The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.

For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food, and ultra-processed food.

Now attitudes are changing. Some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up to battle “Big Food,” or the companies that make most of the food and beverages consumed in the United States. Nominees for top health agencies are taking aim at ultra-processed foods that account for an estimated 70% of the nation’s food supply. Based on recent statements, a variety of potential politically charged policy options to regulate ultra-processed food may land on the Trump team menu, including warning labels, changes to agribusiness subsidies, and limits on which products consumers can buy with government food aid.

The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by conservatives who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.

It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.

“They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’”

“Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches, and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems, and early death.

Nutrition and health leaders are optimistic that a reckoning is already underway. Kennedy has pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches, restrict certain food additives such as dyes in cereal, and shift federal agricultural subsidies away from commodity crops widely used in ultra-processed foods.

The intensifying focus in Washington has triggered a new level of interest on the legal front as lawyers explore cases to take on major foodmakers for selling products they say result in chronic disease.

Bryce Martinez, now 18, filed a lawsuit in December against almost a dozen foodmakers such as Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Co., and Nestle USA. He developed diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16, and is seeking to hold them accountable for his illnesses. According to the suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the companies knew or should have known ultra-processed foods were harmful and addictive.

The lawsuit noted that Martinez grew up eating heavily advertised, brand-name foods that are staples of the American diet — sugary soft drinks, Cheerios and Lucky Charms, Skittles and Snickers, frozen and packaged dinners, just to name a few.

Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz didn’t return emails seeking comment for this article. The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for makers of consumer packaged goods, disputed the allegations.

“Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy, in a statement.

Other law firms are on the hunt for children or adults who believe they were harmed by consuming ultra-processed foods, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits.

One Indiana personal injury firm says on its website that “we are actively investigating ultra processed food (UPF) cases.” Trial attorneys in Texas also are looking into possible legal action against the federal regulators they say have failed to police ultra-processed foods.

“If you or your child have suffered health problems that your doctor has linked directly to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, we want to hear your story,” they say on their website.

Meanwhile, the FDA on Jan. 14 announced it is proposing to require a front-of-package label to appear on most packaged foods to make information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content easily visible to consumers.

And on Capitol Hill, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sounding the alarm over ultra-processed food. Sanders introduced legislation in 2024 that could lead to a federal ban on junk food advertising to children, a national education campaign, and labels on ultra-processed foods that say the products aren’t recommended for children. Booker cosigned the legislation along with Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a December hearing examining links between ultra-processed food and chronic disease during which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called for more funding for research.

Food companies have tapped into “the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction,” Califf said at the hearing.

Sanders, who presided over the hearing, said there’s “growing evidence” that “these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive,” and he asserted that ultra-processed foods have driven epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and hundreds of billions of dollars in medical expenses.

Research on food and addiction “has accumulated to the point where it’s reached a critical mass,” said Kelly Brownell, an emeritus professor at Stanford who is one of the editors of a scholarly handbook on the subject.

Attacks from three sides — lawyers, Congress, and the incoming Trump administration, all seemingly interested in taking up the fight — could lead to enough pressure to challenge Big Food and possibly spur better health outcomes in the U.S., which has the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries.

“Maybe getting rid of highly processed foods in some things could actually flip the switch pretty quickly in changing the percentage of the American public that are obese,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the previous Trump administration, in remarks at a December event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Claims that Big Food knowingly manufactured and sold addictive and harmful products resemble the claims leveled against Big Tobacco before the landmark $206 billion settlement was reached in 1998.

“These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys, and games, along with social media advertising,” Rene Rocha, one of the lawyers at Morgan & Morgan representing Martinez, told KFF Health News.

The 148-page Martinez lawsuit against foodmakers draws from documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies that owned some of the biggest brands in the food industry.

Similar allegations were made against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers before they agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in a 2021 settlement with states.

The FDA ultimately put restrictions on the labeling and marketing of tobacco, and the opioid epidemic led to legislation that increased access to lifesaving medications to treat addiction.

