The Poverty Trap

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one “founding member” subscriber recently had to say aboutThe Poverty Trap:

“You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B.

Wishing Our Substack Community A Happy And Healthy New Year!

I want to thank our Substack community for your support in 2025—your reading and sharing of The Poverty Trap helped make this year our most successful yet! Most of all, your insightful and thoughtful comments added so much to my posts and to the conversation on The Poverty Trap— I am so grateful for you, and what we can do together to make the lives of those living in poverty a bit better, and in the process, make our country better.

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Here are the posts you read, shared and commented on the most in 2025!

— In January, you “enjoyed” this post on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s history and legacy in the context of today’s world of anti-DEI, ICE raids and soaring reports of violent racist and anti-semitic attacks.

— In March, we scored two hits with you:

The first post titled “The Working Homeless”, which discussed how millions of Americans could work full time and still be literally homeless, struck a chord.

The second post titled “Thoughts on Poverty” and featuring an interview between Mathew Desmond (author of “Poverty By America”) and Jon Stewart garnered over 1.3 thousand views and many interesting comments—particularly once we all learned how little money and effort it would take for our government to pull the majority of Americans out of poverty.

— And concluding our round-up of your favorite Poverty Trap posts for 2025….

This post from November titled “I Was On Medicaid And Food Stamps...And This Is What Will Happen When These Already Meager Programs Are Cut” sparked a great conversation about the impending cuts to our country’s social safety net.

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I appreciate each of you and hope you all will continue to join us next year on The Poverty Trap! In the meantime, why not scroll our archives and share with your friends and family?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these and other posts in the Comment Section below.

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one “founding member” subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap:

“You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B.

Wishing Our Substack Community A Happy And Healthy Holiday Season!

What Triggers A SNAP Application…

(Chart below from the October 2025 report prepared by The Hamilton Project)

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I’ve recently written two posts about the federal government’s cruel and short-sighted handling of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as Food Stamps:

* The first post centered on the government shutdown, the court orders to fund the SNAP program immediately, the refusal of the administration to comply with the court orders and some of the most persistent myths about SNAP recipients. You can read that post here.

* The second post discussed the delayed, post-shutdown distribution of November’s SNAP benefits, the administration’s “manufactured chaos” surrounding the benefits distribution, and the onerous new requirements to receive SNAP benefits in the near future required by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). These new mandates include details of the expanded recipient work requirements and the increased cost sharing burden on the states. You can read that post here.

Meanwhile, a recent report from The Hamilton Project discussing the likely impact of the OBBBA’s cuts to SNAP benefits on current and future recipients, states, and the general economy concluded that SNAP benefits as structured before the OBBBA act as an automatic economic stabilizer, but will not under the new law.:

As economic conditions deteriorate, some policies—often referred to as automatic stabilizers—do not require any policymaker action at all to kick in. Historically, SNAP has been a key automatic stabilizer because when people lose their jobs or experience a decline in income and become newly eligible for SNAP, they can enroll in the program and quickly receive and spend benefits at grocery stores…An unprecedented mandate for states to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits will end SNAP in some states and inhibit SNAP’s ability to respond to recessions…

In somewhat good news, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) survived the first round of initial proposed cuts to pass intact in the final budget bill —it is fully funded for FY 2026. WIC has been helping pregnant women and women with young children meet their demanding nutritional needs for over 50 years. Inexplicably, the House Republican majority, led by the Trump Administration, had proposed in earlier drafts of the bill to slash WIC’s supplemental payments earmarked specifically for fruits and vegetable in an attempt to cut the overall WIC budget.

Another nonsensical change made in the OBBBA that directly impacts lower income families is the restructuring of the Child Tax Credit. It now gives more money for each child to middle and higher income earners than to the lowest tier of earners. Why? Because the lowest income parents don’t earn enough to take the full deduction allowed per child ($2,200). According to a 2025 report from the Urban Institute, the changes mean:

…the CTC increased average benefits for families with middle- and high-incomes by about $200 and decreased average benefits for families in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution by about $100. An estimated 19 million eligible children (30 percent of all eligible children) live in families that will continue to receive less than the maximum CTC because their parents do not earn enough.

Note: Although the lowest income earners can receive a refund per child when they don’t earn enough money to deduct the full credit from their taxes…there is a cap on the refund.

Read more about each of the federal programs to help the poor and when each was enacted here.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on the changes the new budget will bring to federal poverty programs.

