TYSON HAS LONG BEEN IDENTIFED WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Tyson Foods Faces Boycott After Firing 1,200 Americans, ‘Would Like to Employ’ 42,000 Migrants - AND BIDEN - MAYORKAS - SCHUMER HAVE USHERED OVER THE BORDER 15 MILLION TO PICK FROM.
A New York judge has rejected President Trump’s bid to temporarily halt proceedings in a lawsuit filed against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of rape, a ruling that allows the case to move forward in the months before the presidential election.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump had sought to put the lawsuit on hold while an appeals court is deciding whether to dismiss a similar lawsuit filed against Mr. Trump by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who has accused him of sexually assaulting her.
In their bid for a delay, the lawyers also said the Constitution gave a sitting president immunity against civil lawsuits in state court.
On Thursday, Justice Verna L. Saunders in New York rejected their arguments, pointing to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that concluded Mr. Trump could not block a subpoena for his tax returns by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The Supreme Court ruling determined that the president did not possess absolute immunity against state criminal subpoenas.
Although that ruling pertained to a criminal investigation, Justice Saunders wrote that the same legal question was relevant to Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit — “whether the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution bars a state court from exercising jurisdiction over a sitting President of the United States during his term.”
“No, it does not,” Justice Saunders wrote.
She said the Supreme Court’s ruling applied to “all state court proceedings in which a sitting president is involved,” including those involving the president’s unofficial or personal conduct.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who did not respond to a request for comment, could appeal the ruling.
For now, the ruling allows the lawsuit to enter the crucial discovery phase, in which both sides will exchange documents and other materials.
Lawyers for Ms. Carroll had requested that Mr. Trump provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress that Ms. Carroll said she was wearing at the time of the incident.
The ruling also means both Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump could sit for depositions under oath in the coming months.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Carroll, said, “We are now eager to move forward with discovery so that we can prove that Donald Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll when he lied about her in connection with her brave decision to tell the truth about the fact that Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her.”
Some of the findings during discovery could be disclosed publicly in court filings ahead of the election in November, although Mr. Trump’s lawyers could seek other avenues to delay the case.
In a book excerpt published last June, Ms. Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle magazine, wrote that Mr. Trump threw her up against the wall of a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store in Manhattan, and forced himself on her. She said the episode occurred in late 1995 or early 1996.
She had kept the black, wool dress that she was wearing that day, she wrote.
Ms. Carroll announced earlier this year that she had departed from Elle magazine, saying the magazine fired her after Mr. Trump insulted her reputation. Her contract was terminated early, but Elle says it was not over her allegations against him.
Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Carroll’s allegations. He said he did not know her, even though the two were photographed together at a party in 1987 with Ms. Carroll’s former husband. Mr. Trump later said that the image was misleading.
Ms. Carroll is one of more than 10 women who have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct before he was president. Mr. Trump has denied all of the accusations.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. authorities have discovered an unfinished 1,300-foot (400-meter) tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border, calling it an unusually sophisticated smuggling route complete with ventilation and a rail system.
The tunnel was found on Tuesday in the desert near San Luis, Arizona by federal agents led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's investigative arm, the agency said in a press release Friday.
Authorities have located hundreds of tunnels over the years under the Southwest border, saying they are used by drug cartels and criminal organizations to smuggle narcotics, people and weapons back and forth between the two countries.
The tunnel found this week measured 3 feet by 4 feet (91 cm by 1.22 meters) and included a "ventilation system, water lines, electrical wiring, rail system, [and] extensive reinforcement," ICE said.
Federal agents drilled and used underground cameras to investigate the tunnel after discovering a sinkhole near cross-border fencing in mid-July, ICE said.
Carl Landrum, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official, said the tunnel "appears to be the most sophisticated tunnel in U.S. history, and certainly the most sophisticated I've seen in my career." Landrum started with Border Patrol in 1996, according to the agency's website.
In January this year, CBP announced federal agents had discovered the longest cross-border smuggling tunnel ever found along the Southwest border, originating in Baja California, Mexico. It measured 4,309 feet (1,300 meters).
President Donald Trump has pledged to build a wall on the border with Mexico to stop illegal crossings and drug trafficking, but critics point to tunnels as one way people can get around such a barrier.
(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer in Los Angeles; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Frances Kerry)
A registered sex offender was arrested this week in Boston for allegedly kidnapping and raping another victim.
