By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

For the Day Eagle Hope Project, federal money has helped volunteers deliver fresh produce and meat to families in need across the remote Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in northern Montana — while putting cash into the hands of farmers, ranchers and meat processors.

The nonprofit generally has less than $300,000 to spend per year. So the $200,000 from a U.S. Department of Agriculture local food buying program drastically raised both the quantity and quality of the food it could distribute.

“They were a major, major contributor to our food,” said Tescha Hawley, who directs the organization, which aims to improve physical, mental and spiritual health.

The USDA recently nixed more than $1 billion from two programs that helped food banks and school meal programs buy local foods, including $660 million for schoolchildren. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently described the programs as “nonessential.”

But the move has left hundreds of school systems and food banks reeling. They already face rising food prices and are struggling to help community members with growing food insecurity.

Created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Local Food Purchase Assistance and the Local Food for Schools programs aimed to build more resilient supply chains of domestic food by connecting schools and food pantries with small ranches, farms and dairies. The program was initially funded by 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act but later expanded by the Biden administration.

The federal programs stimulated the purchase of locally grown fruits, vegetables, dairy and meats — benefiting both the smaller farmers who received fair market pay for their products and the organizations granted funds to buy high quality foods.

The noncompetitive grants sent hundreds of millions of dollars to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 84 tribal governments, boosting business for more than 8,000 farmers and providing local food to almost as many food banks. The Trump administration is killing the programs, despite Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign against processed food, which he says is “poisoning” Americans.

Without ongoing funding, Hawley said, she would have to rely on cheaper, less nutritious food.

“It’s simple, right? I can get a truck … in here with all highly processed food, no problem,” she said.

Schools are facing a similar challenge: While officials running breakfast and lunch programs would prefer to buy more local products, those are often expensive. And with underfunding, high food costs and labor struggles, school lunch programs are already stretched thin.

In Milan, Tennessee, the federal funds allowed the local school system to buy minimally processed beef from a local stockyard, and broccoli, purple hull peas, tomatoes and melons from local growers.

Vickie Dunaway, who supervises the school system’s food services, told the Tennessee Lookout the federal cuts mean“going backwards” on purchasing healthier foods.

“That will obviously have to be cut out, because our budget will not withstand being able to purchase local,” she said. “Purchasing local, minimally processed food is way more expensive than buying from a distributor.”

A ‘devastating’ cut to food banks

Late last year, USDA said the programs had already spent more than $1 billion on local foods, and announced an expansion of the two programs with an additional $1.13 billion. USDA has killed that $1.13 billion expansion; it is still reimbursing the previously committed funds.

The Trump administration, which has sought to dramatically slash the size of the federal government, told recipients earlier this month that the programs “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”

In a statement to Stateline, the USDA said the current administration is “prioritizing stable, proven solutions that deliver lasting impact.”

“The COVID era is over — USDA’s approach to nutrition programs will reflect that reality moving forward,” the statement said.

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The nonpartisan National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, which represents the ag department leaders of all 50 states, last month lobbied the federal government to continue the local foods program with permanent funding and ease procurement regulations for school meal programs. Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture Wes Ward, president of the association, said in a statement that the local food programs aid both producers and consumers.

“Investing in local and regional food systems not only strengthens the connections between farmers and their local communities, it bolsters supply chain resiliency as well,” his statement read.

In New Mexico, the program allowed food banks to buy some 900,000 pounds of locally grown food from more than 200 farmers since 2023. Before the program was terminated, the state was expecting close to $3 million in additional funding, Source New Mexico reported.

Jill Dixon, executive director of The Food Depot in northern New Mexico, called the cuts “devastating.”

In Texas, the San Antonio Food Bank counted on USDA’s local food program to help round out the food boxes it provides to families in need. The food bank, which serves more than 100,000 people across 29 Texas counties, largely relies on donated foods from hotels, restaurants and grocery stores.

“The challenge is I might get peanut butter donated, but I don’t have the jelly, or I might have pasta donated, but I don’t have the marinara,” said Eric Cooper, president and CEO of the food bank. “This program allowed us to purchase those items that we didn’t get that then helped round out the food box, or really complement the food that was being donated to give families the ability to make meals.”

The program initially provided the food bank nearly $3 million in grant funding — about 20% of what the organization spends each year on bulk food purchases. It expected a similar amount this year, before USDA’s announcement.

Cooper said cuts come even as the need for assistance rises. Food prices have squeezed families, and mass layoffs of federal workers portend more demand for food assistance in the coming months, he said.

“And we’ll be caught in the middle. And you know, that’s an incredibly uncomfortable place to be. The only thing we’ll be able to do is just ration what little we have — to spread it as thinly as possible over the number of households we provide food to.”

A boost for school lunches

For years, school meal programs have struggled with tight margins. Not only do they have to meet strict nutritional guidelines, but schools also face lagging reimbursement from the federal government and spend millions covering the cost of students’ unpaid meal debt.

At the 1,600-student Monticello School District in Arkansas, that debt is approaching $60,000.

So $50,000 from USDA’s local food program was a significant boost to the bottom line.

“That was such a help,” said Amanda West, the district’s child nutrition director.

The southeast Arkansas district used grant money to buy locally grown ground beef. The beef went into dishes including taco salad, meatloaf and spaghetti.

West said staff and students immediately noticed a difference in taste from conventionally purchased meats. And though the local product cost more, West said it also yielded more because it was not full of additives that cause the meat to shrink when cooked.

West, who is the president of the Arkansas School Nutrition Association, noted that her state is home to the nation’s highest rates of food insecurity.

West had hoped to see the local foods program help turn that tide by bringing more stability to school meal programs and growing the state economy by boosting local farmers, ranchers and distributors.

“We’re all upset about it. I hate that we’re not receiving it because grocery prices are 30, 40% higher than what they were a few years ago, and it really hurts our budget,” she said. “It helped a lot of districts, including mine, and it would be amazing if we could get it back.”

On top of the local foods program cuts, congressional Republicans are considering billions in potential cuts to free and reduced-price school meal programs — cuts the School Nutrition Association says could potentially affect millions of American students.

The federal government partially subsidizes breakfast, lunch and after-school snack programs at rates calculated by the income level of students’ families.

The School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 school meal providers across the country, said the school meals are the healthiest many American children receive. But that group says federal reimbursements are far from adequate, leaving members worried about the future of their meal programs.

In a recent association survey of more than 1,390 school meal directors, more than 90% reported serious or moderate concern over the financial sustainability of their school meal programs three years from now.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In a streaming series called “Zero Day,” an ex-president, played by Robert De Niro, is drafted by the current president to return to the White House and help guide the country through a computer hacking crisis that has brought the nation to its knees. In order to bring the ex-president up to speed, the director of the CIA takes him into a sealed room with clouded windows, to which the audience is not made privy so that we might understand that whatever is being said in that room can only be heard by the people in the room.

That’s the way most of us thinks it works. Sensitive information is top secret.

Only to discover that President Donald Trump’s top intelligence and defense agencies discussed plans to bomb Houthi rebel targets in Yemen – they’d been disrupting shipping traffic in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden – on an unclassified Signal chat that included the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. The White House wants to downplay the event. They can’t. They were talking about dropping bombs on specific targets at specific times before the men and women flying the attacks were even in the air.

We’ve all read our late great friend Vince Flynn enough to know how dangerous that could have been to the pilots. If you need a worthy heir to Flynn, try Jack Carr.

There was no soundproof room for the principals, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and the guy scratching his head at his preposterously unlikely inclusion, Goldberg. Any one of them could have been in the drive-through line at Arby’s.

I know guys who got big scoops on the next football coach by hearing a telephone conversation behind a closed door, but Goldberg, journalistically speaking, must have thought he died and went to scoop heaven. Still, Goldberg didn’t publish anything until he gave the White House a chance to comment. The story was not necessarily the bombing. Miraculously, they apparently were not heard by enemies. The story was the way the plans were disseminated. Signal is encrypted, but it’s not a secured room. And even then, Goldberg only published pieces. It was only when the White House denied he could have such information that he printed the texts.

