Veterans, we pause to say thank you to the brave men and women who have served in our nation’s armed forces. Your courage, sacrifice and dedication ensure the freedoms we enjoy every day . Thank you for your service.
Gov. Braun Issues Available SNAP Benefits
State prepared to distribute full amount once made available
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indiana Governor Mike Braun announced today that partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits will be issued to eligible Hoosiers. Benefits will begin processing today and are expected to be available on qualifying EBT cards starting tomorrow, November 11. Hoosiers expecting November SNAP benefits should check the balance on their EBT cards beginning Tuesday, November 11.
Indiana is prepared to issue partial benefits due to federal funding restrictions and a U.S. Supreme Court stay. As the shutdown winds down and funding is restored, the state is positioned to move quickly to deliver full benefits to qualifying households across Indiana as soon as possible.
Governor Mike Braun welcomed the end of the shutdown and credited the outcome to a long-overdue shift in Washington. “After weeks of gridlock, it’s good to see some folks in D.C. finally come to their senses. Senate Democrats held this up far too long, but they’ve finally relented. SNAP benefits are on the way, and Indiana is well-positioned to distribute them as soon as possible.”
FSSA remains in close contact with federal partners and is prepared to respond quickly to any further changes in federal policy or funding.
Hoosiers who need immediate food assistance are encouraged to call 2-1-1 or contact their local food bank.
Terry Announces 2025 Forward Together Grant Recipients
Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry today announced the recipients of the city’s Forward Together grants, which were created last year to support eligible nonprofit organizations in the Evansville community.
In all, 15 organizations were awarded a total of $500,000 in Forward Together grant funds. The funds are intended to aid organizations who lead meaningful work in one of the following areas:
- Home Weatherization
- Food Access
- Services for people experiencing homelessness, and
- Literacy
Organizations were able to apply for up to $35,000 each to fund such programs.
A total of 45 organizations applied for funding, which were derived from interest on American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
The awards are contingent on City Council approving allocation of these ARPA interest funds. That approval is on the agenda for tonight’s City Council meeting.
Funding was awarded to the following organizations:
- YWCA, Tech Tools for Transformation, $12,000 (Homeless Services)
- St. Vincent Early Learning Center, Growing Readers, Growing Families, $28,200 (Literacy)
- University of Evansville, UE School of Education Literacy in the Community Project, $30,000 (Literacy)
- Patchwork Central, Patchwork Central’s Neighborhood Hospitality and Food Pantry, $35,000 (Food Access, Homeless Services)
- Aurora, Homeless Street Outreach, $35,000 (Homeless Services)
- JD Sheth Foundation, Meena’s Place, $30,000 (Homeless Services)
- CAPE (Community Action Program of Evansville), Increasing Access to Federal Weatherization Dollars, $35,000 (Weatherization)
- United Way, K-Camp, $35,000 (Literacy)
- Impact Evansville, Bedford Collab Project, $35,000 (Food Access)
- Urban Seeds, $35,000 (Food Access)
- Potter’s Wheel, Addressing Food Access in Evansville Through the Diner, $35,000 (Food Access, Homeless Services)
- YMCA of Southwestern Indiana, Grade Level Reading and Healthy Eating, $35,000 (Food Access, Literacy)
- Community One, Major Home Repair Program, $35,000 (Weatherization)
- Albion Fellows Bacon Center, Safety Voice and Choice for Survivors and Albion Fellows Bacon Center, $35,000 (Homeless Services)
- Evansville Rescue Mission, Supporting Emergency Shelter and Food Access in Evansville, $25,000 (Food Access, Homeless Services)
- Meals on Wheels Evansville, Inc., Meal Delivery to the Homebound, $24,780 (Food Access)
All applications were reviewed by a committee of volunteers, which made recommendations for funding. Those recommendations were reviewed by Mayor Terry before she made final decisions.
“This year’s Forward Together grants come at a critical moment for many in our community,” Mayor Terry said. “Rising utility costs make weatherization programs more important than ever, and the uncertainty around SNAP benefits has highlighted the strain many families feel just to put food on the table.
“These grants will help local organizations meet those immediate needs while also supporting literacy programs and services for our unhoused neighbors, helping to build stability and opportunity in our community.”
Ariah Leary, Community Affairs & Special projects Director for the Office of Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry, will be available to speak to media about the grants at 1:00 p.m. today in the Mayor’s Office, room 302 of the Civic Center.