But the Trump administration’s zeal in taking on Big Food may face unique challenges.

The ability of the FDA to impose regulation is hampered in part by funding. While the agency’s drug division collects industry user fees, its division of food relies on a more limited budget determined by Congress.

Change can take time because the agency moves at what some critics call a glacial pace. Last year, the FDA revoked a regulation allowing brominated vegetable oil in food products. The agency determined in 1970 that the additive was not generally recognized as safe.

Efforts to curtail the marketing of ultra-processed food could spur lawsuits alleging that any restrictions violate commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. And Kennedy — if he is confirmed as HHS secretary — may struggle to get support from a Republican-led Congress that champions less federal regulation and a president-elect who during his previous term served fast food in the White House.

“The question is, will RFK be able to make a difference?” said David L. Katz, a doctor who founded True Health Initiative, a nonprofit group that combats public health misinformation. “No prior administration has done much in this space, and RFK is linked to a particularly anti-regulatory administration.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. population is recognized as among the most obese in the world and has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions among high-income countries.

“There is a big grassroots effort out there because of how sick we are,” said Jerold Mande, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture from 2009 to 2011. “A big part of it is people shouldn’t be this sick this young in their lives. You’re lucky if you get to 18 without a chronic disease. It’s remarkable.”

Stephanie Armour:
sarmour@kff.org,
@StephArmour1

David Hilzenrath:
dhilzenrath@kff.org,
@DavidHilzenrath

Jessie Mazar squeezed the grab handle in her husband’s pickup and groaned as contractions struck her during the 90-minute drive from her home in rural northeastern California to the closest hospital with a maternity unit.

She could have reached Plumas District Hospital, in Quincy, in just seven minutes. But it no longer delivers babies.

Local officials have a plan for a birth center in Quincy, where midwives could deliver babies with backup from on-call doctors and a standby perinatal unit at the hospital, but state health officials have yet to approve it.

That left Mazar to brave the long, winding road — one sometimes blocked by snow, floods, or forest fires — to have her baby. Women across California are facing similar ordeals as hospitals increasingly close money-losing maternity units, especially in rural areas.

Midwife-operated birth centers offer an alternative for women with low-risk pregnancies and can play a crucial role in filling the gap left by hospitals’ retreat from obstetrics, maternal health advocates say.

Declining birth rates, staffing shortages, and financial pressures have led 56 California hospitals — about 1 in 6 — to shutter maternity units over the past dozen years.

But midwives say California’s regulatory regime around birth centers is unnecessarily preventing new centers from opening and leading some existing facilities to close. Obtaining a license can take as long as four years.

“All they’ve essentially done is made it more dangerous to have a baby,” said Sacramento midwife Bethany Sasaki. “People have to drive two hours now because a birth center can’t open, so it’s more dangerous. People are going to be having babies in cars on the side of the road.”

Last month, state Assembly member Mia Bonta introduced legislation to streamline the regulatory process and fix what she calls “a broken system” for licensing birth centers.

“We know that alternative birth centers lead to often better outcomes, lower-risk births, more opportunity for children to be born healthy, and also to lower maternal mortality and morbidity,” she said.

The proposed bill would remove various bureaucratic requirements, though many details have yet to be finalized. Bonta introduced the bill in its current form as a jumping-off point for discussions about how to expedite licensing.

“It’s a starting place,” said Sandra Poole, health policy advocate for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a co-sponsor of the legislation.

For now, birth centers struggle with a gantlet of rules, only some clearly connected to patient safety. Over the past decade, the number of licensed birth centers in California dropped from 12 to five, according to Bonta.

Alex Terry (left) and Jessie Mazar leave Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee, California, with their newborn. The hospital is the closest one to their home in Quincy — about 1½ hours away on winding roads. (Jessie Mazar)

Plumas County officials are trying to address one key issue: how far a birth center can be from a hospital with a round-the-clock obstetrics unit. State regulations say it can be no more than a 30-minute drive, a distance set when many more hospitals had maternity units.