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one, kind “founding member” subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap:

“You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B.

Wishing Our Substack Community A Happy And Healthy Holiday Season!

The largest social safety net program in the United States is Social Security, ninety years young this year. It is currently keeping over 22 million Americans, mostly the elderly and disabled, above the poverty line.

Here’s a current breakdown of social security recipients, courtesy of the Social Security Administration via Pew Research:

“As of April 2025, 73.9 million people – more than a fifth of the entire U.S. population – got benefits from at least one of Social Security’s programs,” including:

* 52.6 million retired workers

* 2.7 million spouses and children of retired workers

* 5.8 million survivors of deceased workers

* 7.2 million disabled workers

* 1.1 million spouses and children of disabled workers

* 7.4 million receiving Supplemental Security Income

Note: Some people qualify for more than one type of benefit, which is why these figures add up to more than the total number of beneficiaries.

In the mid nineteen seventies, I was one of the “children of deceased workers” who received Social Security benefits after my father died when I was 17. Because I was under 18 when he died, I received survivor benefits for about a year, and because I went directly to college, I received social security each month until my graduation. My mother also received Social Security benefits as my dad’s surviving spouse. I can’t tell you the sense of “security” this money gave my mother and me, which is exactly what we needed after suddenly losing the breadwinner and bedrock of our family.

And this is what Franklin D. Roosevelt intended when he signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935:

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

The Social Security Administration website provides a good deal of FDR’s thinking about this law, both before and years after its signing, which you can read here.

And why not listen to this seven-minute, edited version of FDR’s fireside chat where he discusses the Social Security Act he will sign into law a few months later. Just hearing the caring and civility in his voice is worth your time.

According to an analysis published early this year by the Pew Research Center, a large percentage of the population receiving Social Security benefits literally depend on that monthly check to survive. According to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation ( SIPP), in 2022, Social Security benefits accounted for three-quarters of the income for 26.5 million people. And for 16.4 million people, it was their only source of income.

Additionally, the several different Social Security programs are funded in different ways, making some more vulnerable than others. For example, Social Security payments to retirees, survivors of former workers and the disabled are paid through a payroll tax of 12.4%, split evenly between the employer and employee (the self-employed pay the entire 12.4%). These are the Social Security programs that might be in danger because the funds are substantially dependent on the ratio of the number of workers paying into the system versus the number of retirees collecting from the system. You can correctly blame it on the staggered retirement of the Baby Boom generation, whose large numbers sucked down its designated Social Security Trust Fund — the retirees have outnumbered the workers paying into the program so it no longer a “pay-as-you-go” system.

Supplemental Security Income, also managed by the Social Security Administration, is a need-based program for those over 65, disabled or blind and provides a small amount of additional cash each month to those who qualify (sometimes in addition to Social Security benefits). Unlike Social Security, this program is paid for through the general revenue fund and is considered solvent for the foreseeable future.

It’s important to add that the current Administration has slashed the number of workers employed by the Social Security Administration as part of its alleged cost-cutting efforts. According to an article published by NPR in late April of this year, “The Social Security Administration (SSA) has laid out plans to slash about 12% of its overall workforce, or 7,000 jobs.” This reduction in staff already has caused considerable delays in processing applications and handling of the numerous questions that arise just trying to get even basic retirement benefits.

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A large majority of Americans favor keeping or expanding social security benefits. What’s your take on this issue? Let me know in the Comment Section below—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one, kind “founding member” subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap:

“You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B.

SNAP PAYMENTS BY STATE

Newsweek: By Aliss Higham on 14 Nov 2025

Source: Newsweek analysis of state SNAP agency announcements. See groovy, Newsweek interactive map that gives details on each state’s SNAP Benefit payments to date, here.

One Big Thing:

The government shutdown ended on Wednesday November 12, 2025, allowing SNAP benefits to resume for 42 million Americans in need of a decent meal. To-date, not everyone has received their full November 2025 benefits. The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed on July 4, 2025 also will require most SNAP recipients to meet onerous work and citizenship requirements, starting immediately. And this Administration intends to require everyone currently receiving SNAP to re-apply.

But First…The Manufactured Chaos:

The Trump Administration chose to fight federal court orders to immediately pay November SNAP benefits from its emergency fund designated by Congress, taking its appeal to the Supreme Court. The administration was granted a temporary stay of the lower courts’ orders, leaving a federal appeals court to figure out the mess.