“Officials were called to assist Boston EMS with an assault victim in the area of Blue Hill Ave and Wales Street in Dorchester on Wednesday at around 1:30 p.m.,” according to Boston 25 News.
When officers arrived at the scene, they spoke to the woman, who was then taken to a hospital for treatment. The Boston Police Department’s (BPD) Sexual Assault Unit later identified the suspect as 39-year-old Shawn McClinton.
The report continued:
McClinton was arraigned in Dorchester District Court on Thursday on charges of aggravated rape, armed kidnapping with sexual assault, strangulation and assault by means of a dangerous weapon. A search through the state’s sex offender registry board (SORB) shows McClinton was previously convicted of raping and abusing a child in June 1994 and of another rape in July 2007. McClinton is also listed as being homeless.
“McClinton had been held on $15,000 bail since his arrest February 19, 2018, on charges of kidnapping and two counts each of aggravated rape and assault and battery,” the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said.
However, he was released July 15 when the Massachusetts Bail Fund posted $15,000 to free him, the office noted.
“The Massachusetts Bail Fund pays bail so that low-income people can stay free while they work towards resolving their case, allowing individuals, families, and communities to stay productive, together, and stable,” the fund’s website read.
Following the suspect’s arrest, Boston Police Commissioner William Gross said of the fund’s action, “I hope they never get a wink of sleep — because this is absolutely ridiculous. This could have been prevented.”
Gross explained that it essentially gave criminals the message that they would not be held responsible for their actions, according to the Boston Herald.
“To the criminals, it’s like, ‘Hey, you can do what you want — we’ll bail you out,'” he said, adding, “For victims, it’s hard enough just to come forward on a rape, and then something like this happens. … This predator goes out and violates another victim.”
Assistant District Attorney Michael V. Glennon requested the suspect be held on a $250,000 bail and that bail be revoked regarding the 2018 sexual assault case, which was pending in Suffolk Superior Court.
“The judge imposed a $500,000 bail and revoked his open bail,” the Boston 25 article concluded.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has reportedly passed $100 billion for the first time after the social media giant’s stock price hit a record based on optimism about the release of its TikTok competitor, Reels. Only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates also have fortunes worth more than $100 billion.
The AP reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has passed $100 billion for the first time this week after Facebook hit a record on optimism about the release of its TikTok competitor Reels. Zuckerberg now joins other tech titans such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and the only people alive to hold the title of “centi-billionaire,” according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The majority of Zuckerberg’s net worth is derived from his large stake in his social media giant Facebook. The founders of America’s largest tech companies have seen a huge increase in their net worth as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has forced many people online. Despite the U.S. economy contracting, tech firms have greatly benefited in recent months.
Zuckerberg has seen his net worth grow by approximately $22 billion this year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has added $75 billion to his net worth. The five largest American tech firms, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft, currently have market valuations equivalent to about 30 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, almost double what they were at the end of 2018.
U.S. Senator and former Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sander (I-VT) reportedly plans to introduce legislation to tax what he refers to as “obscene wealth gains” during the coronavirus pandemic. Sanders’ “Make Billionaires Pay Act” would tax 60 percent of the increase in the billionaire’s net worth from March 18 throughout the end of the year and use the revenue to cover healthcare expenses for Americans.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolanor contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
Trump and the Republicans Are Risking an All-Out Depression
They are currently making the same failed choices that
led to the last one.
The headline from last Thursday’s report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis
(BEA) on second quarter GDP was horrific: The economy contracted 9.5 percent
from April through June. On an annual basis, GDP fell at an astounding rate of
nearly 33 percent. Still, there’s another ominous aspect to the agency’s
findings that has gone largely unnoted: The pandemic-driven collapse in GDP
occurred even with trillions of dollars of government aid dispensed through
emergency checks to households, expanded jobless benefits, and payroll grants.
Now, as the pandemic worsens again—infections
are surging across much of the South, Southwest and Midwest—we may well need to
face another period of largescale shutdowns, like those that stalled out the
economy in April and May. But the White House and congressional Republicans are
balking at a second, comparable round of emergency assistance. The data suggest
that their quibbling and stalling risks a national depression.
The BEA’s latest report on personal incomes, released the
day after its latest GDP report, can give us a rough measure of what might
happen if President Trump and GOP leaders block another round of federal
supports at least as large as the first one.