The first-of-its-kind “Plumas model” aims to take advantage of flexibility provisions in the law to address the obstacle in a way that could potentially be replicated elsewhere in the state.

But the hospital’s application for a birth center and a perinatal unit has been “languishing” with the California Department of Public Health, which is “looking for cover from the legislature,” said Robert Moore, chief medical officer of Partnership HealthPlan of California, a Medi-Cal managed-care plan serving most of Northern California. Asked about the application, a CDPH spokesperson said only that it was under review.

The goal should be for all women to be within an hour’s drive of a hospital with an obstetrics unit, Moore said. Data shows the complication rate goes up after an hour and even higher after two hours, he said, while the benefit is less compelling between 30 and 60 minutes.

Numerous other regulations have made it difficult for birth centers to keep their doors open.

Since August, birth centers in Sacramento and Monterey have had to stop operating because their heating ducts failed to meet licensing requirements. The facilities fall under the same state Department of Health Care Access and Information regulations as primary care clinics, though birth centers see healthy families, not sick ones, and don’t need hospital-grade ventilation, said midwife Caroline Cusenza.

She had spent $50,000 remodeling the Monterey Birth & Wellness Center to include state-required items, such as nursing and hand-washing stations and a housekeeping closet. In the end, a requirement for galvanized steel heating vents, which would have required opening the ceiling at an unaffordable cost, prompted her heart-wrenching decision to close.

“We’re turning women away in tears,” said Sasaki, who owned Midtown Birth Center in Sacramento. She bought the building for $760,000 and spent $250,000 remodeling it in a way she believed met all licensing requirements. But regulators would not license it unless the heating system was redone. Sasaki estimated it would have cost an additional $50,000 to bring it into compliance — too much to keep operating.

She blamed her closure on “regulatory dysfunction.”

Legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year could ease onerous building codes such as those governing Sasaki’s and Cusenza’s heating systems, said Poole, the health policy advocate.

The state has taken two to four years to issue birth center licenses, according to a brief by the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of California-San Francisco. The state Department of Public Health “works tirelessly to ensure health facilities are able to be properly licensed and follow all applicable requirements within our authority before and during their operation,” spokesperson Mark Smith said.

Bonta, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s health committee, said she would consider increasing the allowable drive time between a birth center and a hospital maternity unit as part of her new legislation.

The state last updated birth center regulations more than a decade ago, before hospitals’ mass exodus from obstetrics. “The hurdle is the time and distance standards without compromising safety,” Poole said. “But where there’s nothing right now, we would say a birth center is certainly a better alternative to not having any maternal care.”

Midwife Caroline Cusenza holds Allison Rowe’s infant in the Monterey Birth & Wellness Center.(Paige Driscoll/Bay Area Birth Photographer)

Moore noted that midwife-led births in homes and birth centers are the mainstay of obstetric care in Europe, where the infant mortality rate is considerably lower than in the U.S. More than 98% of American babies are born in hospitals.

Babies delivered by midwives are more likely to be born vaginally, less likely to require intensive care, and more likely to breastfeed, the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative has found. Midwife-led births also lead to fewer infant emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and neonatal deaths. And they cost far less: Birth centers generally charge one-quarter or less of the average cost of about $36,000 for a vaginal birth in a California hospital.

If they catered only to private-pay clients, Cusenza and Sasaki could have continued operating without licenses. They must be licensed, however, to receive payments from Medi-Cal and some private insurance companies, which they needed to remain in business. Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid health insurance program, which covers low-income residents, paid for about 40% of the state’s births in 2022.

Bonta has heard reports from midwives that the key to getting licensed is hunting down the right state health department advocate. “I don’t believe that we should be building resources based on the model of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ in finding a champion inside CDPH,” she said.

