The Greene County Democrat

Category: Health

  • Newswire : Nation’s report card shows drop in Reading, Math, and Science scores

    Black students in high school class

    By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

     

    The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal troubling declines in academic performance among U.S. students, with twelfth-graders posting lower scores in reading and mathematics and eighth-graders showing setbacks in science.

    In reading, the 2024 national average for twelfth graders was three points lower than in 2019, and ten points lower than when the assessment was first administered in 1992. Scores fell across nearly all percentiles, with only the highest-performing students at the 90th percentile holding steady. The percentage of students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level declined to 35 percent in 2024, compared to 37 percent in 2019, while 32 percent of students scored below the NAEP Basic level.

    Mathematics results tell a similar story. The average score for twelfth graders in 2024 dropped three points from 2019 and stood three points lower than in 2005, the year the current trend line began. Scores declined across nearly all percentiles except the 90th. Just 24 percent of twelfth graders scored at or above Proficient in 2024, while 40 percent scored below Basic, up from 37 percent in 2019.
    Eighth-grade science results also fell sharply. The 2024 average score was four points lower than in 2019, with declines across all five reported percentiles. Thirty-eight percent of eighth graders scored below the Basic level, compared to 33 percent in 2019. Students from nearly every demographic and parental education group saw declines, particularly at the lower percentiles. Confidence in science ability also fell, with fewer students reporting that they “definitely” could perform key science tasks.
    Further, African American students remain disproportionately represented among lower performers nationally. Across reading, mathematics, and science, they continue to score below the overall national average, with larger percentages falling below the NAEP Basic level and fewer reaching Proficient or Advanced. Although overall national scores declined in 2024, the long-standing gap between African American students and their White and Asian peers has not narrowed.
    The assessments, administered between January and March 2024, covered tens of thousands of students nationwide. Reading and math were given to twelfth graders, while science was assessed at the eighth-grade level. In addition to academic content, students completed questionnaires about learning opportunities, absenteeism, and engagement, data that NAEP officials say may help explain trends. NAEP, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, is the largest continuing and nationally representative measure of U.S. student achievement. The results are closely watched by educators, policymakers, and researchers as indicators of how students are faring and where learning gaps are widening

  • Alabama’s new tax exemption for menstrual products started Monday

     

    The state’s new sales tax exemption on menstrual and maternity products, as well as baby essentials, will take effect on September 1.2025

    By Mary Claire Wooten, Alabama Political Reporters

     

    Alabama’s new tax exemption on menstrual products and other family essentials will take effect Monday, marking a significant change in how the state treats these necessary items. 

    Beginning September 1, 2025, the state’s 4 percent sales tax exemption applies to tampons, pads, menstrual cups and maternity products, as well as baby formula, bottles, wipes, breast pumps, diapers and maternity clothing. 
    The exemption applies only to state-level sales taxes, which means counties and municipalities may still collect their own local sales taxes unless they pass ordinances to extend the exemption.

    The measure was approved earlier this year. HB152, sponsored by Representative Neil Rafferty, D-Birmingham. Rafferty celebrated it as “a big win for Alabama’s working families.” The House of Representatives approved the bill unanimously in March, and Rafferty’s effort drew bipartisan backing throughout the process. 

    During debate, Representative Ginny Shaver, R-Leesburg, amended the bill to include adult diapers. 

    “You know I’m all about women, children and seniors,” said Shaver.
    The Alabama Senate followed with unanimous approval in May, sending the bill to Governor Kay Ivey’s desk. Ivey signed it into law later that month. 

    Legislative analysts estimate the change will cost the state around $13 million in lost revenue each year, but the impact on the budget was a modest tradeoff for the financial relief it will provide to families.

    Courtney Roark, Alabama Policy and Movement Building director for URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equality, said that these tax cuts are an essential component of family-first agendas.

    “No one should have to choose between affording food or rent and essential healthcare products like tampons or diapers,” said Roarke. “We should all be able to take care of our health, safety, and family needs without it threatening our economic security. This is a huge win that will provide material economic relief for young people struggling to make ends meet and support their families in Alabama.”

