FOOD FIGHT: After promising a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, the Trump administration claims it is unable to tap money held in reserve to keep paying for the food aid program known as SNAP during the federal shutdown. SNAP runs out of money tomorrow leaving as many is 42 million Americans in dire straits.

   Administration lawyers argued in federal court yesterday before a skeptical judge that bureaucratic obstacles prevent the administration from using a SNAP emergency fund that would keep the program going for another month. They also said they cannot drain the emergency fund except in cases of natural disaster.

  “Congress has put money in an emergency fund,” said Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts. “It’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency, when there’s no money, and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits.”

  While claiming helplessness on the matter of food aid, Trump has been moving pots of money to pay the military and immigration enforcement agents.

  The government is even unwilling to pay partial SNAP benefits, as the law allows. “The idea that we’re going to do the absolutely most drastic thing, which is that there’s not just less money but no money, seems the farthest thing from what Congress intended,” Talwani said.  “We’re not going to make everyone drop dead.” 

THE FAMILY FEUD: Britain’s King Charles is moving to completely strip his brother Andrew of all royal titles and honors because of his association with the late American sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

  An announcement from Buckingham Palace said Andrew will also be evicted from his royal residence and be forced to find a place to live. Andrew had paid a rich settlement to Epstein’s most prominent victim, the late Virginia Giuffre, who said she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was a teenager. 

 “His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew,” the Palace statement said. It went on; “Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation.” The statement says in a final condemnation, “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.”

 THE REGIME:

— President Trump’s declaration that he wants to resume nuclear bomb testing faces a reality check. The President claimed other countries have done test explosions, but not so. Russia has tested advance nuclear delivery systems, but has not set off a bomb.

  Bomb testing around the world ended in 1992. Despite an Energy Department assessment in 2013 that the US could test a bomb in six to ten months, the prevailing opinion is that it would be three years … close to the end of the Trump presidency. The Nevada test site has not been used since 1992.

  The Energy Department, which maintains the nukes, has an astounding 65,000 people maintaining and upgrading the US stock of roughly 3700 warheads at a cost of $25 billion a year. Many of those people are on furlough now during the government shutdown. In all the years since setting off an actual bomb, the engineers have devised ways to know whether a bomb will work. With no need for an actual nuclear explosion, Trump’s demand for testing could re-ignite the cold war when the earth rumbled with underground explosions.

— The Trump administrating is planning to severely restrict access to gender-affirming care for youth, including blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender care, according to reporting by NPR.

  The news outlet says it has seen plans by the Department of Health and Human Services that would prohibit federal Medicaid reimbursement for medical care provided to transgender patients younger than age 18. It also would prohibit reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for patients under age 19.

  NPR says the rules are set for release in November.

POKE IN THE EYE: CBS Morning News anchor Gayle King is reported to be leaving the show next year as the network shakeup continues. Making multiple millions a year, King is likely the highest paid employees of CBS News.

  Among those laid off this week was the very capable South African war correspondent Debora Patta, who’s been spending a lot of time in Israel. She came figuratively under fire earlier this year when Ambassador Mike Huckabee accused her of editing an interview to make him look bad. 

DARFUR: Evidence is mounting that the Sudanese region of Darfur is descending deeper into civil war and mass murder. Videos are appearing on the internet of bodies in the street and in one case a summary execution at the hands of a paramilitary commander. 

  The World Health Organization claims that 460 people were killed at a hospital in the city of El Fasher on Tuesday. Fighters with the paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces have been gunning down civilians as they flee the besieged Sudanese city captured by the RSF.

THE SPIN RACK:  Five reputed drug dealers face federal charges in Manhattan accusing them of selling fentanyl-laced opioid pills that killed the grandson of actor Robert De Niro and a young woman in 2023. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Dozens of undergraduates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently caught cheating in a data science course fudging their attendance sent their two professors apologies.

  The class of 1200 students has two sections that meet Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Students are expected to register their attendance with their electronic devices, but the professors found that about 100 students absent from class were still checking in remotely as if they were present.

  Busted, the students sent apologies. Then the professors discovered that the nearly identical apologies had been created with artificial intelligence.

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