Lori Link, director of midwifery at Plumas District Hospital, believes the Plumas model can turn what’s become a maternity desert into an oasis. Jessie Mazar, whose son was born in September without complications at a Truckee hospital, would welcome the opportunity to deliver her planned second child in Quincy.

“That would be convenient,” she said. “We’re not holding our breath.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

It takes a lot of courage to grow old.

I’ve come to appreciate this after conversations with hundreds of older adults over the past eight years for nearly 200 “Navigating Aging” columns.

Time and again, people have described what it’s like to let go of certainties they once lived with and adjust to new circumstances.

These older adults’ lives are filled with change. They don’t know what the future holds except that the end is nearer than it’s ever been.

And yet, they find ways to adapt. To move forward. To find meaning in their lives. And I find myself resolving to follow this path as I ready myself for retirement.

Patricia Estess, 85, of the Brooklyn borough of New York City spoke eloquently about the unpredictability of later life when I reached out to her as I reported a series of columns on older adults who live alone, sometimes known as “solo agers.”

Estess had taken a course on solo aging. “You realize that other people are in the same boat as you are,” she said when I asked what she had learned. “We’re all dealing with uncertainty.”

Consider the questions that older adults — whether living with others or by themselves — deal with year in and out: Will my bones break? Will my thinking skills and memory endure? Will I be able to make it up the stairs of my home, where I’m trying to age in place?

Will beloved friends and family members remain an ongoing source of support? If not, who will be around to provide help when it’s needed?

Will I have enough money to support a long and healthy life, if that’s in the cards? Will community and government resources be available, if needed?

It takes courage to face these uncertainties and advance into the unknown with a measure of equanimity.

“It’s a question of attitude,” Estess told me. “I have honed an attitude of: ‘I am getting older. Things will happen. I will do what I can to plan in advance. I will be more careful. But I will deal with things as they come up.’”

For many people, becoming old alters their sense of identity. They feel like strangers to themselves. Their bodies and minds aren’t working as they used to. They don’t feel the sense of control they once felt.

That requires a different type of courage — the courage to embrace and accept their older selves.

Marna Clarke, a photographer, spent more than a dozen years documenting her changing body and her life with her partner as they grew older. Along the way, she learned to view aging with new eyes.

“Now, I think there’s a beauty that comes out of people when they accept who they are,” she told me in 2022, when she was 70, just before her 93-year-old husband died.

As her partner, Igor Sazevich, lay dying, Marna Clarke says, she “was talking to him and caressing him.” “Then I sat with him and held his very swollen hands,” she says. “Over and over again, I told him I loved him. I know he heard me.” (Marna Clarke)

Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard professor who’s now 83, gained a deeper sense of soulfulness after caring for his beloved wife, who had dementia and eventually died, leaving him grief-stricken.

“We endure, we learn how to endure, how to keep going. We’re marked, we’re injured, we’re wounded. We’re changed, in my case for the better,” he told me when I interviewed him in 2019. He was referring to a newfound sense of vulnerability and empathy he gained as a caregiver.

Herbert Brown, 68, who lives in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, was philosophical when I met him at his apartment building’s annual barbecue in June.

“I was a very wild person in my youth. I’m surprised I’ve lived this long,” he said. “I never planned on being a senior. I thought I’d die before that happened.”

Truthfully, no one is ever prepared to grow old, including me. (I’m turning 70 in February.)

Chalk it up to denial or the limits of imagination. As May Sarton, a writer who thought deeply about aging, put it so well: Old age is “a foreign country with an unknown language.” I, along with all my similarly aged friends, are surprised we’ve arrived at this destination.

For me, 2025 is a turning point. I’m retiring after four decades as a journalist. Most of that time, I’ve written about our nation’s enormously complex health care system. For the past eight years, I’ve focused on the unprecedented growth of the older population — the most significant demographic trend of our time — and its many implications.

In some ways, I’m ready for the challenges that lie ahead. In many ways, I’m not.

