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.

Poverty in America

K-shaped Economy (artwork: R Stephenson)

I hope everyone gets a chance to read Nick Kristof's report on poverty: Meet the Americans Who Can't Afford Haircuts or Toilet Paper. Kristof puts a human face on the poverty that affects millions of our neighbors across this country. The people he interviews are struggling in ways many  of us have never experienced. And as his reporting makes clear, people end up in poverty for many reasons—childhood trauma, low wages, unstable housing, poor health and systems that too often fail people when they most need help.

Kristof also addresses personal responsibility, because that's usually where the conversation about poverty stops in America. Of course, personal choices matter. But so does our collective responsibility for whether children grow up with enough food, vulnerable people are cared for, people have access to decent health care and everyone has a reasonable chance to build a good life.

For me, that responsibility is rooted in Christian faith. Jesus calls us to love our neighbors. The Bible repeatedly calls us to care for people who are poor and vulnerable, and to seek justice. Our responsibility can't end with private charity. We also have to ask whether our policies and institutions make it easier for people to escape poverty.

That question is especially urgent now. We are living in an increasingly K-shaped economy. As Kristof points out, many Americans are thriving, while those at the bottom struggle to afford basic necessities. Yet rather than investing more in struggling families, the Trump administration and Congress are cutting the safety net and throwing decades of progress in reverse.

More than 4.5 million people have lost SNAP benefits since last year's reconciliation law took effect—the steepest drop in food assistance in nearly 30 years, at a time when the cost of living keeps rising. Medicaid lost more than $900 billion under that same law, with the administration's new rules piling on hundreds of billions more in cuts. At the same time, the administration is handing out large tax breaks that disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans and corporations.

And now the administration is pouring resources into an unpopular war that has already cost taxpayers more than $29 billion. The president's latest budget request would push nondefense spending to its lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower administration, while calling for a $445 billion increase in military spending in a single year. That is the largest such increase outside a ground war in our history.  

These are choices about our national priorities. They are especially troubling because we know poverty is not inevitable. The extent of poverty in America is a choice we make through the policies we enact and the priorities we set.

We know this because we have made better choices in the past. I discuss this in Poverty Abolitionists. Nearly half the decline in U.S. poverty between 1967 and 2024 came from the Great Society programs President Lyndon Johnson enacted. We kept improving our safety-net programs, with more emphasis on children and incentives to work. Child poverty fell by half between 1993 and 2019. The poverty rate has never returned to anywhere near what it was before the Johnson administration.

We saw the power of public policy again during the COVID-19 pandemic. When millions of Americans suddenly lost their jobs, Congress responded with expanded assistance, including the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. Many expected poverty to spike. Instead, the country saw a historic drop in child poverty. When Congress let those provisions expire, poverty rose again.

We know that the government cannot do everything. Churches, charities, businesses, and community organizations do things the government cannot do well—especially building personal relationships that help people find opportunity and rebuild their lives. But private charity cannot substitute for effective public policy either. We need both.

Kristof's stories are heartbreaking. I don't believe despair is the right response. Poverty is a solvable problem. We know many of the policies that work. We also know advocacy can change public policy. Even in today's difficult political environment, people of faith and conscience can speak up for programs that protect children and families and create opportunity.

The question is not whether America knows how to reduce poverty. We do. The question is whether we have the moral and political commitment to do it.

Your Dream Needs You

Introduction by David Beckmann

Robin Stephenson and I have worked together in faith-based advocacy for more than two decades. She has worked closely with me since the publisher accepted my proposal for Poverty Abolitionists. She has helped me with writing, editing, research, graphics, and social media. Even more importantly, she has been a creative partner and sounding board. Every once in a while, I ask her to write a post in her own voice. This is one of those posts, and I'm glad to share it with you.

By Robin Stephenson

U2 released a new song, Street of Dreams, and it struck me that it is both a prayer and a call to action. It begins and ends with the plea, "God, hear me shout."

But the lyric that caught my attention is, "Your dream needs you."

That line reminds me of something I learned from my years of listening to David Beckmann and working in faith-based advocacy. Prayer is not passive. We pray, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Then God invites us to help answer that prayer.

The Bible is very clear that God loves every person because each of us is created in God's image. Every person matters. Poverty, injustice, and exclusion deny that truth. God's dream is a world where justice and love are not reserved for a fortunate few but are shared by everyone. As the song puts it, there is "justice, an obsession on the street of dreams." And throughout the Bible, God consistently stands with people who are poor, vulnerable, and overlooked, calling the rest of us to do the same.

That is also the central message of Poverty Abolitionists. God does not ask us only to hope for a better world or pray for one. God invites us to help build it. We participate whenever we advocate for just policies, organize our communities, serve our neighbors, and work to end hunger and poverty. None of us can do everything, but each of us can do something.

These are discouraging days. Many of us have spent years working to reduce poverty and hunger, and today we see some of that progress slipping away. It is easy to become discouraged. But David often encourages me when I feel that way. Faith is our armor against discouragement, and nothing ever gets better when we give up. Good, as he puts it, can always come out of evil.This song was an echo of that:  God's dream of justice still needs people willing to pray, to hope, and to act—”for the many, not just the few.”

You can listen to the song on Youtube or read the lyrics below. I hope it encourages and gives you hope too.

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Street of Dreams (lyrics by Adam Clayton, Dave Evans, Larry Mullen, Paul David Hewson)

God, hear me shout

Lend your ear to my prayer when I′m far from anywhere

Down to my last breath of air

God, hear me shout

Lend your ear to my prayer when I'm far from anywhere

Down to my last breath of air La calle

Calle de los sueños

All the doors are open on the street of dreams

La calle

Calle de los sueños

Be here

Be free

Be yourself

And then free me

Your fate? (Gonna fight it)

Your trust? (Won′t be denied)

This bus? (Gonna ride it)

To the street of dreams La calle Calle de los sueños Justice, an obsession on the street of dreams La calle Calle de los sueños Love in a procession down the street of dreams

Break out

Break through

Break in

Your dream needs you

Your life? (Gonna find you)

Your fear? (Not gonna blind you)

Random angels? (Gonna guide you)

To the street of dreams

La calle

Calle de los sueños

All the doors are open on the street of dreams

La calle

Calle de los sueños

Broken are the chosen on the street of dreams

Don't you give up on your dreams

For the many, not just the few

Don't you give up and your dreams

Won′t give up on you

La calle Calle de los sueños Justice, an obsession on the street of dreams La calle Calle de los sueños Love is a procession down the street of dreams God, hear me shout

Lend your ear to my prayer when I′m far from anywhere

Down to my last breath of air