Previously, the Administration stated it would release emergency funds to at least partially pay SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, but then changed its plan, according to New York Times reporting:

Initially, the Agriculture Department signaled that it would stave off an interruption to food stamps by tapping a set of emergency reserves, totaling about $5 billion — enough to provide at least partial payments. But the agency abruptly reversed course in late October, citing legal, technical and budgetary reasons for the change.

In the meantime, states which had paid full SNAP benefits from their own money were ordered by the USDA to reverse the payments and halt all efforts to continue sending the benefits:

Pending any explicit direction to the contrary from Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), states must not transmit full benefit issuance files to EBT processors. Instead, states must continue to process and load the partial issuance files that reflect the 35% reduction of maximum allotments detailed in the Nov. 5 guidance.

To the extent states sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized. Accordingly, states must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025. USDA memorandum dated November 8, 2025.

Why It Matters To You:

This government shutdown was the longest in U.S. history, extending for 43 days and shuttering all but the most essential government services. According to a November 13 report from CBS News, at least 670,000 government workers were furloughed during the shutdown (and must, by law, receive back pay), another 730,000 federal employees were “deemed essential” and were required to work during the shutdown without pay (these workers also are required by law to be compensated for back pay). And the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) took a “sustained drop” of approximately $7 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The lapse in SNAP benefits has caused much anxiety among the one in eight Americans who receive food stamps and other types of help, like Medicaid and home heating and cooling assistance. The uncertainty surrounding whether any type of social safety net will be available for the mostly working poor, elderly and disabled who receive these benefits is made worse by this Administration’s direct focus on slashing federal spending to help the poor, in addition to making it much more difficult to get the benefits already available:

Mr. Trump and his budget director, Russell T. Vought, have dismantled entire agencies, fired thousands of workers and canceled or halted billions of dollars in federal spending — all without the express permission of lawmakers.

The White House has pursued these cuts in a bid to shrink domestic spending to its lowest level in modern history, primarily by targeting federal climate, education, health, housing and research programs, and a bevy of initiatives that aid the poor.

Millions of Americans who qualify today will be cut from SNAP benefits tomorrow because they must meet the new work and citizenship requirements outlined in the “Beautiful” bill passed by Congress in July. The additional paperwork and reporting requirements will no doubt overwhelm already underfunded state agencies implementing SNAP, in addition to the intended program recipients and directly affect every state budget and operations, according to a recent report by the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL):

* Expanded Work Requirements (See details here);

* SNAP funding for nutrition education is eliminated;

* Additional noncitizen eligibility restrictions enacted: “Several legally present immigrant categories, including refugees, asylees and human trafficking survivors, will lose access to SNAP.” ;

* Administrative Cost Share will increase for all states from 50% to 75% ; and

* Benefit Cost Sharing/Payment Error Rates will change: “For the first time in the program’s history, states will be required to contribute to SNAP benefits if they have a payment error rate above 6%. A state’s payment error rate, or PER, is the combined percentage of overpayments and underpayments that a state makes in SNAP benefit allocations. Payment error rates are a measure of payment accuracy, not fraud.”

But Wait, There’s More:

The USDA announced that all current SNAP recipients will be required to reapply for benefits to root out fraud (no start date given yet), although most states require SNAP recipients to report any changes to their household income or size every six months. Here’s what the Agriculture Secretary had to say about the SNAP program:

“…the plan is to “have everyone reapply for their benefits, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through ... food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

And here are President Trump’s recent thoughts on the SNAP program:

“[SNAP] was meant for people that had real problems, in many cases people that were down and out, people that couldn’t be saved. It wasn’t meant for people who could do whatever they want, the people that say ‘well I don’t think I’ll work, I’ll just, you know, collect this money.’’

In other words, only the “truly needy” will receive food assistance. Does this mean that if you’re alive but at deaths’ door from lack of nutritious food, you won’t qualify for food stamps because you literally have “survived” without it?

Think of the extra state money required to implement the expanded work requirements and review all new SNAP applications. Think of the millions of Americans, your neighbors, family, friends and work colleagues who will go without food and/or suffer undue stress from applications and re-applications for a card loaded with an average of $177 a month for food.

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Here’s a link to my last post on SNAP benefits. Let’s hear your thoughts on the shutdown, SNAP debacle, new work requirements and other restrictions on receiving SNAP benefits being implemented right now.

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Why You Might Want To Subscribe:

Here’s what a new, “founding member” subscriber had to say about The Poverty Trap:

“You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B.