The biggest unknown is what will happen to my vision. I have moderate macular degeneration in both eyes. Last year, I lost central vision in my right eye. How long will my left eye pick up the slack? What will happen when that eye deteriorates?

Like many people, I’m hoping scientific advances outpace the progression of my condition. But I’m not counting on it. Realistically, I have to plan for a future in which I might become partially blind.

It’ll take courage to deal with that.

Then, there’s the matter of my four-story Denver house, where I’ve lived for 33 years. Climbing the stairs has helped keep me in shape. But that won’t be possible if my vision becomes worse.

So my husband and I are taking a leap into the unknown. We’re renovating the house, installing an elevator, and inviting our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to move in with us. Going intergenerational. Giving up privacy. In exchange, we hope our home will be full of mutual assistance and love.

There are no guarantees this will work. But we’re giving it a shot.

Without all the conversations I’ve had over all these years, I might not have been up for it. But I’ve come to see that “no guarantees” isn’t a reason to dig in my heels and resist change.

Thank you to everyone who has taken time to share your experiences and insights about aging. Thank you for your openness, honesty, and courage. These conversations will become even more important in the years ahead, as baby boomers like me make their way through their 70s, 80s, and beyond. May the conversations continue.

Judith Graham:
khn.navigatingaging@gmail.com,
@judith_graham

COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont. — Over two years ago, Kim Hilton and his partner walked out of their home for the final time. The house had sold, and the new landlord raised the rent.

They couldn’t afford it. Their Social Security payments couldn’t cover the cost of any apartments in northwestern Montana’s Flathead Valley.

Hilton’s partner was able to move into her daughter’s studio apartment. There wasn’t enough space for Hilton, so they reluctantly split up.

At 68 years old, he moved into his truck — a forest-green Chevy Avalanche.

Hilton quickly found out how hard it would be to survive. Hilton has diabetes. That first night, his insulin froze, rendering it useless.

Things didn’t get any easier that winter. On the coldest nights, temperatures dropped to about minus 20 degrees. Hilton kept the truck running, but eventually his fuel pump failed. He was on his own in the cold.

Hilton is incredibly optimistic, but in that moment, he said, his spirit broke.

“I just said I want to go to sleep and not wake up and I won’t have to worry about anything. I’ll just sit here and be a little popsicle in the truck,” Hilton recalled.

Hilton was one of tens of thousands of seniors in the U.S. who became homeless for the first time in 2022. A dramatic increase in the number of homeless seniors nationwide is overwhelming services for unhoused people.

Hilton boxes up his belongings on July 9. He was able to get a subsidized apartment in September after nearly a year of homelessness. His right leg was amputated after he had spent five months of living in his truck. He lost his second leg several months later. He believes he’d still have both legs if he hadn’t become homeless.(Aaron Bolton/Montana Public Radio)

Older Montanans especially are struggling because housing costs have skyrocketed since 2021, in part because of the rise of remote work. The state has one of the nation’s fastest-growing homeless populations, according to federal data.

University of Pennsylvania researcher Dennis Culhane estimated that the number of homeless people age 65 and up in the U.S. would triple between 2019 and 2030. He recently updated that estimate using federal data for a recently published paper.

“We are on track to meet that prediction. In fact, the growth has been slightly higher than we predicted,” he said.

According to Culhane’s research, the number of people 65 and older jumped by a little over a third between 2019 and 2022 alone. By 2022, there were about 250,000 people over 55 who were unhoused. About half of this population are homeless for the first time.

What researchers and advocates call the “gray wave” of homeless seniors is overwhelming service providers trying to help.

Wendy Wilson is seeing the gray wave coming firsthand. She’s a case manager at Assist, a nonprofit that helps Flathead residents struggling to meet their medical needs. In the past, that meant helping them get free meals or finding a ride to the doctor’s office.

Increasingly, Wilson helps older people like Hilton find housing.

“They have medical issues. It’s not easy for them to be living in a truck or at the homeless shelter when you have medical issues going on,” she said.

