Critics say move could weaken public assistance programs and increase hardship for low-wage earners
The White House Budget Office is considering its first update to inflation adjustment guidelines for poverty thresholds since 1978, with potential consequences for benefit programs serving low-income households.
The initiative is part of a re-evaluation of six inflation indexes used to track the impact on consumers of rising or falling prices. One of the indexes is used to adjust poverty thresholds, which underlie the calculation of eligibility for a number of benefit programs including Medicaid, food stamps and school lunches and breakfasts for poor children.
The Office of Management and Budget, which has provided guidance to agencies on the current measurement that hasn’t changed in four decades, wants to consider whether updates are warranted.
View the complete May 13 article by Paul M Krawzak on The Roll Call website here.
According to a report in Politico, presidential adviser Jared Kushner has asserted himself in the White House even more since the departure of former Chief of Staff John Kelly — and the results 
The Trump administration is expecting retaliation from China after imposing a new round of steep tariffs but is stressing that negotiations are ongoing.
When President Gerald R. Ford appointed John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975, it was hailed as a victory for conservatism: Stevens replaced Justice William O. Douglas, an unapologetically liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominee who had been on the High Court since 1939. Yet even though he was a conservative and Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate in 1975, Stevens was confirmed unanimously; not one Democratic senator voted against his confirmation. And the 99-year-old Stevens, who retired in 2010 and was replaced by Barack Obama appointee Elena Kagan, reflected on the current 
President Trump sought to have former White House counsel Donald McGahn issue a public statement last month that he did not believe the president had engaged in criminal conduct when he sought to exert control over the Russia investigation — a request McGahn declined, according to people familiar with the episode.