One Big Thing:

Food assistance ended yesterday for 42 million Americans because of the extended government shutdown. As a result, tens of millions of poor, elderly and disabled Americans are going hungry right now.

Why It Matters To You:

Only one of the three branches of our federal government, specifically, two federal courts, are functioning as intended to resolve the suspension of SNAP benefits—the House of Representatives sent its members home nearly six weeks ago and have yet to reconvene, making it impossible to negotiate a settlement to the shutdown, which would resume the payment of money to SNAP recipients.

The executive branch has refused to release emergency federal funds specifically designated to fund the SNAP program during a shutdown, despite a federal court order to do so. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia (all led by Democratic governors and Attorneys General) along with non-profits and citizens groups recently sued the Administration in federal court to release these emergency funds to temporarily pay SNAP program recipients. Rather than immediately complying with the court order, the DOJ has asked the federal court for “clarification” about the legality of releasing the emergency funds, further delaying SNAP payments. On Saturday November 1, 2025, the federal court clarified its order in response to the administrations’s request:

So, on Saturday, Judge McConnell clarified his ruling, citing the president’s request, and offered the Trump administration a timeline.

He said the government “must make” a partial payment by Wednesday, but he also encouraged federal officials to explore the use of a second source of money that might allow it to pay SNAP benefits more quickly and in full. He pointed specifically to a pot of funds at the Agriculture Department largely composed of tariff revenue, which the government had used earlier in the shutdown to preserve another federal nutrition program.

No definitive word yet on whether the Administration will comply with the clarified court order or appeal the ruling.

Less than half of states are stepping in to partially fill the gap in federal funding by directly funding food banks or direct payment to SNAP enrollees, or both.

Dispelling the Myths:

— Illegal Immigrants cannot and do NOT receive SNAP benefits. There are, however, people residing in the United States legally that do receive SNAP benefits and other government aid.

Federal law generally makes undocumented immigrants ineligible for federal public benefits, though certain lawful residents, refugees, and asylees may qualify…. [According to Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. Immigration Policy program at the Migration Policy Institute] no SNAP participants are unauthorized immigrants without status,…most of those granted some form of temporary protection from deportation—including DACA, Temporary Protected Status, and asylum applicants – are ineligible for SNAP and therefore not among the 1.8 million noncitizen participants.”

— Americans, both citizens and those here legally, who receive SNAP benefits are not lazy, and most who are able and expected to work, earn full-time or part-time income most months during a given year:

Most people who receive SNAP benefits are children, over 60 years old or adults with disabilities [people who are not expected to work]…In 2023, the most recent year with available data, 20 percent of SNAP recipients had no income in the past month. Nearly all of those who did have an income made less than 130 percent of the poverty level — about $2,900 a month for a family of three in 2025.

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I’m trying out a new format with this post, using the Axios “Smart Brevity” formatting. I think it fits this particular topic, but I likely won’t use it for every post going forward. Please let me know what you think of this format, and if you can offer ways I can tweak it to improve clarity, understanding, or anything else, please let me know in the Comment Section below. I’d also love to hear your take on the freezing of SNAP benefits and the impact on your community.

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

Chronic Illness has increased dramatically in the United States over the last several decades, particularly Heart Disease, Obesity, Hypertension and Type 2 Diabetes. And when healthcare is unavailable or unaffordable, millions of Americans living in poverty or pay check to pay check will spiral into debt, declare bankruptcy or simply go without treatment.

The Growing Burden of Chronic Diseases Within The United States

NIHCM.ORG

We’ve talked here on The Poverty Trap about how stressful it is to be a low-income worker or fall below the poverty level in the United States, and how stress negatively impacts a person’s physical and mental health. We’ve also discussed the soaring cost of medical care, including prescription drugs, and the crushing medical debt that accompanies an unexpected or chronic illness.

Data prepared in 2024 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) show chronic illness in the United States has increased substantially in the last several decades and affects at least 6 in 10 Americans, regardless of economic status. But it’s the poor and those living paycheck to paycheck who will suffer the most. A New York Times article from 2024 discussing the intersection between the steady increase in chronic disease and the increased cost of drugs to manage those diseases says:

For many, the cost of treating those diseases month after month, year after year, can prove to be its own chronic problem — one that can fill people with fear and lead to drastic measures and risky trade-offs….About three in 10 adults reported not taking medications as prescribed over the past year because of cost, according to data published by the nonprofit KFF in October [2024]….“The costs quickly become unaffordable for people, even if they have what they previously thought of as very good health insurance…”, said Dr. Seth A. Berkowitz, an associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Speaking of stress, experts say it is often difficult to tell the difference between symptoms caused by stress and the same or similar symptoms that indicate a chronic illness. Even worse, stress can actually trigger some chronic illnesses, including heart disease, high blood pressure and autoimmune problems.