    Alongside the removal of the period tax, lawmakers also approved a phased reduction of the state grocery tax and expanded paid parental leave for teachers and state employees. Together, the initiatives represent an effort to ease economic pressures on Alabama households.

    Starting Monday, families across the state will begin to see the effects of those changes. 

  • Newswire : Newbern, AL, first Black mayor, who had been locked out of office, wins re-election

    Mayor Patrick Braxton of Newbern

    By The Associated Press


    NEWBERN, Ala. — The first Black mayor of a tiny Alabama town overwhelmingly won election this week, four years after white residents locked him out of the town hall and refused to let him serve.
    Incumbent Mayor Patrick Braxton was elected as the mayor of Newbern, winning 66 votes to his opponent’s 26, according to results posted by the town. His victory puts a punctuation mark in the dispute over control of the town government that drew national attention.
    “The people came out and spoke and voted. Now, there ain’t no doubt what they want for this town,” Braxton said in a telephone interview Wednesday night.
    The election Tuesday was the town’s first since at least the 1960s, held under a federal settlement. Black residents had sued, challenging what they called the town’s “hand-me-down governance” and refusal to let Braxton serve after he ran unopposed for mayor in 2020.
    Newbern’s residents number just 133 people. A library, the town hall, a mercantile and a flashing caution light anchor the downtown, about 40 miles west of Selma.
    What the town had been without is elections.
    Newbern’s mayor-council government had not been put to a vote for six decades. Instead, town officials held “hand-me-down” positions, with each mayor appointing a successor who appointed the council members, according to the lawsuit filed by Braxton and others. The result was an overwhelmingly white government in a town where Black residents outnumber white residents 2-1.
    Braxton, a volunteer firefighter, qualified in 2020 to run for the nonpartisan position of mayor, and since he was the only candidate, he became the mayor-elect without an election. He then appointed a new town council, as other mayors have done.
    But the locks were changed at the town hall, and Braxton was denied access to the town’s financial accounts. His lawsuit also alleged that outgoing council members held a secret meeting to set up a special election and “fraudulently reappointed themselves as the town council.”
    “I didn’t get a chance to serve but one year out of the five years,” said Braxton, who finally occupied the office last year after a three-year legal battle.
    Town officials had denied wrongdoing, arguing in court filings that Braxton’s claim to be mayor was “invalid.”
    The settlement agreement included a promise to hold a mayoral election in 2025.
    Braxton had one challenger this time — a white auctioneer and Realtor, Laird Cole.
    “Mayor Braxton’s election represents a turning point for Newbern, restoring democratic governance, ensuring fair representation, and reaffirming that every resident has a voice in their local government,” Madison Hollon, program manager of political campaigns for the SPLC Action Fund, said Thursday. The group endorsed Braxton in the race.
    The mayor said his lopsided victory should eliminate any “doubts people had hanging in their heads on if people want me.”
    “It feels good the second time,” Braxton said.

     

  • Newswire : Spike Lee Documentary shows the refusal to help Blacks during Hurricane Katrina

    Radar image of Hurricane Katrina and Flooded houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

    News media focused on looting, not Black residents
    being denied food, water, and shelter

     

    By Blackmansstreet Today


    When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans 20 years ago on August 28, 2005, many of the city’s Black residents, especially those in the Lower 9th Ward, didn’t own cars or even know how to drive to flee the oncoming flood. The buses weren’t running. Some companies eventually sent buses, but no drivers because they were afraid of coming into the city, because all the news media reported was that looting and murders were widespread.

    Some 100,000 to 150,000 residents remained in the city to sit out the hurricane and to hope for the best, or they stayed because they had no other place to go.

    Many were left without food, safe drinking water, and shelter, but as one woman in Spike Lee’s Netflix documentary “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” said, they were seeking help but were treated like criminals. 

    In the film, we see one Black cop holding a shotgun on men taking food from a store in circumstances where it was impossible to procure food otherwise.

    The series also points out racist language in news coverage. On the pages of national newspapers, headlines announced, “The Looting Instinct,” “Thugs Reign of Terror,” and the like.

