Speaking Events Between Now and the Elections

Photo Bread for the World

With the midterm elections approaching, the topics in Poverty Abolitionists are especially urgent now. I’m scheduled to speak at a series of events around the country, and I’m stressing what we can do to influence elections and protect democracy.  

I’m speaking on Thursday, September 17, at the Episcopal cathedral in Portland, Maine.  Several local leaders will be on the program with me. Two of Maine’s races for Congress are competitive —one of Maine’s seats in the Senate and one in the House. The program is free and open to the public. It starts at 6:30 pm.

On September 28, I’ll be speaking to the annual meeting of the National Head Start Association. More than 600 Head Start parents, teachers, and staff are coming to Washington to learn and lobby Congress. I’ll celebrate their legislative advocacy and urge them to be active in the upcoming elections too. I’ll also discuss President Trump’s ongoing interference in this election, what he and his allies might do after the voting is over, and ways we can prepare to defend our democracy.

On September 30, I’ll join a Zoom call with a book study group at St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska—organized by a high school friend.

I’ll fly to Orlando, Florida, in the first days of October. I’ve been invited to speak to 500 pastors from across the country at the annual meeting of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NALEC). Evangelical Latinos include both conservative and progressive people. I’ll talk about current policy setbacks for people in poverty, including brutal immigration policies and deep cuts in health and food assistance. This conference will also be a good opportunity for me to brush up on my Spanish.

This year’s G20 Interfaith Forum meets October 15-16. Faith leaders from around the world and different religions gather each fall to discuss the issues that heads of state will consider—or should consider—at that year’s Group of 20 summit. I’ve spoken at the last two meetings of the G20 Interfaith Forum in Brasilia and Cape Town. This year President Trump is chairing the G20 Summit (at Mar a Lago). The Interfaith Forum will gather in Salt Lake City, and I’ve been asked to speak again. These forums inform faith-based advocacy around the world and sometimes what happens at the G20 Summit

Latter-day Saints have played a leadership role in these forums for many years, and I expect a crowd of Latter-day Saints (including lots of students) at this year’s Forum. Their church is now playing a stronger role in humanitarian assistance, and there seems to be growing interest among their leadership in advocacy for people in need. Our Forum will be in the news in Utah two weeks before the midterm elections. 

I’ll fly from Salt Lake City to Des Moines for the World Food Prize Foundation’s annual Borlaug Forum. It also brings people from around the world together, mainly people involved in agriculture and food security issues. After decades of celebrating reductions in world hunger, the theme of this year’s Borlaug Forum is “Before Hunger Wins.”

I’ve been invited to be a main stage speaker at the Borlaug Forum, too. I intend to help make the case that world hunger is probably on the increase in 2026, and that people who care about food security and agriculture —in Iowa and all around the world —need to double down on efforts to restore political will on hunger issues. Iowa is a swing state in this year’s elections, with competitive races for governor, senator, and three of their four representatives in the House.

I expect President Trump, his administration, and his allies to interfere in this year’s elections, at some polling places and in the certification process. If so, November and December will still be intense. Organizations that are designed to protect democracy will be calling on the courts to act and convening demonstrations to curtail abuse.

I’ll be a speaker at the annual meeting of the Alliance to End Hunger on November 5. It will be an opportunity to gather information and develop strategies to defend the choices that voters will have made. Church leaders in the Circle of Protection from the church bodies and organizations will meet on November 9.

New Data on Food Security and Nutrition Worldwide

(graphic: R Stephenson)

Every year the United Nations, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization, puts together a fact-packed report titled The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI). I am focused on all the things that the current U.S. administration is doing to make life harder for hungry people, so I came to this year’s U.N. report looking to see if the harm it is doing is showing up in the data yet.  

The latest numbers in the report are for 2025, and they still show a bit of progress against undernourishment. FAO has been tracking the prevalence of undernourishment for more than 50 years. An estimated 7.8 percent of the world’s people (645 million people) were undernourished in 2025, higher than the estimated 7.5 percent for 2019 before the pandemic, but slightly lower than 8.1 percent in 2024. 

We aren’t seeing the negative effects of Trump’s policies in this data, partly because some of the policies he announced in 2025 will go into effect over a period of years. Also, while the United States has global impact, changes in U.S. policy may have relatively little effect on the livelihoods of people in countries or regions with relatively weak connections to the United States. 

Undernourishment is probably increasing in 2026. The U.N. report stresses “enormous uncertainty” in the current year. It highlights three threats to global food security, all of them due in part to the current administration: conflict in the Middle East, increasing weather extremes, and reductions in international humanitarian and development assistance. 

This year’s SOFI calls particular attention to parts of the world where hunger is prevalent and severe: Africa and a cluster of countries suffering from widespread acute hunger.

• The percentage of Africa’s people who are undernourished is now much higher than in any other region. As of 2025, 20 percent of Africans are undernourished, compared to 6 percent in Asia and 4.8 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

• The most distressing aspect of this report is what it says about the increasing prevalence of acute food insecurity in the world. The United Nations has developed a new methodology and a separate annual report on acute food insecurity titled The Global Report on Food Crises. The traditional indicator of hunger, undernourishment, measures chronic food insecurity—people who don’t get enough calories to be healthy and productive. The indicator of acute food insecurity measures severe hunger that threatens lives or livelihoods. It was designed to guide international humanitarian action, and it divides countries into five phases of increasing urgency. 