A 2024 article in Time summed it up well:

…a growing body of research documents the strong connection between financial anxiety and struggles with physical and mental health, particularly over the long term…In fact, a study published earlier this year by a team of British researchers suggests that among the serious life challenges that people often face—including divorce, disability, caregiving, illness, and bereavement—financial strain is the most detrimental to health.

When chronic illness overlaps with extreme poverty in a rural setting, as it does in many areas across the country, the outcomes are devastating, as described in this 2025 article in The New York Times. This piece describes in horrifying detail the patients of one traveling nurse in West Virginia. The reality is “Americans now spend more years living with chronic disease than people in 183 other countries in the World Health Organization”, and in the last two decades: “…death rates up 25 percent nationally from diabetes, 40 percent from liver disease, 60 percent from kidney disease, 80 percent from hypertension and more than 95 percent from obesity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”.

What All This Means:

Those living with economic insecurity have a great deal of added stress. This stress can result in increased chronic illness which causes even greater economic insecurity, even for those with health insurance, and managing a chronic illness causes even more stress, resulting in a vicious, nearly inescapable cycle. The continued increase in chronic disease, particularly among low income populations, costs all Americans by:

* Adding a strain on existing health care services and increasing the cost of medical care for everyone when those priced out of the health care market cannot pay; and

* Lost wages and productivity at work and the resulting increased costs for businesses.

(See: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/05d4343b-91e3-4c0f-bd50-9376fa86a2ce/jec-chronic-conditions-final.pdf)

* Ninety percent of the nation’s $4.9 trillion in annual health care expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.1,2

Interventions to prevent and manage these diseases can have significant health and economic benefits.

After a nearly three-week government shut down, we know that if the government re-opens without curing the draconian cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies, millions more Americans likely will develop chronic illness from the added economic burdens, accumulate medical debt or go without treatment. In fact, a study quantifying the impact of these cuts, conducted by Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, shows that over 50,000 Americans will die each year because they can’t afford medical care.

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Do these statistics shock you? Are you, family member or friend living with a chronic illness? Can you afford to pay for your care? Let me know your thoughts in the Comment Section below. And while you’re in the area, please Like, Share and Re-stack this post—thanks in advance!

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

“Let us move forward with faith in ourselves, in our intelligence, in our indomitable spirit. Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion and love.”

Dr. Jane Goodall

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We lost two public figures recently, Robert Redford and Jane Goodall, who accomplished so much good with their lives that their impact is probably impossible to quantify. And I won’t try. But I’ll share with you a few pieces of their own writing that seem to reflect the thinking behind their actions.

— Robert Redford, artist, actor, director, environmentalist and philanthropist spoke eloquently, not only about his art and the artistic community, but about protecting our environment and defending our democracy:

* https://orionmagazine.org/article/robert-redford-nature-interview/

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-redford-the-biggest-scott-pruitt-scandal-is-the-one-right-in-front-of-us/2018/04/26/849085f0-498c-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-democracy-is-in-crisis-we-must-focus-on-2020--not-impeachment/2019/01/24/b51f1268-1ff6-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html

— Jane Goodall, primatologist, field biologist, conservationist and relentless advocate for animals and the environment discussed how her extensive research with chimpanzees upended traditional thinking about the animal mind. In later interviews, Ms. Goodall reflected on how being a woman in the male-dominated world of science actually helped her advance her work, and the perils of humans’ disconnect from other animals and our shared environment:

* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.282.5397.2184

* https://time.com/5192249/jane-goodall-sexism-gender-equality-documentary/

* https://whatwillittake.com/interviews/interview-with-dr-jane-goodall-weve-got-to-get-together-and-take-action-now/#:~:text=Jane%20Goodall:%20What’s%20been%20on,the%20bushmeat%20markets%20in%20Africa.

I’d like to share two additional, but related readings as you head into the weekend with absolutely nothing to do, I’m sure. Both pieces demonstrate the dangers inherent in our country’s increasing disregard of science and the scientific process.

