Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
Do Trump’s SNAP announcements violate the Hatch Act?
These USDA announcements about Disaster SNAP were forwarded to me by Kaitlyn Waugaman, MPH, RDN, LDN, who is in the Division of Preventive Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The one from August 27:
The one on September 8, a few weeks closer to the November election:
At issue: whether the more recent announcement violates the Hatch Act, as amended in 2012, which generally prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while on the job. According to the US Office of Special Counsel, the President and Vice-President are excluded from the Act’s provisions. But the New York Times has raised questions about Trump’s use of the White House to announce his candidacy.
This is another example of questionable use of the Presidency, just like Trump’s notes in the Farmers to Families food boxes that I wrote about earlier.