    For the first days after the hurricane, news outlets focused on what we now know to be greatly exaggerated individual acts of crime and violence. 

    White residents stealing from grocery stores were described as “finding” food and beverages for their families, while Black residents doing the same thing were described as looters.

    Even reporter Soledad O’Brien, who covered the Katrina from start to finish, admitted she fell into the trap of calling Black people looters and comparing them with White people seeking food.

    Eddie Compass, New Orleans Chief of Police, said snipers were firing at helicopters, and Governor Kathleen Blanco repeated that there were snipers. Blanco ordered police to shoot to kill. 

    Mayor Ray Nagin fired Compass.

    Instead, we learned that people on the ground were trying to get attention so someone would rescue them. 

    They were not snipers, said General Russal L. Honore, who is the only hero in this disaster. He ordered members of the National Guard to put their “Goddamn guns down and begin helping people.”

    Hurricane Katrina killed 1,392 people, including 520 direct deaths, 341 of which were in Louisiana, according to the National Hurricane Center in 2023. Hurricane Katrina’s 175 miles per hour winds caused $320 billion in damage when the levee broke, flooding the city.

    Men and women huddled in the Superdome to escape the baking heat, while others walked the highway leading from New Orleans.

    The documentary shows Black men, women, and children floating face down in the water populated by venomous snakes and crocodiles.

    Others stood on their rooftops, holding waving towels, signaling for help. 

    President George W. Bush cut his vacation short to fly over the devastation, but he never went to New Orleans.

    He had declined to visit the impacted areas right away so as not to impede recovery efforts. But that’s not what people saw. 

    The image of the White, Republican president gazing distantly from above was a made-for-TV contrast with the images coming out of heavily Black, Democratic New Orleans. To many Americans, it was a far cry from the Bush who had triumphantly stood with firefighters in the rubble of the World Trade Center days after 9/11, the Bush who had famously said, “I can hear you.” 

    Bush faced almost immediate criticism from Democrats, but several Republicans would soon join in. “If we can’t respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we’re prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?” former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked. 

    Then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called the federal response “embarrassing.” And a 2006 report by House Republicans would later criticize Bush’s Department of Homeland Security for inaction that resulted in a delayed evacuation of New Orleans. 

    On Sept. 2, Bush toured the Gulf Coast and signed a Congressionally approved $10 billion relief package. 

    He pledged to crack down on crime, restore power, and get supplies to the needy. He even appeared to criticize his own disaster officials, saying he was satisfied with the government’s response, but “not satisfied with all the results.” 

    That same day, Kanye West would go on TV and proclaim what many were already thinking: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

    All three parts of Katrina: Come Hell and High Water are available on Netflix.

  • Newswire : Billionaires pay lower effective tax rates than average Americans, new data show

    By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

     


    A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reveals that America’s wealthiest billionaires pay a lower share of their income in taxes than most workers and even less than the national average.

    The analysis, conducted by economists Akcan S. Balkir, Emmanuel Saez, Danny Yagan, and Gabriel Zucman, used administrative data from 2010 through 2020, matching Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans with individual, business, estate, and gift tax returns. It found that the top 0.0002 percent of households—roughly the “Forbes 400”—paid an average total effective tax rate of 24 percent from 2018 to 2020.
    That compares with 30 percent for the overall U.S. population and 45 percent for top labor income earners. The authors define the effective rate as all taxes paid relative to “economic income,” which includes labor income, business profits, and capital gains. The report concludes that billionaires “appear less taxed than the average American” when all sources of wealth are considered.

    Why the Wealthiest Pay Less

    The findings point to structural features of the U.S. tax code. C-corporations owned by billionaires distribute relatively little in dividends, which minimizes individual income tax unless the stock is sold. Pass through businesses—such as partnerships and S corporations—often report negative taxable income despite high profits, further limiting tax bills.

    The researchers found that between 2010 and 2017, billionaires’ effective tax rates averaged about 30 percent, but that fell to 24 percent in the years after Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The law slashed the federal corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and expanded provisions like full expensing of investment, allowing companies to reduce taxable income even with high book profits.
    Estate and gift taxes also make little difference. Decedents in the Forbes 400 paid just 0.8 percent of their wealth in estate tax when married and 7 percent when single. Annual charitable giving by the group equaled 0.6 percent of wealth and 11 percent of economic income in 2018–2020.

