SNAP Benefits: Josh Shapiro’s Rebuke of JD Vance Goes Viral; Newsweek, November 8, 2025

Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek ; SNAP Benefits: Josh Shapiro’s Rebuke of JD Vance Goes Viral

"Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s scathing rebuke of Vice President JD Vance has gone viral on social media.

At a press conference on Friday, Shapiro was asked about Vance, who had called a court order that directed the Trump administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for November "absurd."

Shapiro, a Democrat, called Vance a “total phony” who “doesn’t give a damn about all Americans” and had turned his back on the Appalachian communities he once said he represented.

A clip of Shapiro’s comments garnered more than a million views after it was posted on X by the senior digital editor of the liberal Meidas Touch website...

Vance “rose to some prominence by writing a book about growing up in Appalachia, where there’s a whole lot of people who get SNAP," Shapiro said, referring to Vance's 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

"He made millions of dollars on the backs of telling their stories, and then he turned his damn back on those very people who he likes to write about and claim as his own.”

Shapiro also said Vance’s stance runs counter to his Christian faith.

“He claims to be a person of faith. I know my Bible. And my Bible teaches us that we are to love thy neighbor and we are to feed the hungry,” Shapiro said."

I Photographed an Appalachian Family for 15 Years; The New York Times, November 6, 2025

Photographs by Maddie McGarvey

Text by Emi Nietfeld

, The New York Times; I Photographed an Appalachian Family for 15 Years

[Kip Currier: This is a remarkable photographic essay shedding light on individual lived experiences in Appalachian Ohio, but also shared human connections and universal emotions of fear, longing, uncertainty, desperation, hope, and resilience.

I came away from the piece, probably like many other readers, wondering in what ways we as individuals and societies can provide more infrastructure and services -- not less -- to help fellow humans to break out of cycles of poverty and need.

The piece is even more poignant in light of the current government shutdown and disruptions in SNAP food assistance benefits for more than 40 million Americans.]

[Excerpt]

"Today, the toddler who ran playfully through Ms. McGarvey’s photographs is a high school graduate facing an uncertain future. Through her childhood and adolescence, Paige raised herself and took care of her younger brothers while her family moved frequently between small coal towns, without a stable place to land.

When I saw Ms. McGarvey’s project, I felt an immediate connection to Paige. As a teen I spent time in foster care and bounced between sleeping on friends’ sofas, in my car or in a shelter. The details in the photographs transported me back to that turbulent period: the detritus piled on the broken stovetop; the hours hanging out at McDonald’s; the world dissolving into weariness before you’re even old enough to drive.

Most of all, I recognized Ms. McGarvey’s project as an act of witnessing, documenting one family’s life in its daily tenderness, ordinary suffering and full complexity."