Here's the newsletter post I wrote today about the CDC vax page and MAHA as marketing buttondown.com/abbycartus/a...

It's hard to express what it meant to watch Maurice, Natalia, Celeste, and Rhea tell their stories—in their own voices—this morning. The segment revealed a brutal reality: homelessness at this scale isn't about personal failure. It's the result of policy choices and systems built to exploit people.

“Lots of people have had to eat without SNAP, so they’ve used their rent money and their utility money, [so] we are likely to see a wave of evictions and utility shutoffs. I think we’re going to see a lot of disruptions in people’s lives for months to come.” prospect.org/2025/11/14/s...

I’m devastated by @sfdirewolf.bsky.social’s passing. Alice was an incredible advocate, writer, and human. I miss her so much already and am grateful for our time together but mostly for the legacy she left us all. Her memory is a huge blessing. www.facebook.com/share/14QATF...

Lottie, a 15yo in Pike County, KY, writes for @kentucky.com about the impact of SNAP delays in her community, which is still recovering from flooding. Cars line up hours before the church where she volunteers begins giving out food: "I see this line growing longer and longer month after month..."

It’s time for us to reconnect with the radical, system-changing spirit that was once at the heart of our field. #publichealth #episky #medsky #activism www.thenation.com/article/acti...

"A family of four in Vermont making $130,000 per year — more than four times the federal poverty level — can expect to see a premium hike of nearly $33,000 annually, the report said." www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/31/b...

Just so we're clear: This administration's blatant, unapologetic choice to deny food to 42 million people—to have the money sitting there and say, "No, we'll let them go hungry"—is simply a more overt display of why homelessness and poverty keep worsening in this country. Because it's *decided.*

This @nytimes.com piece on the "Vision for Homelessness" in Utah should horrify all people. This NYTimes piece on the "Vision for Homelessness" in Utah should horrify all people. 1/x 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/u...

With millions at risk of losing SNAP in the coming days, a reminder: hunger doesn't happen in isolation. When food assistance disappears, families use rent money to eat. Then come evictions and homelessness. Housing, food, healthcare—it's all connected. Cut one thread and the whole thing unravels.

I will also say while I’m at it, that for every argument that you can make for the need to have new / younger / different reps, you can and should dissect how those arguments are ableist and ageist. I’d rather hear how “X” elected is disconnected than trotting out their age like they’re disposable.

Read this: "Nothing is Holy," by Ava Razavi. I taught a course on writing about the Trumpocene. Ava said, "I don't want to think about it." But she couldn't stop thinking about it. Gorgeous, heartbreaking prose by a new writer on looking for answers. callingallsyllables.substack.com/p/nothing-is...

One of many village centers lined with protesters in rural Vermont. #NoKings

Tolerating bigotry until it becomes a political liability is not principled and courageous leadership.

EIS outbreak investigators, Africa-based staff on Ebola, editors of main journal updating health officials, gone. Administration is doing all it can to enable viruses. This isn’t mysterious: people this administration is actually accountable to can largely exit, stay home. Inequality=>Pandemics

Community safety comes from ensuring that everyone has a safe and secure place to live. Community safety comes from ensuring that we have well-funded, high functioning schools. Community safety comes from ensuring everyone has access to the healthcare that they need.

They know they won't be in power forever. So, they're breaking as much as they can right now, in the hope that whoever follows them won't be able to put it all back together.

I am grateful to work alongside colleagues in the health/public health space who are intentional about building our power as academics in service of advancing health equity. We are the Health and Power Organizing Project (HPOP). Read our AJPH paper here: ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/...

Part 3 in my ongoing series, "How (Not) to Write about Homelessness." People don't "fall" into homelessness, they are pushed. Our stories about homelessness should reflect that, and refuse to allow the pushers to remain invisible. Read more: kevinmnye.substack.com/p/how-not-to...

“Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would give up its legal rights and would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.” @brendannyhan.bsky.social & Lisa Fazio www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Sam the rural health advoCATe is worried about rural hospitals and their survival. And as a public health cat, he is also worried about a "who deserves it" tone in many comments. Public health cares for all, even those who disagree/are disagreeable. Dead folks can't change. #PowerOfRuralCat

@maxjordan.bsky.social Bending science for political gain doesn't restore trust. It grows the market for false cures. open.substack.com/pub/adverser...

“You can’t see what you’ve never had to live”—Cultivating imagination and solution spaces in global health and development Please read our new paper in @plosglobalpublichealth.org journals.plos.org/globalpublic...

