Some insights from “Killing Kids in Iran While Kids in the U.S. Go Hungry” by Sarah Lazare at The American Prospect and Workday Magazine:

“…On the first day of the war, the United States bombed an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, killing 168 people, 110 of them children. The U.S.-Israel coalition went on to heavily bomb residential areas in Iran and Lebanon, and strike oil depots around Tehran, filling the air with thick, black smoke that blots out the sun and unleashes oily, toxic rain…The Pentagon estimates that the war costs $1 billion a day, according to Atlantic journalist Nancy Youssef, who cites “a congressional official.” For that amount, the United States instead could be paying the daily cost of food stamps for the 41 million people who need them, or the daily costs of Medicaid for the 16 million people who are expected to lose their coverage due to recent cuts, according to Alliyah Lusuegro and Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project, an organization that researches federal budgets.

…Six in 10 people in the U.S. are against the airstrikes, according to a CNN pollreleased March 2. A whopping 82 percent of Democrats disapprove, found the poll, which mirrors the findings of another poll from Reuters/Ipsos. That survey determined just 7 percent of Democrats support the war, and just 27 percent of all adults…

Working-class Americans are already feeling the strain in their bank accounts. Since the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, gas prices have jumped 17 percent, an impact that—due to the realities of how our cities are designed—disproportionately harms working people. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also blocked a significant chunk of the world’s fertilizer, which raises input costs for food producers and will almost certainly lead to higher food prices.

Food insecurity increased in 2025, climbing to 16 percent in November of that year, according to the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability at Purdue University. One in 7 households in the U.S. are “struggling to put food on the table,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, warned in February. “For the 47.9 million people, including 14.1 million children, who live in these households, food insecurity is not an abstract concept. It is a daily reality, and it has only gotten worse as the cost of food has continued to climb.”

Read more here.