    The Corporate Tax’s Outsized Role

    Corporate taxes remain a major source of government revenue from billionaires. About 9 percentage points of the top 400’s 23.8 percent effective rate comes from corporate tax. By contrast, their individual income taxes amounted to just 11 percent of economic income. When measured against wealth instead of income, the richest Americans paid only 1.3 percent of their holdings in taxes annually in 2018–2020—down from 2.7 percent in 2010–2013.

    International Comparisons

    The United States is not alone in seeing ultra-rich households taxed at lower rates. Similar studies show billionaires in the Netherlands pay less than 20 percent of economic income, while in France, the top 0.0002 percent paid 26 percent in 2016. Still, U.S. billionaires’ individual income tax rates—about 11 percent of economic income—are higher than those in parts of Europe, where personal holding companies allow greater avoidance.
    The researchers caution that the effective rate at the very top is heavily dependent on how economic income is defined, but across multiple approaches, the results remain consistent: the richest households are taxed at lower rates than most Americans. “Ultra-high-net-worth individuals appear less taxed than the average American,” the authors wrote.

     

  • Newswire : Trump terminates Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection, but California will fill the gap.Trump is running a narcissistic vendetta


     Vice President Kamala Harris

    By Blackmansstreet Today

    President Donald Trump has dropped Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party nominee in the 2024 election for president, quashing an 18-month extension ordered by President Joseph Joseph Biden after she left office.

    Trump however, ordered the Secret Service detail to end on September 1.He made the decision Thursday to revoke that continued protection, and an executive memorandum was issued to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directing her to rescind Harris’s Secret Service detail, the officials said.

    The directive was then forwarded to the Secret Service, and the agency will comply with the order, the Homeland Security officials confirmed.

    In June, the U. S. Secret Service ran a threat assessment on Harris and did not find anything alarming, that would warrant extending her detail past the usual. six months, according to sources familiar with the situation. 

    “The Vice President is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety,” Kirsten Allen, a senior adviser to Harris, said in a statement to CBS News.

    Trump is seeking retribution against people he doesn’t like.

    In another recent instance, Trump has demanded that the U.S. Central Bank
    force Lisa D. Cook, and asked her to step down as a Governor of the Federal
    Reserve Board,. This was after Trump officials alleged that Cook was involved in a case of mortgage fraud. Cook has not been charged with a crime. Cook angrily told Trump she is not leaving and that he has no right to force her out of her job. She also sued Trump, her lawyer says.

    Last Friday, the FBI raided former national security advisor and frequent
    Trump critic John Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. The FBI said the raid was part of a “national security investigation in search of classified
    records,” a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

    Trump administration has removed Secret Service protection for several others, including John Bolton, who was the president’s national security adviser during his first term, and Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden, the children of former President Joe Biden, were also denied further protective services.

    Trump has fired anyone who opposes him. The White House said on
    The Thursday that it has fired Robert Primus, a member of the Surface Transportation Board because he opposed the proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroad companies

    The California Highway Patrol will protect Harris following a meeting between Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

  • Newswire : Administration tries to pretend slavery never happened

     Slave showing marks of whipping

    By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

    The Trump White House has declared war on history itself. In an official article published Friday, Aug. 22, on the White House website, the administration blasted the Smithsonian Institution for telling the truth about slavery, systemic racism, and inequality in America. It was not just an attack on museums—it was an attack on memory, on facts, and on the lives of generations of Black Americans who endured the country’s greatest crimes.

    The White House mocked exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture for daring to explain that America privileges whiteness. It dismissed scholarship on the legacies of slavery in the Texas Revolution, ridiculed art that reckons with the Middle Passage, and condemned programs that document systemic exclusion in immigration and housing. It went further, painting the Smithsonian as “anti-American propaganda” for highlighting the ways colonization, racism, and oppression shaped the very foundations of the nation.
    What the administration is doing is clear: it is trying to erase the trail of oppression that runs like a scar through U.S. history—from the whip on enslaved backs, to Jim Crow segregation, to the discriminatory policies that persist today.