US Senate advances bill to end record-breaking government shutdown
By Ashley Murray, Indiana Capital Chronicle
WASHINGTON — Seven U.S. Senate Democrats and one independent joined Republicans on Sunday night in advancing legislation to reopen the government and temporarily keep it afloat until the end of January, after a record-breaking shutdown that began Oct. 1.
Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted with most of the GOP to advance the stopgap measure through a 60-40 procedural vote.
Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted in support.
Fetterman, King and Cortez Masto had already voted with Republicans on the previous 14 votes to reopen the government. Until Sunday, Republicans who control the chamber did not have the 60 votes needed to clear the filibuster threshold.
GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has consistently voted against the temporary funding measure, again cast a “no” vote.
The deal would also unlock full-year funding for a vital food aid program that serves 42 million Americans and bring back federal workers fired by President Donald Trump when the government was closed.
It does not include language addressing skyrocketing premiums for those enrolled in individual health insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, a major sticking point for Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said late Sunday on the Senate floor that he commits to holding a separate vote on health insurance subsidies no later than the second week of December.

In a press conference following the vote, Rosen said Democrats have “an opportunity also to put Republicans on the record on the ACA.”
“Are they committed to doing this? Are they committed leaders who said, ‘You can come to the table on health care once the government was open’? And now he must follow through. If Republicans want to join us in lowering costs for working families, they have the perfect opportunity to show the American public,” Rosen said.
New text of a temporary stopgap funding deal released Sunday night proposes to keep the government open until Jan. 30. The bill would also reinstate all federal employees who were fired after the shutdown began, restoring their jobs with back pay, and prohibit any further layoffs until the temporary funding expires.
As part of the agreement, three fiscal year 2026 funding bills will ride along with the package, including the appropriations bills for agriculture programs, veterans benefits, military construction and Congress.
Divided Democrats
Several Senate Democrats left a lengthy closed-door meeting earlier Sunday night upset that the deal does not include anything to address rising health care premiums, on which the party has staked the 40-day shutdown.
Subsidies for those who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace expire at the end of this year.
“So far as I’m concerned, health care isn’t included, so I’ll be a no,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin also issued statements following the caucus meeting declaring they would vote no. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also told reporters on his way out of the meeting that he’s opposed to the deal.
Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said on social media he would oppose it. ”I’ve been clear that we need real action to stop the devastating health care cost increases that are hurting millions of families,” he said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., issued a statement expressing support for the agreement, highlighting that Senate Republicans have promised a vote on extending the health care subsidies.
“This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do. Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will,” Kaine said.
Government reopening will take time
The Sunday night vote does not mean the government will reopen right away.
The legislation must make its way through Senate procedural steps and then gain approval from the U.S. House, which hasn’t been in session since Sept. 19. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, attended the Washington Commanders football game with Trump Sunday night in Landover, Maryland.
Trump briefly spoke to reporters upon news of the deal after leaving the NFL game, telling them, “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”
Nearly a million federal workers have missed paychecks during the shutdown, and food benefits for the poorest Americans stopped flowing at the beginning of November.
Air travel has also become snarled as the shutdown has dragged on, and air traffic controllers are under pressure without pay. The Federal Aviation Administration began cutting flights Friday at 40 major airports across the U.S. The cuts are set to ramp up to a 10% decrease in air traffic.
SNAP funding
The deal includes provisions that Democrats say the Trump administration sought to shrink or cut altogether, including fresh fruit and vegetable subsidies for mothers with children and monthly food boxes for low-income seniors.
The legislation would direct $8.2 billion to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, otherwise known as WIC, a roughly $600 million increase over last year’s program amount.
During the shutdown, the administration used $150 million from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rainy day fund to keep the program going. The bill would replenish the contingency money.
The bill also fully funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and children’s nutrition programs, including subsidized school breakfast and lunch, and the availability of food during summer school breaks.
Democrats on the Senate Committee on Appropriations say it included “key funding for SNAP and other critical nutrition programs as President Trump fights in court during the government shutdown to cut off benefits for 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to feed their families,” according to a bill summary.
The USDA directed states to begin releasing the November SNAP benefits onto recipients’ benefits debit cards after a Rhode Island federal district judge and circuit court ordered the Trump administration to do so last week.
