Households in seven Ohio counties can now apply to FEMA for help with flood damage, after a federal major disaster declaration dated October 2. The declaration, numbered DR-4945-OH, covers an incident period of August 10 through August 22 and names Clermont, Franklin, Hamilton, Licking, Morgan, Muskingum and Perry counties. It activates the Individuals and Households…

Medicaid expansion adults between 19 and 64 are about to find out what 80 hours a month looks like on paper. States must generally have the new work requirement running no later than January 1, 2027, and in most of them the first month that counts is December 2026, the month before. Nebraska and Montana…

Eighteen state SNAP food restriction projects went out for public comment in a single day, and the window closes on October 15, 2026. The notices appeared in the Federal Register on September 15, long after several states had already begun turning away soda and candy at the checkout lane. For households on SNAP, the practical…

The Treasury Department’s Direct Express page, last updated September 1, 2026, does not mention Comerica Bank at all, and no federal or program page checked on October 3, 2026 gives a date when Comerica-issued Direct Express cards stop working. The silence matters because Fifth Third Bank bought and merged with Comerica earlier this year, and…

A civil case captioned Nieves Aragon et al. v. Brooke Rollins now carries two filings that explain the state of the SNAP soda and candy restrictions: a June 22, 2026 order from a federal district court in Washington that threw out five states’ waivers, and an August 20 notice that the Justice Department, on USDA’s…

Beginning November 1, 2026, SNAP benefits in five states stop covering a list of sugary drinks and candy: Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. The schedule comes from the USDA’s own state-by-state table of approved food restriction waivers, which the agency last updated on October 2. The five join eight states where restrictions…

More than 457,000 veterans holding Veterans’ Group Life Insurance will owe nothing for three months, from November 2026 through January 2027. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced the premium holiday on September 16, 2026, and it applies to VGLI only, not to the other life insurance programs VA administers. The department puts the average premium…

A veteran rated 100 percent disabled and living alone collects $3,938.58 a month from the VA, and that figure has not moved since the table it comes from took effect on December 1, 2025. Ten months on, every disability compensation check in the country is still calculated from that one page. Nothing is broken about…

The White House says 26 pharmaceutical manufacturers have signed agreements covering 89 percent of the branded drug market, and that the deals will cut what all 50 state Medicaid programs pay for expensive brand-name drugs. What the announcement does not say is when any lower price takes effect, which drugs get cheaper or by how…

Written comments on four state SNAP purchase restrictions must reach USDA on or before October 15, 2026. The agency published request-for-comment notices on September 15 for the Ohio, South Carolina, Montana and Virginia projects, each of which would take items such as soda, sweetened drinks or candy off the list of what a SNAP card…