    From Slavery to Jim Crow

    Slavery was not just an economic system—it was a regime of terror. Families were ripped apart, women were violated, men were chained, and entire generations were forced into labor that built the wealth of this nation. When emancipation finally came, Reconstruction briefly promised equality. Black men held office, built schools, and claimed rights once denied. But white supremacy roared back with violence and legal restrictions. Reconstruction collapsed, and Jim Crow rose in its place. For nearly a century, Jim Crow laws ensured Black Americans could not vote freely, attend equal schools, or live without fear of lynching. The White House’s attempt to dismiss museums for teaching about this reality is nothing less than an attempt to silence that history.

    Red-lining and the War on Drugs

    When Jim Crow ended, systemic racism mutated. The federal government backed redlining policies that locked Black families out of home ownership, while white families accumulated wealth through suburban expansion. Gentrification decades later uprooted Black communities in cities, pushing families out of neighborhoods they had called home for generations. Then came the war on drugs. Entire communities were criminalized. Harsh sentencing laws and targeted policing filled prisons with Black and brown bodies, devastating families and stripping away economic and political power. The administration now attacking the Smithsonian is the same one that celebrates law-and-order policies that continue this cycle.

    Civil Rights Gains Under Siege

    The Civil Rights Movement forced America to confront its hypocrisy. Through marches, sit-ins, and court victories, Black Americans dismantled legal segregation. But every gain came with backlash. Today, voter suppression laws, redistricting schemes, and so-called “voter integrity measures” are dressed-up attempts to return to the days when Black voices were excluded. The Smithsonian’s exhibits on democracy document this truth. The White House calls it subversive.
    Erasing History to Protect Power

    The Trump White House’s attack on the Smithsonian is not accidental. By branding the truth as “anti-American,” the administration seeks to recast America as blameless. The logic is simple: if slavery is just a footnote, if Jim Crow was just the past, if systemic racism never existed, then there is nothing to fix. There is no reason for reparations, no reason for equity, no reason to confront police violence, mass incarceration, or economic injustice. The administration even ridiculed the National Museum of African Art’s exhibit inspired by Drexciya, a myth of children born underwater from enslaved women who died in the Middle Passage. Instead of honoring the resilience behind that vision, the White House dismissed it as “fringe”.

    The Fight for Memory

    The attempt to rewrite history is part of a wider campaign. This White House has moved to criminalize protest, weaken civil rights protections, and silence Black leaders. Attacking the Smithsonian is about controlling the narrative—deciding whose story matters and whose story gets erased.
    The truth is this: America’s history is not just one of freedom and triumph. It is also one of bondage, violence, exclusion, and systemic theft of opportunity. To erase that truth is to dishonor every enslaved man, every woman denied her humanity, every family displaced by redlining, every child funneled into mass incarceration.
    The Smithsonian was created to tell America’s story in full. Today, that mission is under direct assault from a White House that has chosen denial over truth. And if the nation accepts this whitewashing, the suffering of millions will not just be forgotten—it will be erased.

  • Newswire : How Trump and his family made a Billion off the White House, in second term

    By Stacy M. Brown
    Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

    Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House has proven to be a gold mine — for Donald Trump. An investigation by The New Yorker has tallied more than $1 billion in personal and family gains tied directly to his two presidencies, from foreign mega-projects to luxury perks and merchandise sales that blur, if not obliterate, the lines between public office and private profit. When Trump first took office in 2017, he assured Americans he would not “destroy the company he built” but would turn daily operations over to his sons. He claimed such a handoff would avoid the appearance of exploiting the presidency. Eight years later, that promise is in shreds.
    The New Yorker reports that Trump and his family have reaped massive windfalls, including Persian Gulf real estate and golf course contracts in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Dubai, and Qatar that would be inconceivable without the presidency. Jared Kushner’s private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s sovereign wealth fund, along with hundreds of millions more from the UAE and Qatar, generating hundreds of millions for Kushner personally. Mar-a-Lago’s revenues have quintupled since Trump entered politics, producing at least $125 million in extra profit from members willing to pay as much as $1 million to join.