— First up is an opinion piece published in The New York Times on August 20, 2025 describing the inequality on top of inequality created by climate change induced heat— between the “cooled and the cooked” as the long-time climate reporter, Jeff Goodell explains:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/opinion/extreme-heat-class-divide.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20250821&instance_id=160974&nl=opinion-today®i_id=37791042&segment_id=204354&user_id=50fd655bafac31c03e262ced7c8a769c

—Finally, a second New York Times opinion piece discusses how and why “vaccine-hesitant” parents feel justified to interpret science for themselves and their children, the heck with their larger communities:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/opinion/vaccine-hesitancy.html

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Have you been reading about the legacies of Robert Redford and Jane Goodall? What do you make of our country’s deepening disregard of science? How do we balance individual freedoms with public health threats? Please leave your thoughts in the Comment Section below. I’d also appreciate a “Like” and a “Re-stack” of this post if you have an extra minute—thanks!

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” President John F. Kennedy , Rice University, September 12, 1962.

Our country needs a breath of fresh air. And it’s sad that at the moment, we seem to have no where to look but the past. Not just one or the other political party, but our country itself needs a positive force and a vision for a common good to lead us into a brighter future, a future much brighter, more vigorous and much more optimistic than our present.

Sixty-three years ago today, it was President Kennedy who spoke before a crowd of 40,000 people on a hot, sunny day at Rice University in Houston, Texas, also the home of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to rally a nation to focus its considerable human and financial resources and “…commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

This speech outlined President Kennedy’s reasoning for gathering our country’s best scientists and policy strategists toward space exploration, with a singular objective to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth, a goal that many thought unachievable, given our technologies at the time. But together, our people and our country accomplished President Kennedy’s vision by the end of the decade.

In December 2017, the National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, revisited President Kennedy’s audacious idea to land a man on the moon and his historic “moonshot speech” at Rice University, in view of our country’s renewed interest in space exploration at the time. The article discusses how President Kennedy prepared his thinking about the goal, and includes excerpts from a memo co-written by then NASA Administrator James E. Webb and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to Vice-President Johnson dated May 8, 1961, titled: “Recommendations for our National Space Program: Changes, Policies, Goals”. In other words, President Kennedy didn’t just blurt out this specific objective, he sought information and recommendations from experts, and they concluded the goal was achievable before the end of the decade. Below is an excerpt from the memo, courtesy of The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum:

It is our belief that manned exploration to the vicinity of and on the surface of the Moon represents a major area in which international competition for achievement in space will be conducted. The orbiting of machines is not the same as the orbiting or landing of man. It is man, not merely machines, in space that capture the imagination of the world.... the establishment of this major objective has many implications. It will cost a great deal of money. it will require large efforts for a long time. It requires parallel and supporting undertakings which are also costly and complex. Thus, for example, the RANGER and SURVEYOR projects and the technology associated with them must be undertaken and must succeed to provide the data, the techniques, and the experience without which manned lunar exploration cannot be undertaken.

Also in 2017, the JFK Presidential Library and Museum hosted a fascinating discussion of a new book titled, “JFK: A Vision for America” that collected President Kennedy’s most important speeches along with commentary on those speeches by notable historians, political figures and artists, like Congressman John Lewis, Senator John McCain, Senator Elizabeth Warren, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Robert Redford, Conan O’Brien, Dave Eggers, Gloria Steinem, Don DeLillo, David McCullough, among many others. The co-editors of the book are noted historian Douglas Brinkley, and Stephen Kennedy-Smith, a nephew of President Kennedy and one of the board members of the JFK Library Foundation.

They both talked about President Kennedy’s ability to inspire individual citizens to contribute to our country and cautioned about those who promise quick fixes to complex, world problems. In President Kennedy’s final speech that he was to deliver in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, he planned to say:

In a world of frustrations and irritations, in a world of complex problems, the policies of the United States must be governed by learning and reason. Otherwise, those who confuse the rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy with their seemingly quick and easy solutions to every world problem.

And according to Stephen Kennedy- Smith: “So that's on us. It's our choice what kind of leaders we want to choose. And we're the ones that are ultimately going to be responsible for our choice.” [emphasis added].

NASA and Rice University celebrated the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech on September 12, 2022, and for good reason: it inspired Americans and millions of people around the world because it showed that our country and its leaders cared about something bigger than ourselves, something that would benefit all of humankind—and it did. Below is the 60th anniversary commemoration in full, and it is well worth your time to see.

