Two decades ago, Sara Carlson, then a mother of three, was newly single because of a traumatic event, and the US’s food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), helped her feed her children with free food supplies.
“I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live,” said Carlson, 45, who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and now works as an operations manager for a wealth-management firm and serves on the board of Channel One Regional Food Bank, which works to increase food access.
While the food stamps helped her, the government cut her off after a couple years because she started making too much money, which meant she again had to worry about having enough food.
Now, nearly 42 million people around the country could face the same fate if the federal government shutdown continues and funding for Snap is cut off on 1 November.
Brittany, a 38-year-old mother of three, lives in Greenup, Kentucky, and works 35 to 40 hours each week as a home health nurse.
She also has received Snap benefits for a few years.
“It’s not like I receive benefits and not work,” said Brittany, pushing back against the misconception that people who receive food stamps just sit on the couch.
They allow her to get “most of the necessities throughout the month and then I just pay cash for the rest of them”, said Brittany, who did not want her last name used.
If the Snap funding is cut off, she said, she would have to work on the weekends to make up the difference, which would mean she would have “hardly any time with my children”.
Still, she supports Trump and blames Democrats for the shutdown because “they are not agreeing on anything that the Republicans offer”.
And this right here is a record breaking amount of cognitive dissonance.
42,000,000 people, y’all.
42,000,000 are going to fucking starve for our asshole president’s tender feelings. If you have any extra cash laying around, please consider looking into your local food banks before November and making a donation.
For some perspective, that’s 8% of the population. That’s 8% of the population that doesn’t even get paid enough to afford basic necessities like food.
That was my first thought
Snap participants generally must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line.
How do you have so many people living in poverty?
The poverty line formula was developed in 1963, at a time with much less severe wage differentials between top and bottom. While it technically is updated every year, it is a national level. There is a massive swing from rural America to Urban New York or Los Angeles, and the outliers really fuck up the formula. Especially with the wage stagnation since then.
In 1963 the federal minimum wage was $1.25. In 2025, it is now $7.25. With inflation alone, not considering actual buying power… $1 in 1963 is worth $10.59 today.
The wage stagnation is the core of the issue. It’s the core of a LOT of problems in the US at the moment. Low wages force employees to stick with employers because hey can’t afford to be out of work. They don’t make enough money to build up a safety net, and as soon as a small unexpected expense happens like a car repair, anything they did manage to save is immediately wiped out. Tying healthcare to employment also means many employees can’t readily quit to find better jobs, if there even are any they’re qualified to do. It also prevents many from being able to protest, because they need to be at work just to make ends meet. Taking a day off work to protest means a day’s pay they can’t afford to lose.
Same is true for voting in a lot of places in the US. Cuz making Election Day a national holiday would be a “blatant power grab by the Democrats” (an actual argument against it Mitch McConnell made). Many places don’t have early in-person voting or adequate mail-in voting.
If you’ve gotta spend multiple hours waiting in line at the only polling place in your district that’s makes it hard to do without losing out on a day’s pay you can’t afford to lose.
making Election Day a national holiday would be a “blatant power grab by the Democrats”
That the Democrats had the power to do this under Obama and didn’t tells you pretty clearly which side they’re on in the class war.
If you’ve gotta spend multiple hours waiting in line at the only polling place in your district that’s makes it hard to do without losing out on a day’s pay you can’t afford to lose
That’s why so many didn’t bother to vote in 2024. The last eight years have taught them that neither ruling party will make a material difference in their lives, so why lose that day’s pay?
Under Trump people are losing their livelihoods, losing their spending power, losing their health insurance, losing their rights, losing their freedom when they’re kidnapped by masked thugs. This regime is doing nothing but harm to everyone but the very richest. It’s incredible that it still has so much support, but fascism seems very effective at blinding people to reality.
You’re right.
But ‘donate to your food banks’ feels like a good response to the litany of posts asking ‘well, what can I do?’.
FYI, here’s a link to a food bank lookup provided by a neighbor of mine: https://foodfinder-prod-dot-foodfinder-183216.uc.r.appspot.com/
They were gonna spend it all on SODA!!!
