Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Stephen Pimpare

@stephenpimpare.bsky.social

1.6K followers 4.2K following 260 posts

Poverty and US social welfare policy, hovering awkwardly between the fields of political science and social work. Host, New Books in Public Policy: https://newbooksnetwork.com/hosts/profile/aba1b96c-5ec5-4ab6-940e-08f426f74a37 .. more

Videos

Political science 45%

Economics 18%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 2d

Not the main point, I realize, but this is a WILDLY disingenuous description of the Free Staters.

1 3

Reposted by Daniel W. Drezner, Silvia Secchi, Stephen Pimpare , and 1 more Daniel W. Drezner, Silvia Secchi, Stephen Pimpare, Southern Africa

Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 7d

The conversation between Klein and Coates showed me that a lot of people who screech about “infighting” on the left aren’t aware of the fact that marginalized people have been forced to learn how to regulate their emotions during conflict, and so, are better able to hear what’s actually being said.

60 1.2K 6.1K

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 8d

“His lack of compass in the moment means that he is being played by a system that benefits from his confusion and his willingness to spread that confusion as if it were political analysis.”

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 8d

““I believe he's in the throes of a real struggle over how to proceed, but as of right now, he is only serving the political movement and business interests that benefit from a morally compromised, morally compromising political left”

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 8d

This is so good and clarifying
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

You don't have to swallow frogs

Podcast Episode · Next Comes What · 10/02/2025 · 25m

podcasts.apple.com

1 1

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 8d

What's going on in this very last line in the VA?

30% increase to "Electronic Health Record Modernization"?

Anyone have insight?

dense chart showing personnel cuts to various agencies

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 8d

"The merging of state power and economic power around one man who accepts that power as his due would not be possible without the algorithmic grift that has so all-consumingly captured our attention." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

Opinion | Mourn, or Else

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by David R. Miller, Stephen Pimpare, Stuart Shapiro

Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 9d

Preregistering:
1. The shutdown will break the record for longest shutdown (35 days).
2. Attitudes about the shutdown, and who's to blame, will be polarized along partisan lines; there will be no coherent or consistent narrative about its cause.
3. The shutdown will persist until context changes.

18 44 250

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 10d

“AI isn't going to wake up, become superintelligent and turn you into paperclips – but rich people with AI investor psychosis are almost certainly going to make you much, much poorer.”

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 10d

“These companies are not profitable. They can't be profitable. They keep the lights on by soaking up hundreds of billions of dollars in other people's money and then lighting it on fire.”

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 10d

“AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts. . . “

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 10d

No surprise, this is very good. pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

1 1

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 10d

No surprise, this is very good. pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

5 63 190

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 10d

"SNAP Changes Will Upend State Budgets" www.georgetownpoverty.org/issues/snap-...

interactive state-by-state map of SNAP cut effects

2 4

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

Childless Dog Lady is PISSED OFF 🍉🌺 @sgbuggs.bsky.social · 11d

Ezra Klein is the perfect embodiment of the white moderate MLK warned us about

1 35 160

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 14d

“designating disrespect and denigration as beyond the pale, as grounds for exclusion from polite company, is “turning the temperature down.” Klein and others are helping to turn it up.”

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16d

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Archon Fung, Stephen Pimpare

Lee Drutman @leedrutman.bsky.social · 14d

"Campaigns that should be building movements are instead building donor databases. Political energy that could mobilize communities gets redirected into optimizing email subject lines and testing which desperate plea extracts the most dollars from exhausted supporters."
substack.com/inbox/post/1...

The Fundraising-Industrial Complex Is Eating American Politics

New data reveals campaigns burn about a third of donations raised just asking for more donations

substack.com

5 14 54

Reposted by Scott L. Greer, Ameet Sarpatwari, John A. Graves , and 3 more Scott L. Greer, Ameet Sarpatwari, John A. Graves, Ankur Pandya, David L. Anderson, Stephen Pimpare

Adrianna McIntyre @adrianna.bsky.social · 15d

A new paper led by Harvard Health Policy PhD student Ye Shen finds that, in the current policy environment, more than six in ten kids will have been enrolled in Medicaid for some period of time by their 18th birthday; the program is absolutley critical for children.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

4 38 61

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16d

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

200 1.9K 6.7K

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

Streetsblog NYC @nyc.streetsblog.org · 17d

The Big Apple’s $30-billion social safety net amounts to a badly frayed patchwork of systems that still cannot reliably get New Yorkers in psychiatric crisis from subway platforms to hospital beds, a Streetsblog investigation has found.

