Cutting SNAP and guarding the Epstein files is anything but divine

I’ve been a politician for most of my adult life. I understand that politics can sometimes be rough. But the brutal harm that the Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders are needlessly inflicting on millions of Americans is shocking. 

The basic facts aren’t hard to understand, even if the cruelty is hard to comprehend.  

As part of a political power play over the budget, the lawless Trump administration has decided to withhold billions of dollars that should be funding SNAP payments — known to many people as food stamps — leaving millions of families without access to food and forcing food banks across the country into an emergency scramble.  

The administration has the money, power and legal obligation to fund these payments even during the government shutdown. They just aren’t doing it. They are making a choice to impose massive suffering. 

That’s not putting Americans first — especially when the same administration somehow manages to find $40 billion to interfere in Argentina’s presidential election to help out the president’s buddy. 

At the same time, millions of families are facing devastating and unaffordable increases in health care costs. That’s because Republicans’ gruesomely misnamed “big, beautiful bill” prioritized obscenely large tax cuts for the richest Americans over basic access to health care for millions of working families.  

Unless Republicans back down, millions of families will see their health insurance premiums double, triple or worse at the beginning of the year.  

Democrats in the Senate and House have been waging a righteous fight by refusing to go along with the Republican scheme to yank health coverage away from millions of families and force many others into financial crisis. 

President Trump and the White House are dictating the Republican strategy, of course. But what is going on with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)? What is he up to, other than securing a notorious place in history by overseeing a massive abdication of congressional responsibility and sacrifice of congressional authority? 

Governing requires negotiation and compromise. But Johnson has kept the House of Representatives shut down for more than a month — and the federal government shut down for weeks — to force Democrats to accept the brutal Republican budget and its hatchet job on families’ health care. 

Johnson is also refusing to fulfill a basic responsibility to swear in Representative elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) more than a month after she won a special election with 69 percent of the vote to fill the seat previously held by her late father. 

Johnson’s unjustifiable refusal to swear Grijalva in, and his refusal to let the House come back into session to deal with the budget, food and health care crises his party has created, are deeply unprincipled. 

Indeed, there’s good reason to suspect that Johnson has a very bad reason for his behavior. Grijalva would cast the deciding vote to force the Trump administration to disclose the files it has on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

Watching Johnson stumble through humiliatingly bogus justifications for his action makes me wonder: When Johnson said that God raised him up to be Speaker of the House as an American Moses to lead our country through a Red Sea moment, did he imagine that his calling would be to take food out of the mouths of 40 million Americans and force millions of families to face devastating health insurance costs — all to protect a president potentially hiding embarrassing revelations in the Epstein files?

Mysterious ways, indeed. 

In their unquestioning loyalty to Trump, Republican leaders have lost their way. Ensuring that American kids and families have enough to eat and can afford to see a doctor when they need to are not only compassionate policies, they are also wise policies. They are good for the country and our future. 

Voters, take notice.  

Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.