Over the second quarter of 2020, personal
income from salaries and wages fell 7.1 percent even as total personal income
grew 7.3 percent. That gaping difference was bridged mainly by the emergency
checks and expanded jobless benefits from the federal government.
The report also shows that personal consumption
fell 10.5 percent even as the emergency checks and extended jobless benefits
provided $1,420 billion in income support. That’s because people spend a lot
less when unemployment sets new records. Instead, they cut out most
non-essential spending and save a lot more to tide themselves for even worse
times: The personal saving rate, which averaged 7.5 percent in 2019, soared to
25.7 percent in the second quarter.
Worse times may be right on the horizon if
Trump and his allies continue to delay and diminish a second round of emergency
assistance. We can estimate what would happen to personal incomes,
consumption spending, and GDP if this second spike of infections produces
shutdowns and unemployment in August and September akin to the first spike in
April and May, although without the emergency aid from the government. Personal
income would fall 7.0 percent below the depressed levels in the second quarter,
or more than $1,424 billion. Personal consumption, which declined at an annual
rate of $1,528 billion from March through May, would be further depressed by
the absence of another $1,055 billion (the $1,420 billion in emergency aid
minus the 25.7 percent saved). From July through September—the
months leading up to the election—Americans would spend nearly 18 percent less
than they did from January through March.
That means the GDP would not begin to recover
at all. The overall economy would be nearly as depressed in the third quarter
as it was in the disastrous second quarter, and possibly worse. This is the
fire that the Trump administration and Congress are playing with, and it could
burn down a good part of the U.S. economy.
In a week or two, the White House and
congressional Republicans will likely try to avoid this dire scenario—or at
least the responsibility for it—by pushing a sharply pared down version of the
emergency package passed more than two months ago by House Democrats. .
The version offered by GOP Senate leader Mitch
McConnell would provide $1 trillion in assistance, i.e.
one-third the support in the Democratic package. The GOP plan would cut the
$600 expanded jobless benefit to $200, eliminate pay supplements for essential
workers in hazardous jobs, and provide little aid to state and local
governments. The plan does include another round of $1,200 checks for
most people, with the funds paid over several months and without the additional
support for children in the Democrats’ bill.
There is no economic justification for a half
loaf here and the GOP’s cuts in emergency funding will exact appalling costs on
millions of households. Based on all of our economic and epidemiological
information, the right course for anyone not seized by love or fear of Donald
Trump is to press for a new round of assistance as least as large as the
measures enacted last time.
Major aid disbursements to America’s families
is also the only equitable course. The crisis has already ended, kaput, for
large investors—the top 10 percent of Americans who own
91 percent of all financial assets—because the Federal Reserve’s aggressive
operations have virtually restored the stock and bond markets.
From February 20 to March 23, the S&P 500
tumbled almost 34 percent from its historic high of 3,372 to 2,237. Yet,
as the economy has continued to tank from March 23 onward, $2.8 trillion in new
Fed purchases pushed the S&P 500 back to 3,296 on
August 3, just two percent from its historic high. The Fed’s operations have
had the same impact on corporate bond markets, with both investment grade paper
and junk bonds reversing virtually all of their recent
losses even as GDP cratered.
Nevertheless, President Trump and GOP leaders
have dismissed their obligation to provide large-scale support for everyone
else and take the steps needed to break the pandemic.In a plummeting economy,
they apparently have chosen Hebert Hoover as their role model, another
Republican president with a GOP-controlled Congress who rejected calls for
wide-ranging government assistance for an economic crisis. The result, of
course, was the Great Depression.
Robert J. Shapiro, a Washington Monthly contributing
writer, is the chairman of Sonecon and a Senior Fellow at the McDonough School
of Business at Georgetown University. He previously served as Under Secretary
of Commerce for Economic Affairs under Bill Clinton and advised senior members
of the Obama administration on economic policy.
Fact check: U.S. GDP drop in
2020's second quarter is the worst in modern history
Matthew Brown, USA TODAY
August
8, 2020, 6:10 AM
The claim: U.S. GDP
quarterly drop worst since the Great Depression
As America’s summer plods along amid a historic pandemic,
national protest and civil unrest, the economic fallout from the coronavirus is
also taking its toll, leading many to try to contextualize the damage.
Accompanying the language was a screenshot of a tweet from
President Donald Trump after his visit with famed former professional football
player and coach Mike Singletary.
