House Democrats on Thursday passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, sending the slimmed-down aid package to the Senate more than four months after they passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act. Senate Republicans refused to vote on the previous bill, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled he won’t schedule a vote on the revised HEROES Act, either.
This comes as the Census Bureau reported 10% of U.S. households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat within the past seven days — with nearly one in five Black and Latino households affected. Meanwhile, anti-hunger activists around the U.S. are denouncing a letter, written in English and Spanish and signed by President Trump, placed in food assistance boxes doled out to food banks nationwide. They’re denouncing the letter as a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using government property for partisan political gain.