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Dale Romans, pitching himself as an independent-minded Democrat in the mold of Joe Manchin, will try to win a seat for the party in the deep-red state.
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The government shutdown has brought attention to food insecurity in the United States, as it disrupted the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps about 42 million people across the country. Delayed and partial payments have occurred despite the availability of contingency funds to keep the program going during the shutdown, because the Trump administration initially chose not to use those funds. "42 million Americans, 16 million of them children, are really struggling to be able to afford nutritious food for their health," says Mariana Chilton, child hunger expert. "It's deeply concerning."
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In recent weeks, the United States has conducted several deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were being used to traffic drugs. A group of United Nations experts said U.S. strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela amount to "extrajudicial executions."
"There seems to be a much bigger political context behind this than really going after drug traffickers, which seems to be … not at all the main goal of the U.S. administration," says Guillaume Long, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and former foreign minister of Ecuador. Long says "regime change in Venezuela" and anger over Colombian President Gustavo Petro's pro-Palestinian politics are also motivating factors in the U.S. campaign. Meanwhile, Manuel Rozental, a Colombian physician and activist, says the drug war is about economic control.
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