Great to spend time with Mike Singletary while going to Texas.
He’s one of the greatest football players ever — A strong man and a really good
person. Great being with you Mike! pic.twitter.com/lWsYn4lhOm
The Facebook post, from July 31 attacked the president, claiming
that “1.4 million workers filed for unemployment” and, “More than 150K
Americans were dead from COVID-19” while “Trump spent the day tweeting about
suspending the election and hanging out with a football player.” Earlier in the
day, the president had suggested that the United
States should delay its Nov. 3 elections, citing unsubstantiated
claims about election security mail-in-voting.
Does the economy claim hold up? Yes. The recent
annualized drop in GDP is the worst drop on record, even outstripping the Great
Depression in its scale.
U.S. gross domestic product shrank by 9.5% between April
and June, easily representing the largest quarterly drop on record.
The second-quarter annualized rate came out to a 32.9% drop, also the worst
performance on record.
The annualized rate is a projection, in this case reflecting
that if the American economy experienced a full financial calendar like the
last few months, GDP would drop by about 32.9%. While normally the
annualized rate is a useful metric for measuring the economy, the BEA is not
emphasizing that eye-popping drop in GDP because it's very uncertain whether
the U.S. will experience another quarter so devastating.
The massive contraction in GDP was largely driven by a collapse
in consumer spending and private sector investment.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of all
U.S. economic activity, fell 34.6% on an annualized
rate, though consumption did rise over the past few months compared
to the start of the pandemic, according to the Commerce Department. Spending on
services dropped 43.5%, while spending on nondurable goods like groceries,
toiletries and clothing fell by 15.9%.
Global lockdowns also caused exports to fall 64.1%, while
Americans imported 53.4% less year-over-year as the coronavirus severely cut
domestic demand for foreign goods.
Private-sector investment in the economy fell by 49% percent,
indicating that households and businesses are saving money that would otherwise
be in circulation.
Federal spending, much of it in the form of stimulus aid, was up
significantly from this time last year. Cutbacks in state and local budgets
were largely offset by increased public health and social welfare spending.
The coronavirus
economy vs. other recessions
The severity of the economic damage brought by the coronavirus
pandemic is unprecedented in American history. That said, there are some
important differences between the current recession and periods like the Great
Depression and the Great Recession.
First, the cause of economic
hardship differs from past contractions. American recessions have
most often been caused by issues in the financial system. By comparison, the
economic damage today is mostly the result of strict nationwide lockdowns as
the nation grapples with a public health emergency.
It is also more difficult for economic historians to compare the
current economic situation to contractions that predate federal records,
especially the further back in time one looks.
NBER statistics did
find, however, that the recent fall was worse than the Great Depression, as
well as major slowdowns in 1921, 1893 and 1875.
The surge in the unemployment rate caused by the pandemic could
give way to sizable drop depending on how quickly jobs return as the economy
reopens.The
rate, while still in double digits, has declined since hitting a high point
early in the pandemic.Other workers who filed for unemployment benefits may have also been
furloughed or temporarily let go from their employers, rather than
permanently laid off.
Private economists' forecasts for second-quarter GDP turned out
be slightly more pessimistic than the actual number//; a Dow Jones survey found
that economists estimated a 34.7%
drop in GDP.
How states handle public health guidelines will be crucial in
determining the economic recovery. In July, many states shut back
down after coronavirus cases spiked, threatening economic outlooks
already severely hampered by the virus itself.
Our ruling: True
Some social media posts describe the current annualized
contraction of the economy as the worst since the Great Depression. That
is true, but understates the gravity of the situation; it is also the worst
contraction in modern American history. We rate this claim TRUE, based on our
research.
are lining up at food banks for
the first time in their lives
As
tens of millions of Americans have lost jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic,
food banks across the country say they are facing an unprecedented surge in
demand, comparable to a hurricane hitting the entire country at the same
time.
“I’ve been in food banking for 24 years, and in my tenure I’ve
never seen such a dramatic increase in need literally overnight,” said Lisa
Scales of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, referring to the initial
spike in distribution in March, when the shutdowns started.
Across the country, Americans who’ve never had to rely on food
assistance before are turning to local organizations for aid. In July, the
Census Bureau reported that nearly 30
million Americans said they didn’t have enough to eat in the
prior week, a situation that is likely to worsen since the expanded unemployment
insurance of $600 per week ended last month. Food banks across
the country are bracing for both another spike in food insecurity and the fact
that the effects of the pandemic are likely to last until 2021 and beyond.