Wilson found Hilton a spot in early 2023 at the Samaritan House in Kalispell, which has private rooms. But after five months of living in his truck, Hilton’s health had gone downhill fast. He had several fainting episodes at the shelter, then-manager Sona Blue said.

“It scared us because we have no medical care in this facility,” she said.

That’s not usual for shelters. Finally, Hilton took a bad fall, and shelter staff sent him to an emergency room.

The doctor who treated Hilton discovered he had developed pressure wounds from sitting for months in the same position in his truck. Because of the neuropathy in his limbs from his diabetes, Hilton couldn’t feel the pain. Those wounds never healed and became infected, another common complication of diabetes. 

Hilton had one leg amputated. Later, his other leg was amputated as well. Returning to the shelter in a wheelchair wasn’t an option: There were no shelter staffers or medical personnel available to help with his basic needs.

A handful of homeless service providers, including shelter staffers and other medical case workers, tried to help Hilton find another place to go. They put him on waiting lists for the limited supply of subsidized housing in the area.

Wilson secured one of the few slots in a Medicaid program that helps pay for assisted living for Hilton. But it can take a year or more for units to open. So Wilson crossed her fingers that Hilton would get lucky before he was released from the hospital after his second amputation.

Many seniors across the country are stuck playing the same dangerous waiting game, said Caitlyn Synovec with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council.

“Sometimes they can’t be safely served in a shelter because they have issues with incontinence or cognition. Then they’re more likely to be on the streets, and their conditions will worsen quite a bit,” she said.

Communities are looking for solutions.

To serve aging people with complex medical needs, homeless shelters for seniors are cropping up in such cities as Salt Lake City and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Montana recently got approval from federal health officials to use Medicaid funding to temporarily help people with medical conditions make rent.

But that’s not enough, according to Synovec. She said the real solution is building more affordable housing so older Americans don’t become homeless in the first place.

That housing will need to be accessible, too. Older homeless people like Hilton need homes they can safely navigate. Because of his new wheelchair, he needed a ground-floor apartment.

Snow covers the ground at the assisted living facility where Hilton lives in Columbia Falls, Montana. He says he doesn’t know whether he could have survived another winter living in his truck.(Aaron Bolton/Montana Public Radio)

In the fall, Hilton finally got a spot in a facility that would take his Medicaid waiver. He also got an electric wheelchair to make it easier to get to doctor appointments in town.

Hilton said he hasn’t pushed his new wheelchair to its top speed yet. “It goes fast for a wheelchair. I’m going to find out when I go down to dinner. I’ll stretch it out, break it in,” he said with a laugh.

Hilton is grateful to finally have stable housing. Wilson is grateful too. She said it was one of the few times she’s been able to help a senior regain housing.

“It was a woo-hoo moment,” she said.

As long as the facility stays open and the Medicaid waiver program isn’t cut, she’s confident Hilton will have made it through homelessness.

This article is part of a partnership with NPR and Montana Public Radio.

A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Daily Montanan.

Recently, I was talking to an educator whose job it is to run training programs for students and adults in higher education. She told me that around a dozen different companies and groups were sponsoring training courses for things like nursing assistants, medical workers, electricians and truck driving.

All of the courses were being underwritten by businesses and organizations in hopes of finding workers for jobs that are – and have been open – for some time. Classrooms were available. Instructors were ready. But only one class had enough students to hold the class.

Of all the things COVID-19 has taken from us – freedom to travel, a feeling of safety when going to the store – one of the most profound has been the change in workforce.

I asked, “So where are all those students and workers?”

“You’re the journalist. You tell me,” she replied.

The workers and students that seemed more plentiful before 2020 have disappeared. We could speculate that they’ve wandered off to other states, other areas, but we know other towns and states are struggling with the same workforce shortage. And the demand for housing has rarely been greater.

