Kalena Thomhave
The Nation
Ann Arbor, MI, United States
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Past articles by Kalena:
Why the Super-Rich Are Flocking to South Dakota
South Dakota has become a tax haven for the wealthy. Here’s how the trust industry gained a foothold. → Read More
Undoing Welfare Reform
If Congress makes the expanded Child Tax Credit permanent, simple, and universal, it could have reverberations across the entire welfare state. → Read More
What Happened to Milwaukee’s Black Middle Class?
Democrats will need the support of a Wisconsin city battered by deindustrialization and deunionization. → Read More
How to Make Philanthropy Actually Address the Crisis
A major new proposal could generate $200 billion in donations to nonprofits—and make wealthy ‘do-gooders’ actually do more good. → Read More
The Journey of the Jobless
Congress boosted unemployment benefits. Now the challenge lies in getting them out to the unemployed, through underfunded state-level programs. → Read More
Sanders’s Must-Win Effort in Michigan
In a state where he’s done well, Bernie Sanders pulls out all the stops to slow the Biden juggernaut. → Read More
Poverty Doesn’t Sell, but We Wrote About It Anyway
For the past two years as a Prospect writing fellow, I’ve carved out a beat on poverty and inequality, writing about marginalized populations and overlooked issues. Stories on inequality are depressing. They don’t sell ads. But in an era where the chasm between rich and poor is only widening, and wages have stagnated for decades, this is the stuff we need to talk → Read More
Trump Two-fer: One New Policy Will Attack Both Immigrants and the Safety Net
President Trump’s attacks on the safety net continue, and all the better for him if he can disenfranchise multiple marginalized populations in one fell swoop. This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finalized its “public charge” rule, which targets both welfare recipients and immigrants. The rule will both limit immigration and discourage current → Read More
How California Left Undocumented Immigrants Out of Its EITC Expansion
It costs a lot to be poor: There’s the cost of transportation to get to a low-paying job, for instance, or the cost of health care when that low-paying job doesn’t provide benefits. The assistance from the social safety net might help a little, but for the most part those programs don’t meet the need.Yet it is even more exorbitant to be poor and undocumented. → Read More
The Trump Administration Plans to Kick Three Million Off Food Stamps
The Trump administration has shown that when it fails to pass priority agenda items legislatively, it will push forward through other means, while ignoring Congress.The regulatory process has already been used to introduce restrictions to the nation’s largest nutrition program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. In → Read More
Live Free or Die—Literally
New Hampshire delayed its Medicaid work requirement deadline, as it seemed that more than two-thirds of recipients’ health coverage would be jeopardized. → Read More
Without Congressional Input, Trump May Further Widen the Gap Between Rich and Poor
On the heels of the revelation that the Trump administration is considering changing how the poverty line is adjusted for inflation, which would reduce public benefits for millions, the administration may further use the inflation measure as an excuse to cut taxes for the rich. → Read More
How the Democratic Candidates Talk about Poverty
Medicare for All and income inequality are gaining traction among the party platform, but the candidates must frame all issues of poverty in terms of basic rights. → Read More
Banning Private Prisons—and Prisoner Exploitation
Last Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed as president to terminate all federal private prison contracts, and to pressure local and state governments to do the same. “The government has a basic responsibility to keep the people in its care safe—not to use their punishment as an opportunity for profit,” she wrote in a Medium post.Warren’s plan also promises to → Read More
Confronting Politicians with the Reality of Poverty
In the gym on the campus of Washington, D.C.’s Trinity Washington University, with bleachers pushed to the side to make room for more than 1,000 attendees, a banner hung from the balcony reading, “Fight poverty, not the poor.” Just outside, more banners and posters, declaring the immorality of poverty, papered the walls of the lobby. → Read More
Benefits on the Line
This article appears in the Summer 2019 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. Detroit resident Walter Travier-EL just got out of prison after serving 48 years. He wants a job, but the state is having issues helping him secure a state ID and a new Social Security card—his old one is long lost. For now, Travier-EL survives on Supplemental → Read More
Check a Box for Free Health Care
The Trump administration has spent the last two and a half years doggedly attacking the Affordable Care Act (ACA). From limiting advertising and outreach, shortening enrollment periods, and killing the individual mandate at the federal level, to approving state plans to eliminate health coverage for many Medicaid recipients, the administration has undermined and → Read More
American Call Center Workers Rally for Their Filipino Counterparts
While American call center jobs are offshored to the labor-hostile Philippines, some American call center workers are publicly supporting Filipino workers’ right to organize. → Read More
Democrats Battle Over How to Raise the Minimum Wage
The call for a $15 minimum wage is getting louder, and more people are hearing it. The Fight for $15 has won numerous victories, as states (including California and New York) and localities have passed their own laws to institute a $15 minimum wage—or even higher. In January, Democratic Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia and independent Senator Bernie Sanders → Read More
How to Help the Multiple Victims of a Wrongful Conviction
Restorative justice may open a path to healing for the exonerated, the state, and even the victim of the original crime. → Read More