A number of food bank employees compared the current situation
to the Great Recession of the late 2000s in terms of both length of need and
impact, as the normal practice of turning to other parts of the country for
support in times of a natural disaster failed in the face of a nationwide
calamity.
“The best way to describe it is, we were very active through
Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston and the surrounding area, and this
is way worse than that,” said Mark Brown of the West Houston Assistance
Ministries, a large food pantry in the area. “I’ve never seen this level of
community-wide desperation at such an extended level.”
Like any other organization, food banks faced their own impacts
of the pandemic, which kept some infected workers and older volunteers home,
and required changes in procedure to implement social distancing. They changed
distribution methods, setting up drive-through or no-contact pickups and
starting direct-to-door delivery while coping with supply
chain problems. Staffers who were used to helping residents sign up
for SNAP benefits in the field set up special phone lines to deal with the
influx of applicants.
“We’re very concerned,” Scales said of the expiration of federal
unemployment benefits, noting that her food bank had already seen a slight
increase just in the last week. “We’re anticipating higher than normal
need for the next year, year and a half.”
But there was also gratitude and pride in how communities have
stepped up to help their neighbors, with donations pouring in despite hard
times for so many Americans. Yahoo News spoke to food banks across the country
about what the last five months have been like and how they’re preparing for
another potential spike as benefits that have kept many afloat expire. Their
comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Natalie Jayroe, Second
Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans
It’s been a sprint and a marathon. Here in Louisiana we’ve had
our share of natural and man-made disasters over the last decade and a half,
having been through [Hurricanes] Katrina and Rita and then Gustav and Isaac and
then an oil spill and an economic recession. Yet for intensity this has been
the equal of any of them so far.
First we had the schools close down, so we had children losing
their free and reduced breakfast and lunch. Then we had seniors who could no
longer go to grocery stores, we had people quarantining who we had to get food
to, and then we had mandatory stay-at-home orders and the community shut down.
That was a huge shock, so now you have a community full of people who are still
here, who can’t go anywhere and have totally lost the ability to care for
themselves and their families. Unemployment in New Orleans topped 50 percent at
some points. With the cases going up, it’s frustrating to know we’re going to
be in the acute phase of disaster response at least until the end of this year.
When people start
to find us and show up at the door in an industrial part of New Orleans, it
means they’ve never needed food before and they don’t understand that there’s
probably a church partner in their neighborhood that they can go to. So when we
had so many people showing up that we couldn’t get our tractor trailers into
the warehouse, when we started to have hundreds of cars waiting outside our
door, we moved that distribution to Zephyr Field, which is our baseball
stadium, and now we have more than 2,000 cars there once a week waiting for
food distribution, and they’ll wait five hours, six hours.
We’ve had incredibly generous community support — we’re just
really the funnel through which the community takes care of itself. I can’t say
thank you enough to our local community. Normally when we have disasters like
this, we’ll reach out to food banks in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, where
they have hurricanes — we pay it forward, because people have supported us
through the downtimes we’ve had — but right now the whole country is in the
same boat, so it really comes down to a local community taking care of itself,
and the people here have been so generous in taking care of each other.
It really feels like it’s been a year, when it’s been about five
months. Even before West Virginia had diagnosed cases, we saw what was going to
be coming and started ordering up food because we recognized that we would
probably have a pretty significant increase. We currently serve about 129,000
people across 17 counties. West Virginia is a poor state in general, but the
job loss we anticipated was going to increase our demand about 50 percent. When
the pandemic came and the closures occurred, those estimates became true,
particularly with the demand for child nutrition with schools closed.
We started seeing real delays in getting food, and the cost of
that food started to really increase quite a bit. Where I buy thousands of
pounds of ground beef, I never really had to pay beyond $2 a pound for it, and
suddenly I was being faced with $4.87. So you can only imagine, for the
families we serve or who receive SNAP benefits and are purchasing products
through their retailers, lot of foods became cost-prohibitive and the benefits
didn’t extend as far. We had families who were doing pretty good with managing
their food budget that really had to come back to us for assistance because
those dollars weren’t providing enough for the family.