Enthusiastically shared by Sam the rural health advoCATe. Rural is full of innovation, if people actually look. #PowerOfRuralCats

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. stated that the $50B Rural Health Transformation Fund is the biggest infusion of federal dollars into rural health. That is untrue - Medicaid has been, to the tune of roughly $180B per year. Read why the RHTF won't help (with @aorris.bsky.social): www.cbpp.org/blog/rural-h...

Equity in science is still a beautiful lie. After 27 years in Colombia — shaping me as a person and scientist — I begin a new chapter as Distinguished Researcher @csic.es in Spain. Yet I learnt that geography, networks & prestige still outweigh merit, favoring privileged colleagues, conscious or not

excellent and concise analysis of yet another massive threat to rural health care. from @maxjordan.bsky.social, who is always worth reading

The “beautiful “ bill is a death knell for rural health infrastructure, hisses Sam the rural health advoCATe. Health care is requirement for a healthy community, not a gift for those deemed worthy. #PowerOfRuralCats

This broken record would like to remind everyone that we can hold bad actors to account and critique harmful policies and practices without resorting to stigma, ableism, and disparaging stereotypes.

jokes like this reinforce and spread addiction stigma, and that stigma is a huge reason why they successfully gutted public health work addressing addiction and overdoses. and it’s why they’re targeting adhd medications next. this isn’t funny. it’s harmful

Song For a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity From a Coal Miner’s Daughter will be released on April 21st 2026 from @haymarketbooks.org. In the midst of hateful divisive rhetoric, violent repression, and grifters writing elegies, let this one be a song. ❤️‍🔥 Pre-orders are open!

For no particular reason whatsoever, I wrote a whole book about why society should stop trying to cure #ActuallyAutistic people and instead focus more on creating a better world and society for them. You can buy it here. www.harpercollins.com/products/wer...

Endorsed by Sam the rural health advoCATe. Rural America is many places and many kinds of people. The @brookings.edu report linked below contains a good review of the racial/ethnic makeup of rural. #PowerOfRuralCats www.brookings.edu/articles/map...

Please stop making rural hospitals political pawns. Treating rural hospitals as political currency sends a message that rural communities do not matter, hardens already large divides, and punishes populations that are far more diverse than most on social media would like to acknowledge.

One reason Gregg Colburn and I wrote HOMELESSNESS IS A HOUSING PROBLEM was to push back against the dehumanization of people without housing. Kilmeade’s rhetoric is a direct consequence of a society that defines disposable underclasses

Let’s fight for a society that actually values people and provides them with the safety and security they need. And let’s call out those who use dehumanizing rhetoric. Even those whose rhetoric and actions fall short of these truly horrific examples.

To build a broader progressive coalition, I'd argue that we need to do a better job of helping people to see how policies that disproportionately help the most vulnerable among us will leave us all in a better place long term.

We can reject violence without legitimizing agendas built on bigotry. We can affirm the sense of institutional abandonment and discontent leading many to MAHA without forming unholy alliances with actors who prey on them. Soft bigotry & zero-sum thinking will not save us. Our moral imagination will.

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

The belief that poverty and homelessness are about "individual choices" didn't arise on its own. It was manufactured through decades of messaging designed to protect the policies and interests that create mass precarity. As this new poll shows, that propaganda campaign has been wildly successful.

They tell voters what they should be concerned about. They don’t bother to listen to what they are concerned about. We are trying to force a narrative on people who only need to look around or check their bank account to see what concerns them. jesspiper.substack.com/p/why-cant-w...

RFK Jr. won’t see your post about his addiction — but many others who have suffered from addiction will, along with their families, employers, & friends. your post stigmatizes and punishes US. not him. RFK has many disqualifying attributes; his addiction from years ago is not one of them.

I think people have really undersold the fact that financial motivation is a huge factor in RFK’s actions, yes he’s ideologically a eugenicist but he also makes huge profits off his conspiracy theories

to quote @annesosin.bsky.social, “show me the political economy!”

Wild how normalized the words "safe parking lot for unhoused schoolchildren" have become in this country.

Endorsed by Sam the rural health advoCATe. We need better. @codymullens.bsky.social @ruralhealth.bsky.social #PowerOfRuralCats jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

This is such an important point. With uneven access to vaccines across states, we will further create a two tier health system. Those with privilege will always find their protections, safety, and care.

Methodological individualism is why we're shoe-horning "precision public health" into conversations about structural-level interventions to improve the health of populations, rather than incrementally tweak at the margins.

It's easy to pretend that you don't need a safety net when women are doing the work of keeping you safe, unseen.