For Voters in Kentucky, Trump Is Losing His Luster

"On an April morning in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson landed in Martin County, Kentucky, stepping from Marine One to the hollers of a rural county where 60 percent of residents lived in poverty. With reporters and photographers from Time and Life in tow, Johnson ended up on the cabin porch of Tom Fletcher, a father of eight who had been unemployed for two years."

"After listening to the Fletchers tell him their story, Johnson came down from the porch, turned toward the press corps, and declared: "I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory." Johnson was referring to a pronouncement he had made earlier that year, before a joint session of Congress during his State of the Union address, when he declared his "War on Poverty." Martin County, he made clear, would be on the front line."

"And while the shutdown is over, a return to the status quo is not enough for many voters. In 2024, 91 percent of voters in the county backed Donald Trump. Yet, as The New York Times recently reported, it was the Trump administration that pressured states like Kentucky to roll back efforts to deliver full food stamp benefits during the shutdown."

In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Martin County, Kentucky, a rural area where about 60 percent of residents lived in poverty, and pledged a national "War on Poverty." By August he signed the Food Stamp Act alongside programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Head Start to address poverty in places like Martin County. The longest government shutdown in US history recently caused the deepest disruption to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program since then. About 23 percent of Martin County households rely on SNAP, and many residents view restored status quo benefits as insufficient after pressure to roll back full SNAP payments.

Read at The Nation