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What do you think about the impact of President Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech? The relevance to today’s divided nation? Will we find a real leader with both a knowledge of history and the vigor and intellect to inspire us? Let me know in the Comment Section below—thanks!

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I first published this post on Labor Day 2024 and wanted to share in again with all of our new subscribers to The Poverty Trap in the last year. I’m also adding a brief update on what is happening tomorrow a we celebrate the American worker in 2025…and protest this Administration’s policies that gut the American workforce:

This article published in Newsweek on August 29, 2025, discusses the over 900 protests in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that are planned to take place tomorrow on Labor Day. Below is a map showing how many protests are taking place across the country. “Here's a look at one event happening in each state. To see all the events taking place, visit the "May Day Strong" website.

See last year’s Labor Day post below.

This post, published on September 4, 2025, discusses the ideas behind Labor Day, and how these ideas and ideals intersect iwith workers and the environment.

— First up are a few articles about Labor Day that should help turn us away from the weekend’s nonstop sales and allow us to at least think about it hiss national holiday’s origins and the current importance of the American worker. Labor Day is about our ability to thrive (not just survive) together. Or as our current Vice President and Democratic candidate for president , Kamala Harris says, …she envisions an America where “everyone has a chance to not just get by, but to get ahead”.

— I’ll start with a bit of information and a photo from the Department of Labor on the history of Labor Day:

Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being. … on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history

And interesting commentary and illustration on the American Labor Day from the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland and Liechtenstein:

Unlike other U.S. holidays, Labor Day does not pay tribute to a person or memorialize a historic event. It gives voice to the American worker… The innovation surge that drove manufacturing during the 19th century had given rise to a “working class” of people employed by others — on others’ terms. By the late 1800s, poor working conditions were a source of social discord, especially in cities, where immigrants were arriving in large numbers… The labor movement stirred mixed sentiment in America, but many workers believed it offered a unified voice that would hasten improvements. Organized labor played a role in America’s social and cultural development — and in establishing protections for workers and the first notable commemoration of Labor Day.

— Next is a New York Times article from just a few days ago that highlights those farmers transitioning from factory farming animals to cultivating plants, and the benefits to both workers and the environment from this shift. The benefits are not just physical, like cruel “living” conditions and death for the millions of animals trapped in these factories and the resulting massive, air, water and soil pollution, but the workers’ vastly improved emotional health from leaving grueling, underpaid and viscerally cruel work. I saw first hand the unimaginable cruelty and devastating impacts on the environment from factory farming while working to regulate these facilities at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency—it’s an experience I won’t easily forget. This is a must-read piece.

The work is physically grueling and many farmers earn incomes below the poverty line. The median net revenue for poultry farmers in 2022 was $9,367, according to the Department of Agriculture, and many farmers owe significant debt on their farm buildings.

Today Mr. Whitley [Tyler Whitley, who worked at a help line for farmers in financial distress] is director of the Transfarmation Project, an initiative of the charity Mercy for Animals that works to help people find a path out of factory farming. The group is working with a dozen farms, including one run by the Faaborgs, an Iowa family that traded raising hogs for growing mushrooms and was profiled this month in The Times. “I’ve never heard of a farmer who’s regretted their choice to get out,” Mr. Whitley said. “The longer that they’re out, the happier they are.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/climate/factory-farming-transfarmation-project.html

— This article from 2023 elaborates on the intersection between climate change and the exploitation of workers — think our favorite seller and delivery service, Amazon…

In San Bernardino, California, where retail giant Amazon has a massive warehouse and fulfillment center, daily temperatures reached triple digits for the majority of days in July and have been dangerously hot all summer. Workers with the Inland Empire Amazon Workers United (IEAWU) protested the dangerous conditions and complained to CAL-OSHA, the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. One worker, Daniel Rivera, told Fox11, “Amazon’s main focus is production. Safety is not the priority until it’s too late.”

What we are witnessing with such increasingly common instances [ says the article’s author, Sonali Kolhatkar] is capitalism-induced climate change intersecting with capitalism-induced labor exploitation. It’s a deadly combination and one that is being discussed in ways that obscure its causes and solutions.

https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2023/08/the-deadly-intersection-of-labor-exploitation-and-climate-change/

— To end on an upbeat note, here’s another person working to help the environment: an owner of a tree service that doesn’t cut down trees and puts nature first:

Basil Camu, a founder of the Leaf & Limb tree-care company in Raleigh, N.C., wants us to rein in that obsessively tidy, controlling mind-set and let the safe ones stand. He believes so strongly in the role of trees — not just the healthy ones, but also snags, or wildlife trees, the dead and dying powerhouses of diversity that are often the first targeted for erasure — that he got out of the takedown business altogether.