As near as can be determined, Goldberg somehow ended up on the chat because Waltz apparently had him on his telephone contacts and inadvertently pressed the wrong button and included him. Or not. They will screw themselves into the ground trying to spin that one.

Any way you cut it, it was amateur hour, with Forest Lake’s own, Hegseth, apparently choosing Signal for the confab.

Let’s keep it simple. What happened cannot happen again. Let’s say Gabbard was in an Arby’s drive-through line. There are so many signals and so many microwave transmissions and so many electric impulses in the air, up might have popped on the menu board the text “1215et: F-18s launch (1st strike package).”

Uh, yeah, you want fries with that?

Now throw in the witchery of artificial intelligence and satellites over every corner of Earth and cameras catching every spy’s wink and nod, and nothing is safe for coordinating a bombing strike except for the secure room with the clouded windows. We are not heading into the great unknown, we’re already there.

Our own cars might not even be safe for our secrets and our plans due to the manufacturers designing them with computer chips and wiring looms to keep track of us.

Pete, put down the latest copy of “Total Tattoo” and wrap your head around this. This is the big leagues.

Americans who are opposed to Trump will say the snafu is all the fault of billionaires trying to give themselves tax breaks.

Those who support Trump will blame Goldberg.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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MENOMONIE, Wis. — After more than 50 years, Thursday marked the resolution of an unsolved homicide in western Wisconsin.

After entering a no-contest plea in Dunn County Circuit Court, Jon K. Miller, 84, of Owatonna, Minn., was sentenced to life in prison on a count of first-degree intentional homicide.

Miller fatally stabbed 25-year-old Mary Schlais in Minneapolis in February 1974. Her body was found in the township of Spring Brook.

Members of Schlais’ family attended the hearing to hear the conclusion to a case that has been shrouded in mystery for more than five decades.

“Today marks the end of a 50-year journey — one that is filled with loss, perseverance and finally justice,” said Nina Schlais, Mary’s niece who was born after her murder. “While no verdict can undo the pain of losing Mary, we take comfort in knowing that the man responsible for her murder has been held accountable. Mary Schlais was more than a victim; she was a brilliant and independent woman, a gifted artist, an equestrian, a world traveler and a scholar.

“For decades, our family lived with unanswered questions, but thanks to the tireless efforts of dedicated individuals we now have those answers.”

Based on the sentencing structure back in 1974, any parole date for Miller’s life imprisonment sentence would be determined by the Department of Corrections. Furthermore, the court ordered restitution in the amount of $2,200.

According to police, a stocking hat left near Schlais’ body included hair samples that were used to create a DNA profile of the suspect. Authorities were able to track down Miller after a family member of the suspect uploaded a DNA sample to a public database in spring 2023. When confronted, authorities said he agreed to his involvement in Mary Schlais’ death.

It took the Investigative Genetic Genealogy team from Ramapo College in New Jersey more than a year to track down Miller, largely because he was adopted and members in his family tree weren’t aware of his existence.

Mary Schlais’ death was ruled a homicide in 1974. The investigation revealed that Schlais was from Minneapolis, and was believed to be hitchhiking from Minneapolis to an art show in Chicago. An eyewitness observed a suspect and suspect vehicle that were believed to be connected to the homicide.

“I think we have continued to feel relief,” said Nina Schlais. “Sadly, whenever we thought about Mary over the years, we always thought of what happened to her, and I feel like now we can think about who she was as a person, and not just that final day. That will be what we will continue to do.”

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By KELVIN CHAN, Associated Press Business Writer

LONDON (AP) — You’ve heard of burner phones. What about burner email?

So much of the internet now requires that you hand over your email address before you’re able to use any services — from an app you’ve downloaded to signing up for a newsletter or redeeming a special offer online.

But who says you have to give your real email address? Next time you’re asked, consider using an email mask.

There are a growing number of services that give out disguised email addresses and relay any messages to your actual address. Experts say this can be a powerful tool to safeguard privacy and security.

