“These cuts are being strongly felt among our community before they even hit them,” said Carlyn Cowen, chief policy and public affairs officer at the Chinese-American Planning Council.

An EBT sign in a storefront on East Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

New York Attorney General Letitia James and attorneys general from 21 other states are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a new rule they say would permanently bar refugees and asylees from participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).   

The exclusion stems from the One Big Beautiful Bill passed by federal lawmakers this summer, which included substantial alterations to the nation’s social safety net programs.   

That includes expanded work requirements for SNAP recipients—which are, for now, on hold locally until next year—and new eligibility parameters that exclude victims of trafficking and several legally present immigrant groups from the benefits.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the federal agency in charge of the SNAP program, issued a memo in late October stating that the government no longer considers refugees, people granted asylum, and parolees eligible for food assistance.

While undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for SNAP, the above groups and victims of trafficking were able to apply for food assistance benefits as soon as they obtained that protected status, and as long as they met the program’s other requirements. The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated that eligibility. 

The AGs’ lawsuit says that the USDA’s memo goes even further than what Congress laid out in the bill, claiming it would close all possibilities for these groups to qualify for SNAP, even if they become lawful permanent residents—one of the few non-citizen groups still eligible under the Trump administration’s changes (though after a five year waiting period).

“The federal government’s shameful quest to take food away from children and families continues,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement last week, announcing the lawsuit. “USDA has no authority to arbitrarily cut entire groups of people out of the SNAP program, and no one should go hungry because of the circumstances of their arrival to this country.”

Under the Big Beautiful Bill, the government will cut funding for the SNAP program—formerly known as food stamps—by $187 billion through 2034, representing a 20 percent cut, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The timing couldn’t be worse: SNAP recipients already saw their benefits delayed for over a week in November because of the federal shutdown, while many states and localities aren’t sure how to implement the new eligibility measures.

The federal government says the changes haven’t taken effect yet. 

“Due to the complex nature of non-citizen policy, USDA is in the process of developing further guidance based on questions from SNAP State Agencies and partners,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. 

New York’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which administers the program on the state level, said it has not yet issued implementation guidance to local districts following the USDA’s October memo.

In New York City, officials assured that people should not be losing their benefits yet. “We always work to protect all vulnerable New Yorkers, and no one has yet been impacted by any changes,” a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Social Services (DSS), which runs SNAP in the five boroughs, said in a statement to City Limits.

But should the new requirements move ahead, about 15,000 non-citizens in New York City alone could be impacted, according to DSS’ internal estimates. Officials say that any new guidelines for implementing the system depend on what the state stipulates. Even if these changes are put into place, affected SNAP beneficiaries will not see any changes until they are recertified, the spokesperson said.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 90,000 people under the non-citizen category could lose benefits across the country. According to the Attorney General’s Office, as many as 35,000 New Yorkers across the state could lose benefits.

The Chinese-American Planning Council—which serves low-income and immigrant Asian American New Yorkers—estimates that 20 percent, or 2,000, of the roughly 10,000 SNAP recipients the organization works with could be impacted, according to Carlyn Cowen, chief policy and public affairs officer.

“Just to give you an idea of the level of fear and the scale of impact that these cuts are having in the weeks before we heard about [it]… we had multiple community members calling in asking about what would happen to their SNAP benefits,” Cowen said. “We had a community member experiencing a mental health crisis because they were worried. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to feed his family.” 

“These cuts are being strongly felt among our community before they even hit them,” Cowen added.

Tina Lopez, the International Rescue Committee’s executive director in New York, said access to SNAP “was an integral part of the U.S. refugee and humanitarian programs under federal law.”

“[SNAP] really does become vitally important, particularly for survivors of human trafficking to have these essential food services when they are experiencing such instability,” Lopez said. “These essential food services create that stability that they need to gain back the mental health resources to survive and thrive.”

Chia Chia Wang, New York director for Church World Service, an organization working with vulnerable populations internationally, underlined that community members are uncertain about their futures.

“Their ability to access the benefits they do qualify for may be undermined by numerous efforts that make their lives harder,” Wang said. 

In addition to the SNAP eligibility changes, the Trump administration announced new rules last month around the “public charge” policy—a way for immigration officers to see if immigrants use public benefits. 

The increased scrutiny did not stop there: on Nov. 24, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a memo calling for a “review and re-interview” of all refugees admitted in the country during the Biden administration: about 233,000 people.

According to the memo, first reported by Reuters, USCIS would continue to review refugees admitted in other periods afterwards.

“Federal eligibility rules and other policy changes have created a chaotic situation for immigrants, refugees, and advocates alike,” Wang said.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post New York Sues Trump Administration Over SNAP Changes That Would Exclude Thousands of Legal Immigrants appeared first on City Limits.