Yes, he runs a tree service that doesn’t cut down trees, even dead ones.

His unconventional approach: Let it be.

“Let it participate and help the ecosystem,” Mr. Camu said. “When a tree dies, it enters into its second life, with this incredible new community that builds and thrives around it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/realestate/eco-friendly-landscaping-dead-trees.html

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What do you think of these articles? Thoughts on Labor Day and/or the American worker? Please leave your ideas in the Comment Section, below. And if you are so inclined, please “Like”, “Share” and “Re-Stack” this post—thanks!

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Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change. Join us!

“I hope that people will take away that the institutions of government can function very well by exercising kindness, fairness, and compassion in their deliberations. We live in a very contentious society,” he said in 2017. “I would hope that people will see that we can dispense justice without being oppressive.” Judge Frank Caprio

“Dispense justice without being oppressive”. These words are prescient as we witness federal troops deployed to our major cities (all Democratic majority states and cities, by the way) to allegedly control crime, and where statistics from those same cities show violent crime has been declining for years, according to the Council On Criminal Justice.

The late Judge Caprio had a massive social media presence, despite his ailing health in recent years, and was known and admired worldwide for his compassionate way of dispensing justice in his Providence, Rhode Island, Municipal courtroom. His fame was partly because of his television show, “Caught in Providence”, but he realized early in his career, thanks to a scolding by his father, that poverty ruled the lives of many who came before him for minor traffic and other violations, and it was not “justice” if mandating hundreds of dollars in fines meant that a single parent could not afford to put food on the table:

In one post, he tearfully recalled a moment when his father came to watch him on his first day sitting on the bench and reprimanded him after he failed to hear a mother’s pleas that she could not afford to pay $300 in parking tickets. “It never happened again after that. Never,” Judge Caprio said in the video. Washington Post obituary for Judge Frank Caprio, August 21, 2025.

The history of our civil and criminal justice system has not been particularly compassionate, or even fair to those without money. In fact, it seems to quite literally punish people for being poor, which is why I initially titled this newsletter, Crime and Punishment: Why The Poor Stay Poor In America. A 2022 report published in the American Sociological Review found the following:

Court-related fines and fees are widely levied on criminal defendants who are frequently poor and have little capacity to pay. Such financial obligations may produce a criminalization of poverty, where later court involvement results not from crime but from an inability to meet the financial burdens of the legal process. [Emphasis Added]

The Vera Institute of Justice, founded in 1961 to eliminate mass incarceration, spells out exactly how our country punishes the poor for being poor, including requirements for cash bail, enforcement of local vagrancy laws so the homeless can’t even sit or lie down on a city bench, court-ordered fines and fees, and incarceration during mental health crises.

The District of Columbia, Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico, for example, have eliminated cash bail with no discernible increase in crime. Why should those with extra cash, or who are fortunate enough to have the support of family and friends be able to buy their freedom when the poor cannot do the same?

There is no doubt that our justice system’s discrimination against the poor overlaps with its discrimination against people of color, and each of the reports and studies I refer to uses statistical research to back up that statement. In case you remain skeptical, a graph published in 2024 by the Prison Policy Initiative using 2022 data, shows the incarceration rates of Black people are nearly five times higher than for incarceration of White people:

Even the Department of Justice in a 2015 blog post acknowledged that the poor suffer disproportionally from the imposition of fines and fees imposed by the court system, while still claiming that “poverty is not a crime”:

…in some places around our country, fines are still being imposed and people are still being incarcerated for nonpayment without a judge ever making the basic required inquiry — “Can this person afford to pay?” In these places, court fines, fees and other financial obligations can lead to unnecessary incarceration, trap people in a cycle of poverty, and undermine the faith in the justice system that is so critical to public safety.

What Judge Caprio understood, but many of our judges and certainly our lawmakers and other elected officials do not, is that dispensing justice, if it is to be called justice, must include both common sense and compassion.

This scene from one of my favorite legal movies, “And Justice for All” sums it up—it’s all about caring for our fellow humans. Do you care?

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I’d love to hear your ideas on “justice” and whether our court system and other branches of government discriminate against the poor in practice. Please leave your thoughts in the Comment Section below. And if you enjoy this post, please take a minute to “Like”, Share and “Re-stack”. Thanks!

The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.