With all the developments in Afghanistan and Haiti, you may have missed this historic announcement out of Washington:

The Biden administration has approved updates to the program known as SNAP, giving families who currently receive food stamps the largest single increase in benefits to date.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday released a re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to calculate SNAP benefits, based on changes to nutritional guidance, food prices and what Americans eat.

The Biden administration on Monday announced a historic expansion to the nation’s food stamp program, a decision that will give more than 40 million Americans about 30% more to spend on groceries while racking up billions in costs to the program.

Expanded federal unemployment benefits, put in place as an emergency measure during the COVID-19 pandemic, are on course to become another long-term "welfare trap," a government fiscal watchdog group warns in a new report. 

When San Francisco voters were considering a 2018 ballot measure that would impose the largest tax increase in city history to fund homelessness services, critics warned that the initiative's spending plan was vague and unaccountable. Now, a chunk of that money is going to fund some very expensive tents.

COVID-19 will leave its mark for years to come, especially for children who lose a parent. Will the crisis prompt reforms in children’s welfare that family advocates say are long overdue?

Charlee Roos loved the “buddyship days” she shared with her father when she was a kid. He would take her out for Mickey Mouse pancakes, attend all her soccer games, and go to her dance recitals, “even though he didn’t really get dance competitions.”

He was her best friend, Ms. Roos says. 

As President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan speeds toward final passage this week, Democrats are hailing the bill as one of the most sweeping pieces of progressive legislation in decades – one that they say will lift millions of Americans, particularly children, out of poverty, and could herald a deeper and more long-term shift in public attitudes toward government assistance.

The United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the developed world. More than 11 million American children lived in poverty in 2019, a figure that’s expected to grow once data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic becomes available. In the past week, two plans have emerged in Washington that take widely different approaches to achieving the same goal: combating child poverty by sending parents money every month.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) unveiled a plan on Thursday that would provide American families with a bigger financial boost than what’s proposed in the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion relief package. But both plans fail to completely cover child-care costs for the average American.

A judge on Sunday struck down the Trump administration's efforts to make it more difficult for some adults to receive food stamps. In a 67-page opinion, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of D.C. condemned the administration for failing to consider how the rule would impact an estimated hundreds of thousands of Americans during the pandemic.

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it is reimposing its "public charge" wealth test for green cards that had been blocked during the pandemic, a move likely to alarm advocates, who have warned about the policy's impact on immigrant communities ravaged by the coronavirus.

The 2019 rule, which gives officials more power to deny permanent residency to applicants the government deems rely or could rely on public benefits like food stamps or housing vouchers, was blocked in late July by a federal judge who found it was hampering efforts to contain the virus.