Looking Ahead on Hunger in 2026: Eric Mitchell

I recently listened to an important conversation between Minerva Delgado and Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger, on the Alliance’s January podcast. It is well worth your time.

Eric offers a clear-eyed look at where we are right now. Globally, famine and near-famine conditions are becoming business as usual. Here in the United States, the “big, beautiful bill” made changes in health benefits and SNAP that will increase poverty and hunger over time.

Eric notes how alarming last fall’s administrative disruptions to SNAP were for families and communities who depend on these benefits. The Alliance plans to track the impact of the “big, beautiful bill” in 2026 and 2027, helping voters remember why SNAP benefits are declining. 

I’m grateful for the Alliance’s steady leadership and for Eric’s honest assessment of the moment we are in. 

You can listen to the full podcast below. And if you missed it, I was featured on the December episode, reflecting on the tumultuous year of 2025.

Finding Light Through the Darkness

I recently had a thoughtful conversation with Minerva Delgado on Voices to End Hunger, a podcast hosted by the Alliance to End Hunger. We discussed the deep cuts to anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs, as well as the broader attacks on civil rights and immigrants driven by the Trump administration. But we also talked about my reasons for hope.

As I said in our conversation, “The MAGA movement is not going to go away for a long time. I hope we can restrain it, defeat it at the polls, and over time moderate the views of the millions of Americans who support it.”

It is indeed a dark time for both politics and poverty, which is precisely why advocacy and collective action continue to matter—and why we need a committed group of poverty abolitionists to take up this cause. Engagement, rather than discouragement, remains the path back to the dramatic progress against poverty we have seen in recent decades.

Many of the themes we touched on—the continuing importance of legislative advocacy, the importance of active and generous participation in elections, and needed reforms in American religion—are explored more fully in my forthcoming book, Poverty Abolitionists: Faith, Activism, and Hope in Difficult Times, which will hit bookstores in May of 2026. The book is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bloomsbury.

Listen my conversation with Minerva on YouTube, Voices to End Hunger, or your favorite podcast feed.

Direct Anger at Poverty, Not the Poor

Screenshot from Senator Raphael Warnock’s speech delivered on November 18, 2025, at the Georgetown Center on Faith and Justice, livestreamed on YouTube.

In a November speech delivered at the Georgetown Center on Faith and Justice, Senator Raphael Warnock said, “...we are living in a moment where too many Christians are angry with poor people rather than being angry at poverty.”

He is right. God’s vision for humanity is rooted in compassion and forgiveness. Poverty—a human-made injustice—distorts that vision. When we direct anger toward those who struggle instead of toward the systems that keep people down, we stray from the gospel’s call to love our neighbors.

I deeply admire Sen. Warnock and am grateful that ending po

verty is one of his core issues. I support his work financially because building up leaders who align with our values is one way to strengthen our democracy and revive progress against poverty. The midterms are less than a year away, and all of us will have opportunities to participate—through voting, volunteering, and giving financially—to help shape a government that prioritizes the common good.

Watch the full speech on the Georgetown Center on Faith and Justice YouTube channel — it’s well worth your time.