recently arrested by ICE.
The government shutdown is further preventing congressional oversight into holding facilities. Recent court filings by the Trump administration say that due to the lapse in federal funding, a certain oversight rule has been overridden, preventing members of Congress from inspecting holding and ICE detention centers overall.
This is a problem of “ICE’s own making”, Dagen added. “They are imposing their own arrest quotas on themselves that are unrealistic and absolutely arbitrary, and then trying to meet those quotas, while fully knowing they don’t have the ability to hold people in conditions that are safe and constitutional.”
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 104 overnight as ceasefire looks increasingly fragile
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 104 overnight as ceasefire looks increasingly fragile
“Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 35 children, in the deadliest day since the ceasefire began. The strikes, ordered by Netanyahu after a firefight and amid growing anger over Hamas’s handling of hostages’ remains, exposed the ceasefire’s fragility. Trump stated that Israel should retaliate if its soldiers are killed, while Hamas denied responsibility for the gun attack and delayed a planned handover of remains.
Netanyahu ordered strikes on Tuesday evening after firefight between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 104 Palestinians, including children, in what appeared to be the gravest challenge yet to the increasingly fragile US-brokered ceasefire and the deadliest day since the truce began.
The strikes, one of the bloodiest attacks in the two-year war, killed at least 35 children and injured 200 people, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency. They took place hours after Donald Trump said nothing would jeopardise the ceasefire agreement he had helped broker.
Dr Mohammed al-Mughir, the director of humanitarian support and international cooperation at the civil defence in Gaza, told the Guardian: “Among these attacks was the targeting of a cancer patient camp, the Insan camp.”
The toll was confirmed by an Agence France-Presse (AFP) tally of reports from medical officials at five Gaza hospitals that received the dead and wounded.
Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strikes on Tuesday evening after a firefight between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops, and amid growing anger over Hamas turning over body parts of a hostage whose remains Israeli troops had recovered two years before.
Netanyahu called an emergency meeting to discuss what he called Hamasviolations of the ceasefire, as far-right figures in the Israeli government clamoured for a return to war.
The bombardment prompted Hamas, which denied responsibility for the gun attack, to delay a planned handover of another hostage’s remains, which had been scheduled for Tuesday night.
Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday, said nothing would jeopardise the ceasefire but Israel “should hit back” if its soldiers were killed. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” he said.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, said earlier that the ceasefire was holding despite “skirmishes”.
However, Tuesday night’s attack exposed all the frailties of a ceasefire that from the outset has been marred by violence. Before the latest overnight strikes, Gaza’s media office accused Israel of committing 80 violations since the ceasefire began, killing 97 Palestinians and injuring 230.
The Gaza civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic and terrifying”, calling the strikes “a clear and flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement”. He told AFP: “The Israeli strikes targeted tents for displaced people, homes and the vicinity of a hospital in the strip.”
A spokesperson for the IDF, when asked if the strikes were a resumption of the full-scale invasion, said on Tuesday that the military “can’t elaborate on the scale yet”. On Wednesday the IDF said it had reinstated the Gaza ceasefire.
The Israeli military published footage of what it said were members of Hamas reburying a body in order to “stage a false discovery” for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which it said was Hamas “attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies”. Hamas has yet to comment on the claims.
The news has enraged Israelis, with the far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich lashing out at Hamas and calling on Netanyahu to resume the war.
Under the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on 10 October, Hamas is required to return the remains of all Israeli hostages as soon as possible. In exchange, Israel has agreed to hand over 15 Palestinian bodies for each Israeli.
Hamas has so far returned the remains of 15 hostages, with 13 bodies still in the territory. The militant group has said it does not know the precise whereabouts of all the bodies, saying it has lost contact with several of its units that had been holding the captives and were reportedly killed during Israeli bombardments.
Although Trump has conceded that some of the bodies are difficult to reach, he said “others they can return now and for some reason they are not”. “It may have to do with the disarming of Hamas,” he said.
Israel has made Hamas’s disarmament a central objective, describing it as a key condition for bringing an end to the two-year war.
On Sunday, Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, said the group’s weapons were “tied to the existence of occupation and aggression”. He said: “If the occupation ends, these weapons will be handed over to the state.” It remained unclear whether he was alluding to the still-unformed Palestinian governing authority expected to take over Gaza’s administration once Hamas relinquishes control.”
Trump Officials in Charge of Food Aid Leave Their Posts
Trump Officials in Charge of Food Aid Leave Their Posts
“Two Trump administration officials in charge of food aid are leaving their posts amid the government shutdown, raising concerns about the potential lapse in food stamp funding for 42 million recipients.
The departures of the head of the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service and a senior policy adviser spurred worries on Capitol Hill as food aid benefits could halt.
Two Trump administration officials in charge of food aid are leaving their posts amid the government shutdown as the program that funds food stamps is set to lapse.
James Miller, the administrator of the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service, and Babs Hough, a senior policy adviser there, are moving to the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a senior White House official.
Politico reported earlier on the moves, which raised concern among aides on Capitol Hill, who are already bracing for the pain the government shutdown will inflict on their constituents.
With Mr. Miller’s departure, the agency will be without a permanent leader at a chaotic time.
The Food and Nutrition Service oversees 16 nutrition assistance programs, including the food stamps program, that serve about one in four Americans over the course of a year.
Starting on Saturday, Nov. 1, roughly 42 million aid recipients risk going hungry when funding lapses for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its refusal to ensure continued access to food stamps during the government shutdown, despite a contingency fund.”
The states, including Arizona, California and Massachusetts, described the impending cuts as unnecessary and illegal, and they asked a federal judge to force Washington to maintain SNAP benefits past Nov. 1.
An Agriculture Department spokesperson said the departure of the two officials was not related to the government shutdown, and blamed Democrats for the frozen funding and any chaos it caused in the programs.