In addition to demonizing immigrants and ruining the United States’ reputation abroad, one of the many pet projects of Donald Trump’s administration is to make life more miserable for the poor. Over the summer the president indicated that his team thought low-income families were getting a little too greedy about food, and on Wednesday, said team announced a new plan designed to kick hundreds of thousands of people off of food stamps.

The rule, which has just been finalized, will tighten work requirements for able-bodied adults with no dependents, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a call with reporters, and as with most Trump administration policies, the details are uniquely cruel. Per the Washington Post:

Under current law, able-bodied adults without dependents can receive SNAP benefits for a maximum of three months during a three-year period, unless they’re working or enrolled in an education or training program for 80 hours a month. But states have been able to waive this time limit to ensure access to food stamps during the ups and downs of reentering the workforce. Before this rule, counties with an unemployment rate as low as 2.5% were included in waived areas. The new rule, which is set to take effect on April 1, 2020, will tighten the criteria for states applying for such waivers, making 6% the minimum unemployment rate for a county to receive a waiver.... It arrives as part of a broader effort to limit access to the federal food safety net, the first of three such measures in the works. The USDA initially estimated that up to 750,000 individuals would be dropped from SNAP if the proposal took effect. In Wednesday’s call the USDA adjusted that figure to 688,000.

But 688,000 is just a start, if Team Trump has anything to say about it. In addition to the finalized rule announced today, two other proposed changes, which would cap deductions for utility allowance and limit SNAP benefits for working poor families, would affect an estimated 3.7 million people a month, according to a study by the Urban Institute. The study also predicated that “millions more would experience reductions in monthly benefits and 982,000 students would lose automatic access to free or reduced-price school meals.”

Naturally, the people implementing these changes have tried to dress them up as care for underprivileged individuals who can’t afford the luxury of three meals a day. “Americans are generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch,” Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue told reporters. “This is about restoring the original intent of food stamps...moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency.”

Strangely, though, critics aren’t buying it. “It is deeply disappointing that despite overwhelming opposition to this proposal, the White House has finalized a rule that stiffens work requirements for millions of SNAP participants, which will likely lead to hundreds of thousands of people losing their benefits,” Lisa Davis, Share Our Strength’s senior vice president, told the Post. Stacy Dean, vice president of food assistance policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the new rule makes it much more difficult for states that experience high unemployment to qualify for waivers during national recessions, which, y’know, might be a time that food stamps would come in handy for some people. “That change really weakens SNAP’s ability to assist the unemployed during an economic downturn,” she said.

Even many Republican lawmakers, who typically back the administration and appreciate policies whose underlying message is get a job, you bums!, didn’t support it—47 senators from both parties told the administration it should withdraw the rule, according to Debbie Stabenow, the ranking member on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “This is an unacceptable escalation of the administration’s war on working families, and it comes during a time when too many are forced to stretch already-thin budgets to make ends meet. The USDA is the Grinch that stole Christmas,” said Ohio rep. Marcia Fudge, chair of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition, Oversight, and Department Operations. “Shame on them.”

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Trump: wildly incriminating Giuliani phone records no biggie, but if they are, uh, I know nothing

“I really don’t know—you’d have to ask him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked to explain why Rudy Giuliani would need to talk to the Office of Management and Budget many, many times over the course of the campaign to extort Ukraine. “Sounds like something that’s not so complicated, frankly, but you’d have to ask him. No big deal.”

Okay, this is actually amazing

Lawyers might tell you it’s a terrible idea, but Giuliani answers to no one except the raccoons in his head knocking over trash cans and foraging around for garbage:

Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals. Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kiev on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort. The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine, and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative.... Mr. Giuliani’s trip has generated concern in some quarters of the State Department, coming amid scrutiny of his work with American diplomats earlier this year on the pressure campaign. His trip to Budapest and Kiev suggests that he is unbowed by the intense scrutiny that has enveloped him and his associates, including revelations from the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday of frequent calls from Mr. Giuliani to the White House and other figures in the pressure campaign at key moments this year. The European trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series featuring Mr. Giuliani that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News, or OAN.

Asked about his Eastern European jaunt, Giuliani told the Times that “like a good lawyer, I am gathering evidence to defend my client against the false charges being leveled against him” by the media and Democrats. He added: “I am hoping that the evidence concealed by Schiff will be available to the public as they evaluate his outrageous, unconstitutional behavior.”

Elsewhere!

Trump Abused His Office, Legal Scholars Say: Impeachment Update (Bloomberg)

Professors testify that Trump’s conduct is grounds for removal from office (Washington Post)

William Barr says “communities” that protest cops could lose “the police protection they need” (Washington Post)

Private payrolls growth tumbles in November as jobs market is “losing its shine” (CNBC)

Zuckerberg defends allowing false ads on Facebook, saying company shouldn’t be “censoring” (NYP)

Sundar Pichai just got the worst job in Silicon Valley (CNBC)

Investors pull back from “gig economy” start-ups (Financial Times)

Kim Jong Un is back on his white horse (Washington Post)

Dog starts kitchen fire by turning on microwave (UPI)

Electric eel powers aquarium’s Christmas lights (A.P.)