Things leveled off
over the last month or so at about a 25 percent increase, as a lot of people
overcame the challenge of getting their unemployment benefits. People got the
supplemental assistance, so they were able to move forward with paying for
bills and food. Now that those benefits have ended and the resolution of that
is still pending, we’re expecting we’ll see an increase again. We’ve already
had [to close] some of our pantries located in areas really hard hit by the
virus, so we’re again challenged to go back into those communities and do
mobile distribution, which is focused on safety for the food bank staff, our
volunteers and those receiving the food.
I’ve been struck by how the Band-Aid we rely on to hold safety
net services together has been ripped off with this pandemic. What were already
really fragile systems have really been broken. I’m hoping we can continue the
conversations about how we can better serve our seniors, how we can better
serve our veterans and homeless population, and certainly how we can better
serve our children, as many rely so heavily on those meals they receive at
school.
Scott Young, Food Bank
of Lincoln (Neb.)
We saw a real spike in rural need when the pandemic settled in.
Since then we’ve seen a spike in Lincoln too, as unemployment has continued to
escalate. People have not returned to jobs. I think a lot of us back in March
thought this was a 60- or 90-day inconvenience we’d be dealing with, and as it
dragged on we’ve learned and come to believe this is months and months to go
yet. We’re planning on a month-to-month basis, but we’re planning on doing this
model of our operation through New Year’s Day, and I fully anticipate we’ll be
doing it into the spring of 2021. So when we talk about returning to normal,
some of our staff members talk about “This is normal and we better get used to
it.”
In Lincoln in 2019, we had 5,892 people on the unemployment
rolls. In June of 2020 we had 13,326. So we’ve had an earthquake,
demographically speaking, of newly unemployed people and households that are
going to have more month than money. Nebraska, much to our relief, has one of
the lowest unemployment rates in the country. In June we were seventh [lowest],
so that’s a positive sign in a roundabout way, but if you’re one of those
people who are unemployed it doesn’t matter. You still have the problem of
poverty and food insecurity.
A line that has been repeated around the food bank often is
people saying, “I hate that I have to do this,” in terms of going through a
food line. We’ve heard from people who’ve said, “I used to donate to the food
bank, and now all of a sudden I’m in your line,” and I think that’s a testament
to the charitable food system and the importance of supporting it. So many of
us are on a pretty precarious financial edge, our economic system has been
revealed as pretty fragile during the pandemic, and a lot of people are paying
a stout price for it.
Lisa Endl, Feeding
America Eastern Wisconsin
We support 35 counties in Wisconsin, and during the pandemic
period from March 1 to June 30 we distributed 11 million pounds of food, and
that was an 85 percent increase over what we’ve done in years prior. It’s been
a very strong increase, and we definitely anticipate that if the added
unemployment benefits go away that increase is going to be even more.
About 40 percent of the people using pantries are using them for
the first time ever. We’ve always known in our work that anyone is just one
injury or one missed paycheck from relying on a pantry, and right now it’s just
a huge influx. In 2019, in our service area of eastern Wisconsin, 1 in 10
people were food-insecure or didn’t know where their next meal was going to
come from, and we anticipate by the end of 2020 that 1 in 7 people will be
facing hunger, including an additional 77,000 children.
I was just speaking with one of our pantries that is in
Milwaukee. It’s an inner-city church, and they typically just have people from
that area come in once a month to pick up products. Now they’re seeing people
from suburbs and outlying ZIP codes who are coming to them now for the first
time, so their reach is growing as the need is growing.
Jocelyn Lantrip, Food
Bank of Northern Nevada
We cover the whole northern part of the state, and we have a big
surface area, about 90,000 square miles, and we were busy before the pandemic.
Our monthly average, we’d serve about 91,000 people — we had a pretty
significant issue with hunger already — and we saw a very staggering increase
right after the shutdown. It was not unusual to approach 1,000 families at one
distribution, and we had also been turning to drive-throughs and 147 partners
to distribute food for us.
We saw a particular increase in our Mobile Harvest program,
where we take fresh fruits and vegetables out to neighborhoods. Leading up to
the crisis, we were helping about 8,900 people per month through that program.
In April we helped 28,272 people. We’ve never seen numbers like this. April was
our worst month — we helped 125,000 people overall. We saw a lot of people who
had never received food assistance before, and they were confused and not
really knowing what to do, and then we throw a bunch of other restrictions on
how you can receive food. You’re in a drive-through distribution, you have to
wait in a line and give your information, and the whole process is rattling to
some.