    Trump’s personal merchandising empire — separate from his campaign store — has brought in $27.7 million selling MAGA-style hats, koozies, and flip-flops. Donor-funded PACs have spent over $100 million covering his personal legal bills. The Emir of Qatar offered him a Boeing 747-8 as a “gift” for his use after leaving office, worth an estimated $150 million. A massive Hanoi golf and hotel complex, advanced by Vietnam’s Communist Party with “special attention” from the Trump administration, is projected to bring $40 million in licensing profits.
    Major media companies — ABC, Meta, X, and CBS — have collectively paid $63 million to Trump’s presidential library foundation to settle defamation claims that legal experts described as baseless but were resolved under the weight of presidential power. Meanwhile, Trump and his family have dived into cryptocurrency, NFTs, and token sales, pocketing at least $14.4 million from licensing fees and digital currency holdings. Ethics watchdog Fred Wertheimer told The New Yorker that “when it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, Trump is a unicorn — no one else even comes close.” The total haul stands at roughly $1.02 billion — a sum no prior occupant of the Oval Office has approached.
    “We will never really know,” Robert Weissman of Public Citizen stated.

  • Newswire : As Alabama faces $35 million SNAP (Food Stamps) budget gap, lawmakers consider cuts

    By Chance Phillips, Alabama Political Reporter

    The federal budget signed into law earlier this year will cut the share of SNAP’s administrative costs that the federal government pays from 50 percent to 25 percent, starting in late 2026. Based on numbers from the Alabama Department of Human Resources, this will increase the amount Alabama has to pay by around $35 million a year.
    According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over 735,000 Alabamians are participating in SNAP, and receive on average under $200 per person per month in benefits. One report produced by the USDA in 2023 found almost 40 percent of program beneficiaries in the state were children.

    State Senator Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, told APR during a July interview that state legislators “will need to find the money” this upcoming session to compensate for the reduction in federal funding.

    While the federal budget bill was still awaiting the Senate’s approval, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, currently the frontrunner in the gubernatorial race, expressed concern that Alabama couldn’t afford the cuts to SNAP being debated. Some of the cuts in the House’s initial bill were scaled back before the budget was signed into law, but the reduced share of administrative costs and an incentive program based around benefit cost sharing remained in the final bill.

    Ashley Murray of the Alabama Reflector reported that at a recent public appearance, Tuberville “vowed to reduce SNAP enrollment so that the program will not cost the state when he hopes to be governor.” He cited budgetary effects as a major concern. “It’s going to cost us $200 million my year of starting in terms of paying for SNAP,” Tuberville said at the event. “That’s not going to happen. We’re going to get that down.”
    “Sen. Tuberville believes SNAP should be used temporarily by those who fall on hard times,” Mallory Jaspers, the communications director for Tuberville’s gubernatorial campaign, clarified in an email to APR. “As Governor, he will make sure SNAP is a hand up, not a hand out.” Jaspers did not respond to questions about what data or studies have informed Tuberville’s views about SNAP.


    A report from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service found that nationwide almost 90 percent of SNAP beneficiaries lived in a household with a child, an elderly individual, or a disabled individual during the 2023 fiscal year.

    On Thursday, APR spoke with state Representative Reed Ingram, R-Pike Road, about the pending funding cuts for SNAP and the upcoming legislative session. Ingram also recently pre-filed a bill that would mandate the Alabama Department of Human Resources apply for a waiver allowing the state to exempt various unhealthy foods from the program.

    The representative told APR he believes restricting how beneficiaries can spend SNAP benefits will help the state deal with the cuts to federal funding. “You’re gonna have some attrition [in the program] when you’re cutting out the biggest part, when people can go in and buy four or five cases of Coca-Colas when they buy their groceries and stuff,” Ingram said.