Attorneys for former KSTP-TV meteorologist Wren Clair and the St. Paul-based TV station requested on Tuesday that a judge dismiss her lawsuit against her previous employer.

They filed a stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, meaning the lawsuit can’t be refiled.

Wren Clair (Courtesy of KARE-TV)

Clair, who filed the lawsuit on Aug. 12 under her legal name of Renee Fox, alleged sexual harassment and retaliation at KSTP. She said in the suit she was abruptly terminated after she reported the conduct.

KSTP, in a legal response filed in court on Aug. 13, said Fox was terminated “as a result of her poor performance, on which she was repeatedly coached.” The response also said she was not “subjected to sex-based harassment.”

Ramsey County District Court Judge Reynaldo Aligada Jr. referred the matter to mediation on Nov. 17, according to the court file. The file doesn’t indicate whether they went to mediation or what led to the joint request to dismiss the lawsuit.

“The matter has been resolved,” Fox’s attorney, Paul Schinner, said Tuesday. He said he couldn’t comment further.

Attorneys for KSTP could not immediately be reached Tuesday afternoon.

Kirk Varner, previously KSTP’s news director, said in a Tuesday statement: “While confident that I would have been able to defend myself against the allegations that were made, I am pleased that this matter has been resolved.”

Fox, who grew up in Hopkins and went to the University of Minnesota, was a morning show meteorologist in Boston, a top-10 market in the U.S. at the time. Her husband obtained a promotion that required a move back to Minneapolis and she was hired as a KSTP meteorologist in 2018.

After chief meteorologist Dave Dahl retired in 2020, Fox took over as the prime-time weekday evening meteorologist for “5 Eyewitness News.” She was demoted in 2024 and terminated in February, “but the sex-based disparate treatment and sexual harassment occurred throughout the entirety of her employment,” her lawsuit said.

Fox became a meteorologist for KARE-TV in May. She wrote on Sept. 3 on Instagram that she and the TV station “have agreed to part ways.”

“I thank all my colleagues for their professionalism and hard work,” Fox wrote. “I thank all the viewers for watching me and supporting me. I look forward to focusing more on my personal life and pursuing scientific careers outside of television.”

Related Articles

Former Minneapolis chamber exec Jonathan Weinhagen pleads guilty to fraud scheme

A look at St. Paul’s legal tangles with the Trump administration

Plymouth man sentenced to prison for Anoka drunk driving fatality

Former Minneapolis teacher and coach sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting children

Campbell’s IT chief on leave after lawsuit claims he said company’s food is for ‘poor people’

There are two big worries when it comes to the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. The first is that it will lead to robot overlords that will eradicate humanity. The second is that AI will eliminate many jobs. The more likely scenario is that it creates a labor shortage, or at least a dearth of skilled workers who can make the most of the new technology.

I recently spoke to the head of the informatics program at a large university and asked her about training undergraduates for this future. The biggest obstacle, she explained, is that many students do not have the necessary math skills for a world where AI will dominate our lives, especially those who don’t plan to specialize in the field.

But what about those who do plan a career in AI? Technology has always made labor more valuable because it allows workers to become more productive. The concern now is people will use AI to do their thinking for them, thereby making themselves redundant. That will probably be the case for some, but using AI in a productive manner involves employing the technology to develop novel ideas, and that requires at least some human input.

For example, large language models work by taking lots of data to not only answer a question, but finding the answer that is most common, or average. Sometimes that is adequate, but what distinguishes people in a work situation is often coming up with an exceptional answer. AI can help you get there but is rarely sufficient on its own; it also takes an ability to assess the output and push further. Or often the answer from AI is inadequate because it lacks the context that makes a certain situation unique.

Suppose you attempt to get a simple statistic from a large trove of data. It is not enough to get a statistic thrown back at you; you need to understand the limitations of the data your model is working with, where it comes from, when it is from, if it is relevant to your problem and what specification did the technology use to provide the statistic. Making sense of the results takes both decent statistical and analytic skills.

In the meantime, we are witnessing a collapse of standards and some students’ ability to do even basic math in some of America’s best universities and secondary schools. Perhaps only a fraction of students at Harvard University need remedial math. But the fact that this is even a population at such a school suggests standards across the board are weakening, not only for math but reading as well. Even exceptional students are getting less rigorous training in how to think critically during this crucial time in their lives and brain development.

I’ve heard many academics say they are still unsure how to teach students the skills they need to thrive in an AI world that eliminates many entry-level jobs. Amid a major economic transition, it is impossible to know what the future of work will look like. One likely solution may be as simple as teaching the basics well, enforcing consistent standards and giving real grades.

Doing anything else risks a vicious cycle where new graduates can’t offer much improvement on AI because they lack the skills they need to work with the technology and so aren’t worth hiring. In such a scenario we end up in the worst of all worlds — unemployable graduates and employers unable to find enough workers who can use the new technology effectively.

