"Blistering U.N. Report: Trump Administration’s Policies Designed to Worsen Poverty & Inequality," 15 June 2018

The report states, “[T]he policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship.”... [According to Philip Alston]... "[The current administration]... is singling out all of the major benefit programs and seeking to attach very harsh work requirements to it. We’re all in favor of people having to work, but in the vast majority of cases, people are already working, and they can’t survive... [t]he other thing that my report looks at, which is equally important, is the threat to democracy, of course, that if you consistently make life less manageable for those who are living in poverty, if you start to cut back on those who are able to vote, if you start... making it feasible for the state to eliminate lots of voters—all of these affect, overwhelmingly, those who are not wealthy. And that presents—that means that the assault, in economic terms, represents a major threat to the democracy. So, my report focuses then on the implications of this for what we call civil and political rights in the United States."