While the statistics look good on paper — including Montana’s historically low unemployment rate — the hidden truth behind those numbers is that those surveys include people who are actively looking for jobs or are in the workforce presently. What it doesn’t quite capture is the one statistic we need most: How many of the people have dropped out?

There are certainly a lot of practical questions that “non-participating” workers raise: How are they living? Where are they living? And what would make them come back?

Those aren’t the topic of this column, instead they are at the front of what journalists are trying to solve, discover and report.

Instead, I wonder if we’re overthinking the issue a bit.

The workforce shortage issue is being framed as an economic problem — employers can’t find enough workers and wages don’t seem to entice them.

Yet, maybe there are drivers of this wave of joblessness that we all know, but don’t really want to tackle. Maybe we just don’t like what the workforce shortage is telling us, and so we search for other more complex, nuanced interpretations.

As an observer and reporter, I think maybe the answer to the workforce shortage is a combination of time and fatigue.

American productivity, an actual calculation maintained by the government, shows that Americans have consistently been working harder and putting in more hours while wages have remained stagnant. In some cases, workers have been above 100% capacity, meaning they’re putting in more work and longer hours above what is expected in an effort to simply keep pace. In an effort to cling to good jobs, workers have been pushing themselves hard. In short, the economy was, to borrow a phrase, punching above its weight.

Meanwhile, inflation and housing prices have continued to escalate faster than wages, meaning those already overworked workers are doing more, falling farther behind. And no one wants to work harder to find themselves deeper in a hole.

And that leads me to time: While it seems like COVID has been one long episode of “Groundhog Day,” it’s now been more than two years since the disease has impacted the American economy and the country. While not an expansive amount of time, it’s enough for workers to change their habits, expectations and start over.

Maybe — just maybe — workers have downsized, found a new path, or readjusted to what they can or should expect. They’ve had plenty of time to think about working 40 to 80 hours per week and still not being able to afford housing or food. They may have decided: It’s just not worth it. Whether that means living with family or friends, living in a much smaller place, or finding a new career, people are fatigued and not going to back to how it was.

This also seems to be a crisis of mental health, hidden by the extreme consequences of COVID itself. We keep tabs on the hospitalizations and deaths, but calculating mental health problems is more nebulous. I suspect part of the key to the where-are-the-workers mystery could likely be told by mental health professionals. I would wager they’re seeing depression, burnout and anxiety from folks that might have otherwise never seen a counselor. One of the hidden costs of the virus has been the toll the disease has taken on the already frazzled worker.

Maybe we’re just making this whole situation too complex — as if there’s some undiscovered enclave of workers playing hide-and-seek. That would be an easy sort of problem to wrap your mind around.

Instead, after several years of reporting what is happening, a different narrative may be emerging, and it’s even more scary than the prospect of COVID itself. It’s what happens when the notion of the American Dream — a home, a career, a retirement — starts to evaporate.

When the American Dream ceases to become a vision that can be realized, people simply quit dreaming.

And if there’s nothing to work for, nothing to build toward, it would certainly stand to reason that there’d be a lot of empty classroom seats and a lot more “Help Wanted” signs.

Since the new generation Ford Ranger landed on our shores a few years ago we’ve looked around with jealousy to see this Ranger Raptor offered globally with large fenders, swollen fenders, a lot of space clearance on the ground, as well as a twin turbocharged Diesel engine that has a smoky 369 pounds of torque. If you’re hoping for the particular Ranger Raptor We‘re sorry to say it’s not here, and hasn‘t ever been. But we have good news for you The next one is. In 2023, the Ford Ranger Raptor isn’t only more powerful than the previous model It’s also coming to America. Wait until you receive some of its specifications.