When it comes to the U.S., there’s an added risk tied to immigration. Many foreign students have better quantitative skills than their American peers, but our legal and skilled migration system is broken. Even the president, long an immigration skeptic, admits we need more skilled workers who can create and use technology, and many of them will need to come from abroad. But lasting immigration reform cannot come from an executive order; it requires Congress and bipartisan consensus on immigration priorities. Unfortunately, this is not looking likely at this time.

The result is that America is potentially left dealing with a major mismatch in skills and the lack of analytical thinkers with strong math abilities who can use and adapt to however technology evolves. Neither our education nor immigration system is producing enough of these people. The outcome may be both many unemployable graduates and a massive labor shortage.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

By SARA CLINE and JACK BROOK, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that National Guard troops will soon head to New Orleans and bring another federal surge to the city that is already awaiting a separate immigration crackdown that is expected to begin this week.

Trump did not say how many troops would be sent to New Orleans or exactly when they would arrive. Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who asked the Trump administration in September for up to 1,000 troops to fight crime, told reporters Monday that he expected the Guard to arrive in New Orleans before Christmas.

“Gov. Landry — a great guy, a great governor — he’s asked for help in New Orleans. And we’re going to go there in a couple of weeks,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Landry, a staunch Trump ally, has said he welcomes federal intervention in Democratic-run New Orleans, citing concerns about elevated violent crime rates even though local police officials say crime is down. Separately, Landry posted on social media this week that “We Welcome the Swamp Sweep in Louisiana,” referring to the Border Patrol-led operation that aims to arrest 5,000 people over the coming weeks.

Opponents argue that deployment of federal troops or agents in Louisiana is unwarranted, especially as some cities have actually seen a decrease in violent crime rates — namely New Orleans, which is on pace to have one of its safest years, statistically, since the 1970s.

In September, Landry requested federally funded National Guard troops be sent to Louisiana. In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Landry said there have been “elevated violent crime rates” in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport along with shortages in law enforcement personnel.

Landry also said the state’s vulnerability to natural disasters makes the issue more challenging, and the extra support would be especially helpful for major events, including Mardi Gras and college football bowl games.

Louisiana National Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins declined to comment Tuesday.

In 2022, New Orleans had the dubious distinction of being considered the “murder capital of the country,” reporting the highest per-capita homicide rate in the nation. That year there were 266 murders — a rate of 70 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Three years later, however, shootings, carjackings and armed robberies have plummeted. While there has been a spike of homicides in recent weeks, the city is still on pace to have its lowest number in nearly 50 years, according to crime data from the police department. As of early November, the New Orleans Police Department reported 97 murders.

Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat who takes office in January, has firmly rejected the idea of a National Guard deployment in the blue city and has expressed concern that a federal immigration enforcement surge will lead to rights violations.

Related Articles

US Justice Department seeks to dismiss Maurene Comey lawsuit on procedural grounds

Trump administration says it will withhold SNAP from Democrat-led states if they don’t provide data

Despite legal challenge, Florida college votes again to transfer land for Trump presidential library

Trump says he doesn’t want Somali immigrants in the US, urges them to go back to their homeland and fix it

Federal authorities plan operation in Minnesota focusing on Somali immigrants, AP source says

Outgoing Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat facing federal corruption charges, previously said the city was open to working with the federal government to improve public safety.

Moreno and Cantrell did not immediately provide comment about the impending deployment.

Other New Orleans officials have warned that troops could disrupt unique cultural traditions, such as the frequent brass band parades in the streets that are known as second-lines or jeopardize hard-won relationships between communities and the police.

In January, 100 guard members were sent to the city to help with security measures following a New Year’s Day truck attack that killed 14 people and injured dozens of other revelers on Bourbon Street.

In September, Landry also suggested that federally funded National Guard troops should be sent to Baton Rouge and Shreveport, and Monday indicated troops would be sent to cities beyond New Orleans.

In Baton Rouge, the capital, Republican Mayor Sid Edwards said this month that extra assets could provide “much-needed boots on the ground” amid a police shortage.

Although homicides are on pace to decrease from the previous year there as well, the city has struggled with gun violence, with bystanders caught in crossfire made worse by the use of machine gun conversion devices. A recent multiagency initiative to crack down on violent crime resulted in more than 100 arrests and the seizure of guns.

In conservative Shreveport, the hometown of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux told The Associated Press in October that violent crime has significantly decreased. Arceneaux said he was willing to work with the National Guard but would prefer receiving state police officers instead.

Louisiana is the latest place where Trump has sent — or tried to send — National Guard troops in recent months. Other cities include Los Angeles, Baltimore, Washington and Memphis, Tennessee. Leaders in Democratic-controlled jurisdictions have turned to legal action to block planned deployments, such as in Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writer Michelle Price contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.