On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation into law that launched Medicaid, creating a U.S. health care safety net for millions of low-income Americans in what would become one of the crowning achievements of his domestic legacy.
A year earlier, he did the same for food stamps, drawing on President John F. Kennedy’s first executive order for the development of “a positive food and nutrition program for all Americans.”
This summer, with the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump began to chisel them back.
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