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.
HELLO ARE YOU OR WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A WRITER?
We're hiring editorial fellows in SF and DC. Great gig that has launched hundreds of media careers:
www.motherjones.com/careers/fell...
How a blooming good idea brought international recognition to a Kentucky social worker.
@sarahelizabethladd.bsky.social
kentuckylantern.com/2026/04/20/h...
National media outlets are withdrawing their investment in LGBTQ+ news and queer reporters at a time when trans rights are being increasingly targeted, @bokchoy-baobei.bsky.social reports. objectivejournalism.org/2026/04/equa...
(I don't think anyone meant it in a critical way. More so that so many awful things are happening, that it has pushed people going hungry & changes to the program that helps millions afford food out of a lot of news cycles. That's not to say important reporting on this hasn't been happening!)
Going to keep sharing this, because something I heard from sources is many felt like, after SNAP paused for the first time ever over the fall when the Trump admin refused to fund benefits, lots of people were talking about it. Now, people are still struggling but it feels like attention moved on.
After Condé Nast's decision to close SELF, I spoke to chronically ill women about what the women's health site meant to them.
"We have to acknowledge chronic illness as a politically, culturally, and socially marginalized category"
Latest for @motherjones.com.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
The 1996 welfare retrenchment actually changed policy (for better or for worse).The 2025 welfare retrenchment-which will hurt more people than the 1996 reform-is administrative in nature. It's all about making it impossible for eligible people to actually navigate the system to receive benefits
Right now where you live healthcare for trans kids is either being made literally illegal by your state or made functionally illegal by the unlawful threats of the federal government and a care infrastructure glad to sacrifice trans kids on the altar of appeasement.
www.npr.org/2026/04/17/n...
A mom and widow who had benefits cut because of a mistake on a form. A home health aide making $13/hour who said food pantries are so overwhelmed, they couldn't really help. A student who said SNAP access supported eating disorder recovery. So many people are being impacted:
(Yes, it is driving me slightly out of my mind that I typo-ed and misspelled "aide" in this post but I promise it is in fact spelled correctly in the piece.)
“I feel like you can never get ahead,” she said. She already works full-time as a medical assistant. She can’t get a second job; if she did, she would then make too much to live in government housing—but still wouldn’t be able to afford to live elsewhere. “I try not to cry in front of my kids..."
So grateful to @shanpalus.bsky.social for the great edits and giving this story a home, and to @economichardship.bsky.social for making this reporting possible. And, of course, to sources who made time to speak up about how their lives are being impacted. I hope you'll read everything they shared:
A mom and widow who had benefits cut because of a mistake on a form. A home health aid making $13/hour who said food pantries are so overwhelmed, they couldn't help. A student who said SNAP access supported eating disorder recovery.
My reporting for @slate.com & @economichardship.bsky.social:
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.
I have more questions:
What happens to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and small NPR member stations whose budgets were devastated?
Is anyone encouraging rich people to adopt rural NPR stations, rather than the main network?
This is a stopgap. What is the long-term plan?
So grateful to have gotten to work with you on this!
if you’ve ever made a little mistake on a piece of paperwork … this kind of thing could happen to you. @rainesford.bsky.social on the mental toll that the broken SNAP system is taking on families / anyone who relies on it slate.com/business/202...
From inside their employers’ homes, domestic workers — nannies, home cleaners and health aides — have watched attitudes on immigration shift to the right. They know some of the people who employ them may be the very people who want them out of the country.
19thnews.org/2026/04/immi...
Marimar Martinez, Chicago woman shot 5 times by federal agent, to testify at Washington hearing
@tinasfon.bsky.social reports: chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
"The image of luxury towers constructed above mass graves, with tens of thousands presumably buried under the earthworks, embodies the logic of 21st-century genocide."
NEW: Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain died during miscarriages in Texas after doctors delayed treatment.
The state’s medical board has ruled that substandard care led to the deaths, but the doctors were given minimal punishment.
By Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
“It is, in some ways, inconvenient to believe that your one significant life can collide meaningfully with someone else’s, someone whom you have to put the work into finding, in the outside world, where people still sometimes go to the market, reaching and reaching and reaching.”
“Recently, I’ve been spending far too much of my time doing cost-benefit analyses of various inconveniences. I want to embrace minor discomforts if doing so can make me feel even slightly more alive and engaged in the world.” Everything Hanif Abdurraqib writes is extraordinary:
People are pining for old technologies—CD players, VCRs, Walkmans. What’s behind our longing for inconvenience? www.newyorker.com/culture/essa...
My team at @19thnews.org is hiring a contract LGBTQ+ reporter to join us for 6 months this year!
💻 Remote (US only)
💰$50/hour
📆 32 hours a week
Apply by May 1!
19thnews.org/2026/04/cont...
There's no definitive place for women in media to talk openly about the challenges we face. La Fronde is changing that.
Scoops, interviews and community, every Tuesday and Thursday. Launching April 28. Sign up for early access. la-fronde.com