Trump appealed the order to the Supreme Court, which stayed the decision. A department memo Saturday told states that released the full benefits to take back a portion of them.
The bill would also direct money to the SNAP emergency contingency fund.
Hemp ban
Hemp farmers are sounding the alarm about a provision in the bill that they say would “effectively eliminate the legal hemp industry built under the 2018 farm bill,” according to a Sunday statement from the Hemp Industry and Farmers of America.
Lawmakers are “slamming the door on 325,000 American jobs and forcing consumers back to dangerous black markets,” the industry group’s executive director Brian Swensen said.
Swensen also added: “The hemp industry has been ready and willing to work on responsible regulations – age restrictions, testing requirements, proper labeling — but instead of collaboration, the industry is getting a misguided prohibition through backdoor appropriations deals.”
House trepidation
Several House Democrats, including a top appropriator, criticized the deal.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the proposal Sunday night in a statement, saying House and Senate Democrats have “waged a valiant fight” for the last seven weeks.
“It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. As a result of the Republicans refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket,” Jeffries said.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top House Democratic appropriator, said she did not agree to the release of the veterans and military construction bill as an attachment to the deal.
“Congress must invest in veterans, address the health care crisis that is raising costs on more than 20 million Americans, and prevent President Trump from not spending appropriated dollars in our communities,” DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement.
Rep. Angie Craig joined other House Democrats in slamming the Senate negotiations on social media.
“If people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you. I’m not going to put 24 million Americans at risk of losing their health care. I’m a no,” said Craig, of Minnesota.
Gov. Braun advances healthcare goals with hospital merger
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indiana Governor Mike Braun took another step today toward driving down healthcare costs and improving accessibility to services in Indiana after the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) approved a Certificate of Public Advantage (COPA) application from Union Hospital, Inc. and Terre Haute Regional Hospital.
Union and Terre Haute Regional (owned by HCA Healthcare) submitted on Feb. 5, 2025, a COPA application to combine their two facilities. Indiana statute gives IDOH the authority to approve a COPA application for qualifying hospitals if the proposed merger would improve the outcomes, access, and the quality of healthcare provided to the population served by the hospitals, and those benefits outweigh any potential disadvantages.
“The result of this merger will be lower prices and more healthcare services available to residents of Terre Haute and Vigo County because of the strict operating terms and conditions that Union accepted,” said Gov. Braun. “This will bring long-term improvement to the community’s health outcomes.”
Visit IDOH’s website for more information. Additional details will be available as the two organizations implement the agreement under IDOH oversight
Our most dangerous abstractions rule over us
It’s easy to see why socialism is appealing. Too many of us have been taught that “unregulated capitalism” is causing inflation; and a whole generation is suffering a unified system of corrupt politicians and businesses working against them. They are in fact right to blame “corporate greed” and corrupt politicians for our nation’s ills. And they are right to criticize the misled conservatives and libertarians among us who think that “Public-Private Partnerships” and “privatization” are the panacea. On the other hand, the conservatives and libertarians who think that Big Government and socialism are to blame, are right, too. Democrats are right to blame corporations for buying our politicians, while Republicans are right to blame politicians for selling us to corporations. There is common ground among all of us if we’d wake up to one very simple misunderstanding that has led to catastrophic consequences: Corporations are not humans. Corporations are, in fact, government.
Corporations are, like government, legal, collective abstractions. They are chartered, regulated, empowered and protected by government laws for mostly good reasons. But corporations were foolishly and controversially bequeathed “human rights” in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. While most corporations are still beneficial, the difference between some corporations, and organized crime, is little more than some paperwork, and campaign donations that are made above, as opposed to under, the table. And the “Public-Private Partnerships” actually (not exaggerating or making this up) fit a large part of Mussolini’s definition of fascism – the bundling, or fastening of socialism, nationalism and corporatism. A hand-in-glove crony system of political armed force and greed with collectivized risk and “privatized” profit. And it gets worse.
A few ominous government surveillance programs like “Total Information Awareness” had been rightly shelved. But they were then “privatized” with CIA funding and technology in the ominous form of, for example, Palantir Technologies Inc, Google and Oracle. Dystopic DOD programs have been updated by the sci-fi dystopic Anduril Industries, and SpaceX, as well as the usual “Military-Industrial Complex” and “Scientific-Technological Elite” corporations that Eisenhower warned us against.