As of 2025, 266 million people are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, sharply up from a decade ago. Of these 266 million people, 39 million were in Phase 4 (Emergency) and 1.4 million in Phase 5 (Catastrophe). The five countries with the largest numbers of people facing high levels of acute food security were, in descending order, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. The countries and territories with the largest share of the population facing high levels of acute food insecurity were Gaza, South Sudan, Yemen, Sudan, and Haiti.

The United Nations has declared famine in parts of  Gaza and Sudan. Official declarations of famine are exceedingly rare, and the situation in Gaza is exceedingly grim. Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the famine that has followed have been way out of proportion to Hamas’ terrorist attack in 2023. A delegation from Trump’s Board of Peace has just returned from Israel. But a peace agreement seems unlikely until our government insists that Israel’s government show more compassion in their dealings with Gaza.

The Mounting Damage of Trump’s Policies

Artwork: R Stephenson

The policies of the second Trump administration have done tremendous damage. Their impact has been almost entirely negative, but this post ends with some recent good news.

Wars. Operation Epic Fury in Iran has killed somewhere between 9,000 and 18,000 people since February (18-20 US soldiers, thousands of Iranian military personnel and civilians, also Hezbollah fighters, and civilians in Israel, Lebanon, and the Gulf states). The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up the costs of oil, fertilizer, and food in the US and many other countries, increasing hunger and poverty in the U.S., Asia, and Africa.

Americans are feeling worse about the price of groceries than they were before the war with Iran. Two-thirds of Americans say that groceries are unaffordable, up sharply from the 45 percent who said that before the conflict started. 

Meanwhile, in Gaza about 1,000 people have been killed since the “cease fire” of October 2025.   More than half a million people in Gaza are now trapped in famine, including widespread starvation, destitution, and preventable deaths. 

War also rages in many other countries, notably Gaza and Sudan where war has led to mass displacement and widespread famine. At one time, the U.S. government would have been active in facilitating peace talks in a situation like Sudan faces today. 

President Trump once hoped for the Nobel Peace Prize, but he is building a legacy of violence.

Climate change is now painfully obvious. It’s no hoax, as the president thinks. Extreme heat and wild fires across the U.S. and Europe make climate change hard to ignore. But President Trump’s policy is “Drill, baby, drill,” and the U.S.government no longer works with the rest of the world to protect our planet.  

Mass deportation continues apace, driving many working families into poverty. Americans have grown accustomed to masked, sometimes brutal law enforcement officers.

DOGE cuts in international assistance have contributed to famine in Gaza and Sudan. Cuts in international health assistance have resulted in an untold number of deaths. Cuts in assistance to small-scale farmers and business development have been a drag on progress against poverty.

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” of 2025 is now being implemented. Already, 4.5 million people (about a third of them children) have lost SNAP food assistance. Eight million people have already lost health insurance.

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” also made Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. These tax cuts are mainly for high-income people and corporations. The benefits for middle- and low-income people, which the president trumpets (no taxes on tips and “Trump accounts” for babies) are relatively trivial and will expire in 2028.

The US economy is “K-shaped” and uncertain. The stock market has gone up by 61 percent under this administration, while the share of working-age people who are working has dropped—coincidentally to the same number, 61 percent. Corporate profits are now at their highest level since 1950, while what employees get paid as a percentage of GNP is now at its lowest level since 1950. 

Most Americans are struggling with the high prices of housing, groceries, gas, and health insurance. Yet Trump is imposing a new round of tariffs, which will further raise prices and slow economic growth. Most Americans, especially younger Americans, feel insecure about their futures. Trump’s policy toward the development of artificial intelligence is to let tech billionaires shape its future without any democratic oversight. This policy is meeting with bipartisan voter resistance and might lead to mass unemployment.  

Rigging this year’s elections is a high priority for President Trump.  He started the competition between Republican- and Democrat-majority legislatures to gerrymander congressional districts. Racial minorities have clearly lost representation. The president’s top priority for Congress now is passage of the SAVE Act, which would make voting more difficult, especially among women and low-income people. 

Just this week, Trump’s Justice Department announced they will send 1,000 federal election monitors to polling places across the country. The Trump administration and their allies will almost certainly try to interfere at both polling places and in the post-election certification process.

Are you ready for a bit of good news?

Trump’s approval rating has dropped.  Only 38 percent of Americans think he’s doing a good job, down from 52 percent at the start of this administration.  Seventy-three percent disapprove of the war against Iran, including 34 percent of Republicans. If voters elect a Democratic majority in one or both houses of Congress, that would moderate the damage that the president can do in 2027 and 2028.

Already now, some Senate Republicans are saying no to some of the President’s demands.  They have refused to eliminate the filibuster, so most legislation still requires the votes of at least a handful of Democrats. Thus, the SAVE Act won’t become law, and the Senate’s position on military and social spending will be less severe than what the president and House of Representatives are proposing. 

Finally, the State Department is resuscitating some U.S. international aid, thanks in part to the good work of advocacy groups.  Over the past two months, the State Department has announced $2 billion in commitments for international health and nutrition, mostly relying on international organizations for implementation. Even more recently, the State Department announced another $2 billion in funding for faith-based organizations.  Even now, advocacy sometimes works.