Make America Full Again

November 25, 2025

Plus, actual courage in actual journalism. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

November 25, 2025

Greetings, Meteor readers,

To me, this is the best week in America. The air is freighted with anticipation and cheer, and no one has burnt the sweet potatoes or said something offensive yet. The pie crust is in the freezer (the pie crust is in the freezer, right?). And it’s all merriment and good vibes and OOO messages from here on out.

But of course, not everyone gets to savor the start of this festive season. In today’s newsletter, we check in on SNAP—the program that’s meant to feed the nation’s hungriest and which this administration seems determined to weaken. Below that, a few courageous women to give you hope.

With butter,

Mattie Kahn

WHAT’S GOING ON

Food for thought: As we head into a holiday so heavily focused on meals, abundance, and pictures of meals and abundance, it’s worth remembering that when this month began, millions of people were being robbed of their food benefit s. For a brief moment in time, so many of us were united in our outrage over food insecurity and rushed to help. (Or at least, we rushed to search: Google Trends shows that searches for “SNAP benefits” peaked on November 1, 2025 and have since plummeted.) However, once the shutdown ended and funding resumed, that energy disappeared faster than you can say SNAP is still in danger.

Why? Well, because the new Republican-crafted spending bill (the Big and Not-So-Beautiful Bill, according to us) actually restructures the SNAP program in part by adding stricter work requirements, removing federal dollars from the program, and eliminating access to it for thousands of immigrants with legal status.

These changes are slated to go into effect next month, ahead of yet another holiday season. And when the changes roll out, it will be women and children who are most affected. Non-elderly women make up more than half of all SNAP recipients, and there are roughly 12 million children receiving SNAP.

It is shameful that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, anyone should go hungry. But people in the U.S. aren’t hungry by accident; they are hungry by design. When it comes to women in particular, food access is a multi-pronged issue. Women go hungrier because, historically, they’ve made less money and been saddled with more unpaid care labor, reducing the number of working hours available to them. Throw that together with the changes in reproductive care, gender-based violence, and racial discrimination against women of color that hinder women’s earning potential, and you have yourself a fool-proof recipe for food insecurity.

None of this is to say that men are immune from hunger. They do, however, experience it at a lesser rate than women. And as we’ve previously written, food insecurity isn’t something we can volunteer our way out of. The millions of people who have or are about to lose their food benefits aren’t just hungry on holidays or a few times a year. It is an everyday experience—which means the communal effort to change that fact must happen every day as well. What better week to start? — Shannon Melero

AND:

With media conglomerates buckling in the face of political pressure and entire news organizations being remade in the image of a single blogger, it can feel like courage in the media is in short supply. Thank goodness for the incredible women reminding us that there are in fact thousands of principled reporters, working all over the globe, to deliver the unvarnished facts to their readers and viewers. This month, the International Women’s Media Foundation honored several of them—including one Afghan reporter whose work is so dangerous she can only write under a pseudonym, and an Azerbaijani journalist serving a life sentence for her truth-telling—at the Courage in Journalism Awards. Read more about their indefatigable work here.
Speaking of courage: Viola Fletcher, the oldest survivor of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, died at 111 this week. She was seven when a mob of white residents descended on the Black Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and burned 35 city blocks, resulting in the deaths of around 300 people. (More than 800 others were hospitalized and about 6,000 Black residents were placed in internment camps, per The 19th*.) To mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre, Fletcher testified in Congress. “I am 107 years old and have never seen justice,” she said. “I pray that one day I will.”

VIOLA FORD FLETCHER, AGE 108, ATTENDS A CELEBRATION FOR THE OLDEST LIVING TULSA OKLAHOMA MASSACRE SURVIVORS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IN 2023. (GETTY IMAGES)

Last Friday, North Dakota became the 13th state to enact a full ban on abortion—reversing a judge’s block on the law last year. If you feel like that piece of huge news has been drowned out by everything else happening, a) you’re not wrong, and b) here’s a helpful map that is keeping track of ongoing litigation in each state. We recommend keeping an eye out for states where bans or blocks on bans are only temporary as legal battles continue. — Ann Vettikkal
ICYMI: This weekend, Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and cousin of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wrote a beautiful, gut-wrenching masterpiece of an essay on her battle with cancer. She masterfully threads together the story of her diagnosis—which she received just hours after giving birth to her second child—and the horror of witnessing her cousin’s anti-science advocacy as he spearheads federal efforts to strip back the research funding and vaccines that keep millions of vulnerable Americans like herself alive. — Ann Vettikkal
Was Thanksgiving once woke? Maybe not in the 2025 sense, but in the lead up to the Civil War, evangelical Protestants in the abolitionist North used the holiday to denounce slavery. In fact, Harper’s Monthly depicted freed slaves “celebrating the feast day by praying at ‘the Union altar,’” historian Thomas Tweed writes. Then the slave-holding South bristled against the holiday’s anti-slavery undertones. They came around in other words? It might even be traditional to pick a fight at the Thanksgiving table so long as it’s for one’s righteous morals. — Ann Vettikkal
Here’s a wild idea: You could also just…not shop.