Politically powerful Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and perhaps most egregiously lately, asset management corporations like Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard, along with a certain foreign government colluding with the “Deep State,” have bought out, taken over, and stolen, our nation’s wealth, health, security and freedom.
Almost all of us understand that our government is corrupt. Most of us see the obvious relationship between campaign donations and their results in governance. Very few of us, however, vote like we know any of that. And so, only a tiny few of us in any way oppose what I believe is the biggest political threat we humans have ever faced – a very quickly unfolding AI-powered dystopia ruled by a universally global network of billionaire technocrats who espouse a Malthusian, eugenicist/ transhumanist “dark enlightenment.” Many of the “tech bros” ominously refer to creating the “Antichrist,” “Mark of the Beast,” and even the ancient Golem myth – a man-made slave monster that turns on its makers. But, “you will own nothing, and be happy.”
Our new ruling class is, in other words, howling-at-the-moon crazy.
I suggest the following:
- Recognize that We The People, overwhelmingly, voted for this mess. We didn’t have to. And we don’t have to in the future.
- Vote against it. Fire incumbents; both the politicians and the parties’ corruption networks, follow the money, and vote for only those who don’t, in very real terms, work against you.
- Actively search for better representatives; ones who promote sound, constitutional money, peace, and sound technology (e.g., permissionless blockchain, instead of “stablecoins” and total surveillance and control). Talk them into running, or run yourself. Use our Power of Peaceful Revolution as intended, at long last.
- Only if this doesn’t work, should we discuss Plan B.
Liberty or Bust!
Andy Horning
Holland and Cruz to represent UE at AVCA Convention
Both will gain valuable experience from the opportunity
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Evansville graduate assistant Jordan Holland and junior libero Ainoah Cruz will be representing the Purple Aces volleyball program at the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Convention next month in Kansas City.
“Congratulations to Jordan and Ainoah on being honored by the AVCA and earning a scholarship to attend the AVCA Convention in Kansas City this December, and what a great moment for our program,” UE head volleyball coach Zach Weinberg exclaimed. “They are incredible stewards of Aces Volleyball, and I’m thrilled the AVCA recognized what we see every day. They are going to have a remarkable experience, and I can’t wait to watch how their experience at the AVCA Convention aids them in their careers, on and off the court.”
Holland is one of 16 recipients of the Coaches 4 Coaches Scholarship. The program funds cover registration and hotel costs to bring a group of 16 up-and-coming volleyball coaches to their first AVCA Convention. This opportunity gives recipients the chance to network with successful coaches from all levels and take part in a diverse group of educational opportunities.
“The Coaches 4 Coaches cohort is incredibly selective, so Jordan earning a spot in that group says a ton about the young coach that she is and the future she has in our sport,” Weinberg said. “Jordan has grown tremendously during her time at UE, and I’m thrilled that she will have this convention experience to expand her network, meet other young coaches at similar stages of their careers, and learn a great deal about the art of coaching. She has been an integral part of the staff, and winning this scholarship is a remarkable reward for all the hard work she has put in.”
Cruz will be joining 35 other student-athletes at the convention to serve as demonstrators for on-court educational sessions throughout the event. The program, which is in its fifth year, provides attendees with the chance to attend educational seminars at the event. Many of these seminars focus on professional and personal development for coaches while giving them the chance to network with hundreds of coaches who are attending the convention.
One of the factors in selecting demonstrators was their interest in pursuing a coaching career. Of the 36 demonstrators, 31 are indoor volleyball players while five are beach players. Sixteen currently play at the Division I level, 11 at Division II, eight are currently competing in Division III and one plays at the NAIA level.
“Ainoah is the consummate leader for this program, and she is a volleyball junkie through and through. I can’t think of someone who will be a sponge and learn through this experience more than Ainoah will. Having her on the court, learning and demonstrating her skills for coaches from all over the world, is just the next step in what will be a long and prosperous volleyball career for her,” Weinberg explained. “I’m excited that she gets to attend the convention, and when she’s not on court demonstrating, she will be able to participate in the educational sessions and expose herself to a side of the game she’s not quite used to yet. This experience will be incredibly formative in her career, and I am thrilled to experience it alongside her.”
The convention takes place Dec. 17-21 in Kansas City, Mo.
EPD DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT
FOOTNOTE: EPD DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT information was provided by the EPD and posted by the City-County-County Observer without opinion, bias, or editing.







