Tag Archives: Poverty

Ronald Reagan and his fellow Republicans once invoked what they referred to as “welfare queens” as they made the case for reining in social spending in the 1970s and 1980s, painting a picture of unscrupulous women bilking the system to finance a sumptuous lifestyle. Now as they try to justify cuts to Medicaid, congressional Republicans are focused on a different …

A view of tent houses, belonging to squatters, on the dry riverbed of the Indus River in Hyderabad, on April 25, 2025. — Reuters Over 107m Pakistnis are living below poverty line. Over 39m included in extreme poverty category. New figures reflect updated international thresholds. ISLAMABAD: A sizeable 44.7% of Pakistan’s population is now considered to be living below the …

The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people …

Nolen: The first TB patient that I sat down with in Nairobi was a man who had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB — essentially there’s a just a very slim chance that the only drugs we know about will actually cure him. We’re out of options. And he’d come in that day, like he had very optimistically every day for …

In a hearing on Friday, senators pressed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity nominated to head Medicare and Medicaid, on Republican-led proposals that would significantly affect the health care coverage for nearly half of all Americans. At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Dr. Oz bantered with senators in a friendly atmosphere, joking about basketball and allegiances to …

In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments. He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He …

House Republicans hunting for ways to pay for President Trump’s tax cuts have called for cutting the federal government’s share of Medicaid spending, including a proposal that would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act’s 2014 expansion of the program. Cutting Medicaid spending, which is central to the budget bill that House Republicans may bring to a vote on Tuesday, could …

Federal and state health officials and staff members scrambled on Friday to comply with a 5 p.m. deadline by the Trump administration to terminate any programs that promote “gender ideology,” and to withdraw documents and any other media that may do so. Federal workers had already been ordered to halt diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, to scrub public references to …

In a tense exchange with Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. displayed a surprising lack of familiarity with Medicare and Medicaid, the government programs responsible for covering more than 150 million Americans. At times, Mr. Kennedy seemed to confuse the two programs. Medicare is a federal program that provides coverage to older and disabled Americans, …

Representatives of groups that administer the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, a $7 billion effort funded entirely by the federal government, did not know on Tuesday whether the federal funding pause would affect the program. W.I.C., as it’s usually called, provides vouchers for healthy foods to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants and children. Trump administration officials …