Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 12-21-18

White House And Political News
Trump Foundation Agrees To Dissolve Under Court Supervision
President Donald Trump's personal charitable foundation has agreed to dis- solve under judicial supervi- sion amid an ongoing lawsuit concerning its finances, ac- cording to a document filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court by the New York state Attorney General's office.
The dissolution of the Don- ald J. Trump Foundation re- solves one element of the attorney general's civil law- suit against the foundation, which includes claims that the President and his three eldest children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric violated campaign-finance laws and abused its tax-exempt status. Rather than operating it as a genuine charity, the lawsuit alleges, they instead allowed it to be used "as little more than a checkbook to serve
THE TRUMP FAMILY
Mr. Trump's business and political interests."
The agreement to dissolve, signed by both an attorney for the foundation and Attor- ney General Barbara Under- wood's office, also allows the attorney general's office to re- view the recipients of the charity's assets. The founda- tion's most recent tax return listed its net assets at slightly
more than $1.7 million.
The closure of Trump's nonprofit comes amid an es- calation in the litany of crim- inal and other investigations touching almost every corner of Trump's business and po- litical operations, including his presidential campaign, his inauguration committee and his family real estate
business.
Nearly 40,000 People Died From Guns In U. S. Last Year, Highest In 50 Years
Last year was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States. While public mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas make up a small percentage of firearm deaths, they have changed the national conversation.
More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Con- trol and Prevention.
There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year be- fore. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.’s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.
When adjusted for popula- tion size, the rate of gun deaths in 2017 also increased slightly to 12 deaths for every 100,000 people, up from 11.8 per 100,000 in 2016. By this measure, last year had the highest rate of firearm deaths since the mid-1990s, the data showed.
It was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm
deaths rose in the United States, after remaining rela- tively steady throughout the 2000s and the first part of this decade.
“It is significant that after a period of relative stability, now the rates are rising again,” Bob Anderson, chief of the mor- tality statistics branch at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said in a phone interview.
Suicides have historically made up most deaths by firearm in the United States, research shows.
In 2017, about 60 percent of gun deaths were suicides, while about 37 percent were homicides, according to an analysis of the C.D.C. data by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a public health think tank. (The group is a sis- ter organization of the Coali- tion to Stop Gun Violence, an advocacy group that works to oppose the N.R.A.)
Trump Administration Aims To Toughen Work Requirements For Food Stamp Recipients
The Trump administra- tion unveiled a plan Thursday to force hundreds of thou- sands more Americans to hold jobs if they want to keep re- ceiving food stamps, pursuing through executive powers what it could not achieve in Congress.
The country’s food assis- tance program, which is run by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, already requires most adults without depend- ents to work if they collect food stamps for more than three months in a three-year period. But USDA regulations allow states to waive the re- quirement in areas with un- employment rates that are at least 20 percent greater than the national rate.
The USDA is now propos- ing that states could waive the requirement only in areas where unemployment is above 7 percent. The current national unemployment rate stands at 3.7 percent.
Approximately 2.8 million able-bodied recipients with- out children or an ailing per- son in their care were not working in 2016, according to the USDA’s latest numbers. Roughly 755,000 live in areas that stand to lose the waivers.
“This is unacceptable to most Americans and belies common sense, particularly when employment opportuni-
ties are as plentiful as they currently are,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on a press call, adding the measure could save taxpayers $15 billion over 10 years.
“This restores the dignity of work to a sizeable segment of our population,” he said.
The announcement comes hours before President Trump is expected to sign an approximately $870 billion farm bill with funding for the nation’s agricultural programs and for food stamps. That leg- islation does not impose any tougher work requirements, even though the House ver- sion of the bill had restricted the waiver program and also imposed new requirements on parents with children ages 6 to 12, among other changes. The Senate version did not in- clude those provisions.
The proposed changes will be published in the Federal Register, Perdue said, and the public will have 60 days to comment.
Congressional Democrats quickly slammed the plan and questioned whether the ad- ministration had a legal basis to authorize it.
“Congress writes laws, and the administration is required to write rules based on the law,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the top ranking Democrat on the Sen- ate agriculture committee. “Administrative changes should not be driven by ideol- ogy. I do not support unilat- eral and unjustified changes that would take food away from families.”
Under current rules, able- bodied adults without de- pendents — or ABAWDs, as the USDA calls them — are el- igible for food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for only three months in a three-year period if they do not work or participate in a job-training program for at least 20 hours each week.
States, however, can seek waivers that extend support for such individuals up to two years if they live in areas with a surplus of workers.
The proposed changes would also force states to reapply for waivers every year, rather than every two years. The change would not apply to elderly people or pregnant women.
PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL-BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2018