    “I would say that 20 percent of that is probably going to be junk food that they were buying before, so if it’s going to be to where we’re going to limit it, I don’t mind cost sharing to make sure people don’t go hungry, by no means,” he continued. “We don’t want anybody going hungry, but it’s got to be a nutritional injection that we put in if we’re going to inject money into that program.”
    Ingram also said that Alabama’s ranking as the third-worst state by life expectancy inspired him to pre-file the bill. He added that House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter has tasked a committee of doctors and healthcare professionals with suggesting “what it’s going to take for Alabama to get back on their feet and turn this thing around.”
    However, LaTrell Wood, a hunger policy advocate with poverty-focused nonprofit Alabama Arise, said restricting what SNAP benefits can be spent on won’t save the state any money.

    Instead, it would “increase the amount DHR has to spend, because there are system design costs and outreach costs for state agencies,” Wood told APR. “We can’t afford to get distracted right now. Many members of our delegation in D.C. just voted to send the state a significantly large bill, while completely eliminating funding for SNAP Ed programs that encourage healthy eating, and unjustly policing people because of their income will not save money.” She suggested that stores might even opt out of accepting SNAP as a result, explaining that this could be an issue “particularly in rural areas that may only have a convenience store.” Wood also argued that further restrictions on spending SNAP benefits “turns what is a systemic issue into an issue of individual choice.”

    “Any policy approach that limits Alabamians’ access to food based on demographic, whether it is somebody’s income, race, or where they live, undermines the realities many of our communities’ members are facing when it comes to accessing affordable healthy options,” she wrote.
    Ingram and Orr both told APR they would not support measures like increasing taxes on unhealthy foods, or banning sugary drinks above a certain volume, to help promote public health.

     

  • EDITORIAL

    Please be sure to vote in city
    elections
    Next Tuesday, August 26th.

    Next Tuesday is an important day for all the municipalities of Greene County. On Tuesday, August 26, 2025, the residents of Eutaw, Forkland, Boligee and Union have city elections to elect a Mayor and City Council members.
    This is your chance to vote for your local officials. This is your chance to influence the policies and future direction of your local communities. This is your chance to democratically participate to vote for those who will operate your city, set your water, sewer and garbage bills, zone areas you live in for future development, provide more recreation and activities for youth, respond to natural disasters like tornados, hurricanes, flood and other things.
    Instead of sitting on your couch and complaining about those in politics, here is your chance to go and vote and decide who will be making the decisions and spending tax monies, closest to you, for the next four years.
    The Publishers of the Greene County Democrat, who live in Eutaw, have been talking to the candidates, reviewing their positions on issues and problems of concern. We make the following recommendations:
    For Mayor of Eutaw, we support the current mayor, LATASHA JOHNSON for re-election. There are three candidates in this race, the current Mayor, Latasha Johnson, has done a good job in her four years as mayor, we think she should continue and will do more for the residents of Eutaw in the coming four years. Mayor Johnson was able to develop a budgeting process for city revenues and expenses, had a clean audit in fiscal year 2023-24, raised over $9 million dollars, in grants, that did not require matching, to improve and update the Water and Sewer System for Eutaw and Boligee.
    Mayor Johnson was able to complete the Streetscape project to beautify the sidewalks on the outside of the Courthouse Square. One of her opponents, on the County Commission, voted against providing its share of the matching funds for this project. Mayor Johnson had to borrow funds to complete the project.
    In District 1, we support challenger KE’UNDRA COX, who will bring a youth perspective to the City Council, coupled with six years of leadership training in the Air Force.
    In District 2, the incumbent JONATHAN WOODRUFF, should be re-elected for a full term. We do not agree with him all the time but at least he studies the materials and generally takes a responsible position on the issues.
    In District 3, the incumbent TRACIE HUNTER is unopposed and will be re-elected.
    In District 4, we endorse LORENZO FRENCH for this position because of his experience and knowledge of city facilities from running the Robert H. Young Community Center and trying to provide more recreational opportunities for young people.
    In District 5, we endorse CARRIE LOGAN, based on her experience and dedication with the Eutaw Area Chamber of Commerce. We also feel that there should be some representation for white residences of the city, on the City Council, which Ms. Logan will provide. Her opponent Suzette Powell did a good job in her appointed time on the City Council, but we feel Ms. Logan’s election will be in the best long-term interest of the city.