'Treated and Streeted': How The City's Safety Net Fails Homeless People in the Subway - Streetsblog New York City

The Big Apple’s $30-billion social safety net cannot reliably get a homeless person in psychiatric crisis out of the subway and into a hospital bed, a Streetsblog investigation has found.

buff.ly

5 22

Reposted by Joshua S. Weitz, Maria Abreu, Stephen Pimpare

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 20d

As the Trump administration is expected to add a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, here's what we know about H1-B visas
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
🧵

What we know about the U.S. H-1B visa program

Nearly 400,000 H-1B applications were approved in fiscal year 2024, most of which were applications to renew employment.

www.pewresearch.org

7 28 41

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 21d

😮

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 21d

Updated map of the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. Health departments who have officially confirmed that they are part of the collaborative include Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York City.

Map Regional Public Health Coalitions
Northeast Public Health Collaborative states shaded in blue
West Coast Health Alliance states shaded in yellow
Updated September 18, 2025
Map: @luckytran • Created with Datawrapper

36 210 700

Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Will Jennings, Scott L. Greer , and 7 more Kim L. Scheppele, Will Jennings, Scott L. Greer, Valerie P. Hans, Rosemary A. Joyce, Daniel W. Drezner, Mark Rice, Stephen Pimpare, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Stuart Shapiro

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 22d

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

60 1K 5K

Reposted by Nathan P. Kalmoe

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 23d

For your Constitution Day reading: www.commondreams.org/opinion/fail...

The Right Is Risen: It's Time to Admit the US Constitution Has Failed | Common Dreams

An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy. We can do better.

www.commondreams.org

2 4

Stephen Pimpare @stephenpimpare.bsky.social · 24d

My article, "Social Work under Rising Authoritarian in the United States" is now published in the European Journal of Social Work. Despite the title, I think it can speak to all kinds of folks struggling to figure out how to think about this moment and what to do. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YGQTN...

Social work under rising authoritarianism in the United States

This article unfolds in four sections. It begins in Section I with an effort to place the reëlection of Donald Trump in a broader electoral, historical, and political context. Section II offers an ...

www.tandfonline.com

12 24

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities @centeronbudget.bsky.social · 24d

The Ag Dept has released guidance on implementing new #SNAP work requirements. “There are estimates that about 2.4M people would lose benefits under these time-limit-related changes,” says CBPP’s Ed Bolen in this #GreatRead via @npr.org All Things Considered: www.npr.org/2025/09/08/n...

New SNAP rules could result in 2.4 million people losing benefits each month

The Agriculture Department has started to issue guidance on how states should implement new work requirements for people who get food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

www.npr.org

9 5

Reposted by Michael D. Green, Mirya R. Holman, Stephen D. Murphy , and 5 more Michael D. Green, Mirya R. Holman, Stephen D. Murphy, José Antonio Noguera, David L. Anderson, Florencia Torche, Stephen Pimpare, David Darmofal

Rita Hamad @ritahamad.bsky.social · 28d

Thrilled to co-author 2 recent qualitative papers that perfectly demonstrate the importance of mixed methods research to inform US policy. In the first aptly titled "It's confusing as hell" we examined lived experiences of low-income people applying for the EITC. academic.oup.com/healthaffair... 1/

4 26 92

Reposted by Cathy N. Davidson, Daniel S. Goldberg, Juan Ramón , and 4 more Cathy N. Davidson, Daniel S. Goldberg, Juan Ramón, Stephen Pimpare, Prakash Kashwan, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Dan Immergluck

Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · Sep 9

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.

Most US adults think individual choices keep people in poverty, new AP-NORC/Harris poll finds

A new AP-NORC poll finds that most U.S. adults think personal choices are a major driver of poverty and homelessness, while fewer blame a lack of government support.

apnews.com

110 1.5K 3.7K

Reposted by Stephen Pimpare

Lincoln Mitchell @lincolnmitchell.bsky.social · Sep 9

I was a guest on the Attitude with Arnie Arnesen yesterday. www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sta... w/ @pchowder.bsky.social @stephenpimpare.bsky.social

Arnie Arnesen Attitude September 8 2025

opening thoughts:time to ask Republican Governor Ayotte and possible US Senate candidate John E Sununu (it works in every race by the way)1. do you support the release of the Epstein files...women who...

www.podomatic.com

1 1

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Elizabeth Saunders, Ian Campbell , and 7 more Anna O. Law, Elizabeth Saunders, Ian Campbell, David R. Miller, Aaron Sojourner, James Goodwin, Jason Lyall, Nathan Richardson, Matthew P. McAllister, Stephen Pimpare

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · Sep 8

the maga constitution doesn’t allow any institution, public or private, to explicitly work to ameliorate racial inequality but allows the government to racially profile

Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · Sep 8

BREAKING: By an apparent 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court halts an injunction that had prevented immigration agents from racially profiling Latinos in central California.

Sotomayor, dissenting, says the decision is "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees."

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26085894-25a169-order/

110 1.5K 5.8K