First, that 2.0-liter turbocharged I-4 diesel engine is gone. In its place is the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 that was which is being redesigned to Ford Performance. In Europe it can produce the equivalent of 284 horsepower as well as 362 pounds of twist. That’s impressive, no doubt. But beware of the ponies the Australian version produces an impressive 392 horsepower and the equivalent of 430 lbs. This is the likely version that we’ll see in the United States, although Ford isn’t revealing U.S. specs just yet. This engine with a performance rating comes with an anti-lag system that is similar to the one found in the European-spec Focus ST. Power is transferred through Ford’s standard 10-speed auto and an all-time four-wheel drive system that includes a two-speed transfer system.

The off-road equipment is remarkable. The required front as well as rear differential lockers are available and there’s an array of customizable different terrain modes, such as Baja mode that allows for speedy desert destruction. In addition, the chassis has been strengthened in all the usual ways to withstand the extreme tensions on the suspension caused by for instance, hitting the rock with a moderate size at 60 mph in the playa. This implies that suspension mountings are strengthened, as are some areas of the frame are around the bed and spare tire are reinforced as have been strengthened as well. The entire frame reinforcements in the photo below and they’re identical to the ones on the 2022 Ford Bronco Raptor, which has the same frame.

The suspension is comprised of hefty aluminum control arms at the front, as well as an actual axle that has a Watt’s linkage at the back. Ford went back to Fox to purchase 2.5-inch Live Valve internal bypass shock absorbers to handle wheel oscillation penalties. (Interestingly they have a smaller diameter than that of the 3.1-inch units that are in the Bronco Raptor.) Ford states that the Teflon-infused oil in these new shocks decreases friction and the heat that causes performance loss by 50 percent. Ford also promises better road comfort than previous models. The Bottom-Out Control feature offers more force for damping in the final quarter of the travel of the shock to avoid back-slapping slaps that cause spine-rearranging on bump stops.

There’s some significant armor underneath the hood of this truck. 2.3mm steel plates guard weak points beneath at the top of the truck. They extend out from the bumper to give the truck an attractive underbite. The steering, the radiator engine sump, the engine, and differential are all covered.

The most important thing is that the new Ranger Raptor keeps the attractive, Maverick-inspired look and style of its “regular” next-gen Ranger and adds a huge amount of excitement. Be aware that the next-gen Ranger was not originally made specifically for the American market, but was developed to fit the needs of an international-market truck. It’s clear. The latest Ranger is truly a global vehicle, that was designed specifically with U.S. in mind from the start. We believe that the model’s new Ranger Raptor shows that there was a lot of thought that was put into making sure it appeals to buyers from each side of the ocean, people with very different notions about what an ideal pickup is supposed to be. The features you’d expect to see to see are present, including big fenders with the black arched extensions to them, an e-gutter that has the “FORD” logo you could look up from space, a hood, the fender blisters, as well as an aggressive rear end, with two exhausts that are tucked away in a neat way. The side rails and loop on the bed appear to us like more of a European-style aspect, but maybe they’ll be available to us also.

The interior is a lot more contemporary than our Ranger and, evidently, it is very similar to the world-class Ranger we first saw earlier in the year, sporting the usual Raptor accessories: bright Code Orange accents, a sporting steering wheel and bolstered sports seats.

This is the perfect time to inform people that you’re viewing this ROW version, and specifically it’s the U.K. model. Be prepared for the possibility that there are minor differences in the American-market model–head and taillamps, as well as bumpers, can differ for different regions. However, it’s an intimate glimpse of what’s to come which has been verified by Ford, an American-market Ford Ranger Raptor that was designed from scratch with our needs in our minds. It‘s something that you should be excited about.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is planning to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, according to multiple media reports.

If confirmed by the Senate, Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She would replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring this summer. CNN first reported that Biden will announce her nomination at the White House. 

Jackson, a top contender from the start, currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was previously on President Barack Obama’s short list for a Supreme Court pick in 2016 after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of that year.

Jackson, who was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Miami, has worked as a public defender and was confirmed by Congress in 2009 to serve as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. During her tenure, the commission reduced sentences for many crack cocaine offenses, where research has consistently shown disproportionate sentencing rates between Black and white offenders.

Source: WalletHub