Here are some pointers on the whys and hows of email masking:

Mask on

The idea behind email masking is simple. The masking service gives you a randomized address you can use as a decoy instead of your actual email. It can be a series of unrelated words, or a string of letters and numbers. When someone sends a message to the burner email, it will be automatically routed to your address without anyone knowing.

Providers include privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service, Firefox Relay from browser maker Mozilla, email service FastMail and independent services like Addy.io. The encrypted service Proton Mail offers email masking with its password manager and standalone SimpleLogin service. There are many others.

It’s one of the features Apple offers users subscribing to its iCloud+ or Apple One services. When you’re using the Safari browser app on your iPhone and need to input your email, you can tap the field above the onscreen keyboard to “Hide My Email,” which then creates a random address as a substitute.

It’s also available on Mac computers with the desktop Safari browser or Mail app. If you’re using a different browser or app, you can still manually create a random email address by going into your iCloud settings.

A Key Feature

Most services have a free version with basic options and a premium tier with more features.

Some free services can only receive emails but not reply to them. However, an important feature users should look for is the ability to do both, said Proton CEO Andy Yen.

“Maybe you never reply to a newsletter and that’s fine,” said Yen. But it’s a problem if, for example, you used your email alias to buy something online and there’s an issue with your order that the site needs to ask you about.

“Then the ability to reply is actually pretty important,” he said.

Most masking services have a dashboard control panel where you can view the various alias addresses you’ve activated. If you notice one starting to get a lot of spam, just turn it off.

When should I use it?

Mask your email when you want to add an extra layer of privacy or protect yourself from data leaks or unauthorized information sharing.

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An email mask is a “general-purpose tool that can be used in any context,” says Santiago Andrigo, principal product manager at Mozilla.

However, he recommends using it in two key situations. The first is when you’re unsure what a website will do with your email address.

“Masking your email gives you control — if you start receiving unwanted messages, you can easily block any emails coming to that email mask,” Andrigo said.

The second scenario is “when your association with a service could reveal sensitive personal information,” he said. For example, if you join an online community for a specific medical condition or a minority group, a data breach could expose your participation.

Email fail

There are myriad reasons not to give out your email address to anyone who wants it.

It could be sold to marketers or shady data brokers, eroding your privacy by helping them build a profile of you for legitimate or nefarious purposes.

If your address ends up on the wrong mailing list, it could result in more junk or phishing emails. And if an online service is hacked, attackers could make off with logins, passwords and other personal information.

Using unique passwords for all your online accounts — typically with the help of a password manager — is good cybersecurity practice. “But the real pain point for any user is actually not the password getting leaked, but actually the email getting leaked,” said Yen.

Changing your password after a data breach is standard practice but it’s a lot harder to change another piece of sensitive information, your email address — unless you’re using a mask.

False solutions

There are other so-called hacks that you might have heard about.

You could set up a throwaway account with a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo. But it’s tedious to do this.

Some Gmail users add a plus sign and an extra phrase or combination of characters between their username and the @ sign. It helps track who’s sharing your address as well as filter messages.

But “from a privacy standpoint, that does nothing,” said Yen. “Because people can just simply take away the plus and get your original address.”

What about the man in the middle?

Email masks use their servers to relay message traffic between the sender and the recipient. So how can you be sure those servers are private?

Look for reputable providers that promise not to keep your messages. If you’re shopping around for an email masking service, Yen advises checking if it has “proper terms and conditions,” a privacy policy and is based in a jurisdiction where it could be legally held accountable.

“We state very clearly we’re not keeping a copy of anything that passes through our servers,” Yen said.

Firefox Relay says in its FAQs that it does not “read or store any of your messages.”

“In the event that an email cannot be delivered to you, we will keep it on our servers and delete it after it has been delivered (in no event will we hold onto it for more than three days),” it says.

Apple says it “doesn’t read or process any of the content” in email messages that pass through Hide My Email except for standard spam filtering.

“All email messages are deleted from our relay servers after they’re delivered to you, usually within seconds,” the iPhone maker says.

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, Calif. contributed to this report.

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.