Trump Cuts Threaten Agency Running Meals on Wheels; The New York Times, April 24, 2025

 Reed Abelson, The New York Times; Trump Cuts Threaten Agency Running Meals on Wheels

[Kip Currier: A dear nonagenarian friend of my family's, whom I'll shorthand by her first initial M, utilized Meals on Wheels for about a decade after her husband passed away. She lived on her own in a modest home in a peaceful forested area of Northwestern Pennsylvania. In addition to receiving healthy meals for the week, the volunteer who brought the meals once a week visited and chatted a bit with M. So, the program also provided a social interaction benefit. 

M passed away in early 2024. But during that decade on her own after she became a widow, Meals on Wheels helped M to be able to live independently. Just as the program has done for hundreds of thousands of other seniors.

How terribly short-sighted and unkind it is for this current administration to threaten such a valuable and compassionate program as Meals on Wheels: a volunteer brigade that has been helping older Americans to live with dignity in their Golden Years since 1954.

Call your state and federal representatives and tell them you want Meals on Wheels to continue:

Directory of U.S. House Representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives

Directory of U.S. Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/index.htm ]

[Excerpt]

"Every Monday, Maurine Gentis, a retired teacher, waits for a delivery from Meals on Wheels South Texas.

“The meals help stretch my budget,” Ms. Gentis, 77, said. Living alone and in a wheelchair, she appreciates having someone look in on her regularly. The same group, a nonprofit, delivers books from the library and dry food for her cat.

But Ms. Gentis is anxious about what lies ahead. The small government agency responsible for overseeing programs like Meals on Wheels is being dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly half its staff has been let go in recent layoffs and all of its 10 regional offices are closed, according to several employees who lost their jobs.

“I’m just kind of worried that the whole thing might go down the drain, too,” Ms. Gentis said.

In President Trump’s quest to end what he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” one of his executive orders promoted cracking down on federal efforts to improve accessibility and representation for those with disabilities, with agencies flagging words like “accessible” and “disability” as potentially problematic. Certain research studies are no longer being funded, and many government health employees specializing in disability issues have been fired.

The downsizing of the agency, the Administration for Community Living, is part of far-reaching cuts planned at the H.H.S. under the Trump administration’s proposed budget."

Disconnected: 23 Million Americans Affected by the Shutdown of the Affordable Connectivity Program; CNet, July 28, 2024

Joe Supan, CNet ; Disconnected: 23 Million Americans Affected by the Shutdown of the Affordable Connectivity Program

"Jackson got her first home internet connection through the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era fund that provided $30 to $75 a month to help low-income households pay for internet. In May, the $14.2 billion program officially ran out of money, leaving Jackson and 23 million households like hers with internet bills that were $30 to $75 higher than the month before. 

That's if they decided to hang on to their internet service at all: 13% of ACP subscribers, or roughly 3 million households, said that after the program ended they planned to cancel service, according to a Benton Institute survey conducted as the ACP expired. 

For as long as the internet has existed, there's been a gap between those who have access to it -- and the means to afford it -- and those who don't. The vast majority of federal broadband spending over the past two decades has gone toward expanding internet access to rural areas. Case in point: In 2021, Congress dedicated $90 billion to closing the digital divide, but only $14.2 billion went to making the internet more affordable through the ACP; the rest went to broadband infrastructure...

"The biggest barrier to home broadband is cost. There are more people who don't have access to home internet because of cost than there are people who don't have access because the infrastructure doesn't exist."

Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance"

Mylan to provide EpiPen cost assistance as CEO is asked to testify on price hike; Guardian, 8/25/16

Jana Kasperkevic, Guardian; Mylan to provide EpiPen cost assistance as CEO is asked to testify on price hike:

"Even as Mylan takes steps to make its EpiPen more affordable, lawmakers have called on Bersch to appear before US Congress and explain why the price of EpiPen went up by 461% since Mylan acquired it in 2007.

“We are concerned that these drastic price increases could have a serious effect on the health and well-being of every day Americans,” senators Susan Collins and Claire McCaskill told Bresch in a letter. “As leaders of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, we are particularly concerned that seniors have access to EpiPen because, according to Mylan’s website, older Americans ‘may be at an increased risk of having a more severe anaphylactic reaction if they are exposed to biting and stinging insects’.”

They requested that Bresch testify within the next two weeks.

Even as Mylan was announcing the steps that it is taking to make its EpiPen more affordable, Sarah Jessica Parker issued a statement announcing that she had terminated her relationship with the company. Earlier this year, the Sex and the City actress served as a spokesperson for Mylan, helping raise awareness about anaphylaxis and life-threatening allergies."