For @slate.com & @economichardship.bsky.social, I reported on how chaos and changes surrounding SNAP benefits are taking a toll.
People described endless fear and worry over feeding their kids, where their next meal will come from, and whether SNAP could become even more difficult to access.
🚨YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP: IRS data show 164 taxpayers with an average unreported foreign account balance of $1.3 billion were identified for examination - but only 12 were audited.
The agency didn't do more audits even after they discovered $39 million of taxes owed among the 12.
What you need to know about SNAP work requirements:
- They do not increase employment.
- They cause a large decrease in participation in SNAP.
- They impose burdens on workers, even those outside the policy’s intended target.
Learn more:
"I have been so heartened at how great the team is here and what that means in terms of our ability to deploy things quickly and at pretty low cost.”"
real answers on a bunch of things, along with the lack of investment and resources, are all really concerning to us.”
"But with just weeks to go before the law takes effect, Nebraska’s Medicaid director Drew Gonshorowski told POLITICO he is “pretty optimistic.”...
There are um...differing opinions on how this will go:
“The situation here on the ground is that people are afraid,” said Sarah Maresh, the program director for health care access at the nonprofit Nebraska Appleseed. “The fact that we’re so close to the implementation date and still have no ...
https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-has-cut-legal-immigration-more-illegal-immigration
Trump has cut legal immigration more than illegal immigration, as I predicted. While illegal entries have fallen, they continued a prior trend, falling more before he came back. Meanwhile, Trump has drastically cut legal entries, reversing the prior upward trend. www.cato.org/blog/trump-h...
Medicaid expansion boosted access to opioid addiction treatment medication, study says stateline.org/2026/04/10/m...
There is a long term problem: wage growth for most workers has been sporadic and inconsistent over the past 40 years. I talk about it in my book.
Then there's an immediate problem: sharply rising prices that was avoidable.
Altogether this leaves workers in a precarious position. We can do better.
Repeating the experience of a mother quoted in the article, which said: "Sometimes, her 3-year-old pats his belly when he’s hungry for his favorite fruits like strawberries." Almost 70% of people using SNAP are children, elderly, or disabled.
.. review is how eligible people are being denied support. Other states have seen large declines as well (19% in Florida and 11% in Texas) but not yet as catastrophic as AZ. This likely to get worse and spread as other states begin to make similar changes to avoid financial penalties.
Instead, this was caused by Arizona trying to avoid the financial sanctions from the "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed last July. Under the law, AZ could lose $200 million and the safest way to avoid them is to severely cut food aid to the eligible. Extremely long wait times and applications
This article shows that Arizona has experienced a 47% decline in SNAP enrollment or about ~400,000 people losing critical support to buy groceries in the last year. This decline is not because of more jobs: the AZ economy (same as U.S. overall) has been treading water, unemployment has increased.
Map showing the percentage change in the number of SNAP participants between July 2025 and December 2025 in each state.
Last July, the Republican megabill (H.R. 1) enacted the deepest SNAP cuts in history. Today, we're releasing a tracker of how many people in each state are losing the SNAP benefits they need to afford groceries. www.cbpp.org/research/foo...
Poverty is a key driver of health; our latest article reviews the growing literature on economic policies as an upstream solution. However, several policies have insufficient evidence, and data barriers remain: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... @hsph.harvard.edu @irpwisc.bsky.social
Lenacapavir is a product every pandemic needs: ~100% effective in preventing HIV, including among those for whom condoms, oral PrEP are not viable options & have high HIV incidence: esp gender diverse people & cis young women esp in sub Saharan Africa www.warrenalpert.org/symposium/20...
Means-testing also makes programs cost more than they would under a universal model, because so much money gets wasted on verification, surveillance, and compliance.
Russell Vought is trying to dismantle two agencies created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill because when the next big financial crash comes bankers don’t want to spoil the surprise.
newrepublic.com/article/2085...
hire rate numbers:
bsky.app/profile/joe-...
Bad news for the job market: the Republican megabill passed last year threatens thousands of healthcare jobs. Especially since almost all of the (very low) 2025 job growth came from the healthcare sector + Feb 2026 hiring is already at its lowest level since 2012.
Letting 1000 measles bloom
Review of @arindube.bsky.social new book, see below. Seems to affirm the analysis of mine with @joshbivens-econ.bsky.social (so it must be right :))
www.epi.org/unequalpower...
Did a series of videos with Markus Brunnermeier on Claude Code (more to come)
Video 1: Getting Started with CC
open.substack.com/pub/paulgp/p...
(1/) At least 18% of US workers today are employed in jobs that didn't exist before 1970. But “new work” is not the only way for new jobs to emerge – jobs are also created when an existing occupation expands. How do these jobs in new work compare with more jobs in existing work? 🧵
This NYT story is incredibly unserious reporting - focusing quirky raspberries when we're in for a major food price shock. Read the real story here www.newscientist.com/article/2521...
Just last week, the latest IRS migration data confirmed that higher-income households are not leaving the state. In fact, households with incomes above $200k saw a decrease in outmigration compared to the year before MA Fair Share was enacted. massbudget.org/2026/03/19/n...
Mike also reminds me of an important reason to oppose these promises that I had forgotten I had made: they foreclose creating new social insurance programs like paid family leave that require everyone to pay in a little slate.com/human-intere...
A new study estimates that the number of deaths from COVID19 early in the pandemic was undercounted by more than 150,000 cases.
The undercount was most common among Black, Hispanic and Native Americans, as well as those with low household income.
In Lesotho, children who start school at older ages attain higher levels of education. In adulthood, they are more likely to have professional occupations and less likely to start families early, contract HIV, or experience child mortality.
Read today's article to learn more:
