Later this morning, @uscensusbureau will release its annual report on poverty for 2017.

We expect a slight downtick in the U.S. poverty rate—which is without question good news.

But if Trump tries to take credit, he deserves to be laughed out of the room.

(Here’s why.) @uscensusbureau Any good news for struggling workers is thanks to Trump’s FAILURE to impose much of his policy agenda (AKA a how-to guide for massively increasing poverty & hardship):

- dismantling food assistance
- tripling the poorest families’ rents
- stripping jobless workers of Medicaid

Literally right as House & Senate began conference on the #FarmBill this morning, @USDA released a report finding 15 MILLION American households—about 1 in 6—struggled to put food on the table at some point last year. ers.usda.gov/publications/p… Yet House Republicans, led by @ConawayTX11, are STILL pushing for massive cuts to nutrition assistance that would take food away from 2 million Americans.

Wow. Internal documents show Trump’s State Department knowingly lied, ignored warnings from top economic advisers & manipulated data in an attempt to discredit the recent UN report on poverty in America, per @ForeignPolicy. foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/02/int… The same internal documents also indicate the UN’s report on poverty in America did indeed play a role in motivating the US’s withdrawal from the Human Rights Council earlier this summer.

Hi friends!

Today, as we mark the 28th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (#ADA28), let’s do one better.

Let’s stop relegating people with disabilities to a single day in the calendar.

(THREAD) 1. One in five Americans are people with disabilities. NEWSFLASH: This makes pretty much every issue a disability issue—from health care to the economy to the environment, to criminal justice, and more.

Move over, climate change.

Trump’s White House just issued a sweeping denial of poverty in America.

(THREAD.) 1. In a report released late last week, Trump’s WH declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success.” The report is literally page after page of gaslighting the very real hardship faced by tens of millions of Americans struggling to afford food, housing, healthcare & more.

Feeling all the emotions watching PA @GovernorTomWolf sign the #CleanSlateAct into law just now. Proud to have worked w/my mentor @SDietrich9 to develop the “clean slate” automatic sealing model (now being picked up by other states & Congress!) & @erincohan to get it done in PA. My head is swirling with thoughts of all of my @CLSphila clients who will be freed from the life sentences to poverty they‘re currently serving once the #CleanSlateAct takes effect. Watching my friend Ronald speak at the signing about what it means to him brought me to tears. :)

For anyone needing more evidence the @SaveOurTips anti-minimum wage propaganda is built on a house of lies…

The lobby group behind the campaign to kill #Initiative77 is the same group that claimed a smoking ban would be the death of DC restaurants over a decade ago.

(THREAD.) @saveourtips 1/ One of the main lobby groups trying to keep DC’s tipped workers from getting a raise under #Initiative77 is the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (@RAMWdc).

They’re the ones behind the astroturf @SaveOurTips campaign.

The restaurant lobby is so hell-bent on paying tipped workers a poverty-level sub-minimum wage, they’re funding a front group pretending to be organized restaurant workers—all to block D.C.’s #Initiative77.

Meet @SaveOurTips.

(THREAD) @saveourtips 1. In DC, tipped workers—aka anyone who makes even $30 in tips per month—are subject to a sub-minimum wage of $3.33 an hour. #Initiative77, which is on the ballot in DC through June 19th, would ensure they’re paid the same minimum wage as all other workers.

As Trump crows about the “best economy ever,” now would be a good time to read the 🔥 report the U.N. just released on poverty in America, declaring that for all but the richest, “the American Dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion.”

Its findings are damning.

(THREAD) 1. “IMMENSE WEALTH... IN SHOCKING CONTRAST WITH THE CONDITIONS IN WHICH VAST NUMBERS OF ITS CITIZENS LIVE":

40 million in poverty

18.5 million in extreme poverty

**5.3 million in "Third World conditions of absolute poverty”

As of this morning, Republicans are still pushing ahead for a vote on the #GOPFarmBill, which would strip more than 2 million Americans of food assistance.

So it feels like a good time to review some facts about hunger in America.

(THREAD) For many of us, the word “hunger” evokes third-world images of kids with distended bellies. Or maybe the homeless man sitting on the subway grate. But in America in 2018, hunger and food insecurity are an alarmingly widespread experience.

2/

🚨 🚨 Just months after giving $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, House Republicans just unveiled a radical Farm Bill that would dismantle the nation’s main source of nutrition assistance for struggling workers and families.

Here’s how.

(THREAD) The bill is a thinly disguised ploy to take food away from struggling workers and families in the name of “helping people work.” NEWS FLASH: Making someone hungrier won’t help them find work any faster. 2/x

Tonight, Donald Trump signed an executive order that sums up how little he understands about poverty in America.

Here’s why.

(THREAD) Millions of Americans are working 2+ jobs to get by.

Half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

But Trump’s plan for “economic mobility” is to take healthcare, food & housing away from struggling folks just months after giving huge tax cuts to millionaires.

2/x

Today, March 1st, a minimum-wage worker catches up to what she made in 2009--the last time Congress raised the poverty-level minimum wage (as my colleague @rwest817 shows in new @amprog analysis) americanprogress.org/issues/poverty… In 2018, a worker earning $7.25/hr must work an extra 41 days—more than 2 additional months!—just to earn the same amount as she did in a single year when the federal minimum wage was last increased. 2/x

Trump's Robin Hood in reverse budget would be devastating for nearly every community across the U.S.

Here are just a few ways the #TrumpBudget would hurt:

Women
People with disabilities
Rural Americans
Communities of color
Children
Older Americans
LGBTQ individuals
Veterans 1. WOMEN

Women make up two-thirds of adults on Medicaid—which Trump calls for ending as we know it, leaving millions of women without health coverage. And he'd defund Planned Parenthood, cutting off access to family planning & well-woman care.

MORE: cdn.americanprogress.org/content/upload…

Know how Social Security and Medicare are referred to as the “third rail” – because cutting them is understood to be political suicide?

Well, it turns out it’s not just Social Security & Medicare.

Follow along for details on a new poll the GOP should pay close attention to. 1/x Trump and Congressional Republicans learned the hard way last year how immensely popular Medicaid is, when in many ways it saved the ACA.

New polling shows a whopping **80% of Americans** oppose cutting Medicaid.

2/x

BREAKING: Trump has officially ended Medicaid as we know it, by allowing states to take health insurance away from people who can't find a job.

(Please RT to spread the word.) 1/ With the GOP unable so far to repeal the ACA and destroy Medicaid through legislation, Trump's decided he's done waiting for Congress. 2/

LANGUAGE ALERT: Slashing Medicaid, Medicare, nutrition, housing, disability benefits, and more isn’t “welfare reform” any more giving huge tax cuts to billionaires and wealthy corporations is “tax reform.”

(Commence thread.) 1. For starters, the definition of “reform” is to make changes in order to *improve* something.

What Donald Trump and Speaker Ryan are calling for (to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations) is huge cuts that will hobble essential programs.

House GOP dropped their tax bill today and boy are the media headlines missing the mark. /1 GOP is selling it as a big middle class tax cut – when it’s actually Christmas come early for corporations & the ultra-rich.
/2

WaPo is out with its latest on #SocialSecurity disability benefits and boy do I have some thoughts. /1 More than anything the piece underscores how tragically meager disability benefits are. /2

Wonder why @NationalADAPT protestors are putting their bodies on the line to save Medicaid and defeat Graham-Cassidy? /1 Because for millions of people with disabilities, Medicaid means a great deal more than just health insurance—it means independence. /2