We saw somewhat of
a leveling off in June, still higher than normal, but we really are expecting a
huge spike next month if something doesn’t change with the benefits expiring.
In our area, reported unemployment right now is about 24.9 percent. I was here during
the recession and we were pretty busy during that time, but unemployment was
about 14 percent. We’ve never seen anything like this, and for that many people
to lose benefits we’re prepared to be very, very busy.
We’ve been trying to get as much food in the door as we can so
we can be ready for August and what we might see in the next few months. No
matter what happens, we’re expecting this to be a very long recovery, because
we haven’t recovered from the last economic issue, at least low-income people
haven’t. We’re not unique with this, but we’ve seen issues with the supply
chain, as food that would take us a month will take three months or longer to
get here. That’s been an issue just to stay ahead of it, so we’re really
ordering food all the time. We’ve been fortunate at our food banks — we haven’t
had to turn anyone away because we’ve run out of food.
Jennifer Caslin, Food
Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina
We have been purchasing more food than we normally would in the
past. Normally we rely on donations. In March our purchase budget for food was
$500,000, and we ended up spending $2 million. For funding, the community has
really stepped up during this time — we’ve been comparing it to the Great
Recession because it feels very much like that. People really stepped up to
give us support throughout the recession even though they had less to donate,
but they knew food was a huge need.
If the recovery doesn’t continue and those additional funds
aren’t extended in some form, we do expect the levels of visits from folks to
get closer to what they were right at the beginning of quarantine, when our
agencies were distributing as much as 150 percent higher than in pre-COVID
times. Our food finder on our website, where you can go find a partner agency near
you to receive help, right at the beginning of the pandemic the traffic for
that site increased by 1,500 percent. We’re definitely expecting it to go back
towards those levels as long as there’s not that additional support for people
who still can’t go back to work.
There’s always the
chance of a weather event, so that on top of a pandemic would be pretty
devastating. Thankfully, it’s looking like Hurricane Isaias wasn’t as bad as it
could have been, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we don’t get
anything worse than that this summer. We’re prepared if we do, but certainly
that could make things a lot worse for people anywhere that might be impacted
by a weather event.
Lori Long, Community
Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma
We drove to this real small town in northeast Oklahoma. I had
never been there before, and it was a stereotypical small-town food desert.
They had a convenience store and some kind of a dollar store. There were very
limited nutritious and fresh options because the grocery store had closed. So
we set up this distribution, we were blessed to have the National Guard assisting
us, and we had about a three-hour distribution. I am not kidding you, there
were cars lined up the entire main street of this little town waiting to come
through.
I know one of the biggest things for us that we think is going
to increase need, or at least keep it at the high level, is all of the school
systems deciding to go virtual. We still have a couple of systems that haven’t
decided yet, but the majority have decided to stay virtual, but our kids really
rely on those school meals. The other thing is looking at industry-specific
impact. For example, in Oklahoma we are a heavy oil and gas economy. We also
have a significant aviation industry, and of course with travel not being where
it’s been in the past, it impacts both of those industries, so that’s something
locally we are seeing more.
Dave Krepcho, Second
Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida
I hate to even think about [the expanded unemployment benefits
expiring]. That’s going to cause an immediate increase. The theme parks have
reopened on a small scale, but Disney has 70,000 employees. When they’re
partially open that’s tens of thousands of people without a job. Then add
Universal Orlando and the other theme parks like Sea World, and then the ripple
effect to all the resorts, all the hotel rooms, all the restaurants, the
rent-a-car companies.
We’re a convention town, and that convention center hires
thousands of people to work there, so when that hits a community like this it’s
devastating economically. Thank God the stimulus checks went out, and thank God
the $600 has been around, but when that’s reduced — the jobs aren’t here.
There’s some job training going on, but my goodness, those openings are so few
and far between, so it’s going to take months — I’ve heard some economists
project that it will take 24 to 36 months to fully get back as a community. So
that $600, that’s golden for these folks, and that only goes so far.
On the flip side, what I’ve seen that’s a very positive thing,
we started to see a pattern of $1,200 donations. A lot of people were attaching
notes to these and saying, “My wife and I got our stimulus checks and we don’t
need them as much as somebody else does. Please put this to work for us.”
Things like that, the community’s generosity, is really heartwarming.