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Demovictory9

(32,482 posts) Wed Jan 20, 2021, 05:46 AM Jan 2021

Ivanka's last days in WH - a flurry of self promotional photo ops tweets

Link to tweet

Trump team tries to milk the politics of food boxes to its final days

The first daughter for months has been touting the USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program through events, social media posts and photo ops, contributing to speculation that she’s looking to launch her own political career in Florida, her father’s soon-to-be home and one that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020. She’s been quick to claim credit for the food aid program, which she’s said she helped launch last spring, at the urging of her father, to help connect surplus crops with people in need.

The flurry of self-promotion, following other efforts by Trump administration officials to leverage the food program for alleged political gain, has triggered mounting complaints from anti-hunger advocates who are concerned the $6 billion aid program is being brazenly leveraged for political purposes.

“Food assistance shouldn’t be politicized and it’s now being used as a tool to soften Ivanka’s image,” said one advocate, who argued that nutrition assistance should remain nonpartisan. The Biden transition team is reviewing the program, which has funding through the spring.

The political positioning has particularly irked policy advocates because the Trump administration has overseen historic increases in hunger and food insecurity, especially among children and Black and Hispanic households, as the pandemic devastated the economy. The administration has repeatedly faced pressure to make it easier for kids from low-income households to access free meals this school year. Billions in nutrition aid that Congress approved in September has also not yet gone out the door, stuck in a bureaucratic morass at USDA, as POLITICO reported last month.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/19/ivanka-trump-promotes-usda-food-boxes-460205