Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Well, howdy there, Internet people. It's Belle again. And welcome to The Roads with Belle. Today is November 2nd, 2025. And this is episode 115 of The Roads Not Taken, which is a weekly series where we go over the news that was unreported, underreported, didn't get the coverage we thought it deserved, or we just found it interesting. And then we go through a few questions from y'all.
Today is November 2nd, and today is the end of daylight savings time. If you didn't know that, you're probably not on schedule. Today is also the Day of the Dead, and I'm declaring it drop-off food at a food pantry day if you can. There's still a lot of uncertainty.
Chapter 2: What unreported news stories are highlighted in this episode?
And on this date in 2000, the first crew arrived at the International Space Station. and starting with foreign policy.
After backlash ranging from outright mockery of his lack of knowledge on the subject, to economists talking about the costs, to military experts talking about the domino effects, to the environmentalists, and well, honestly, it came from everybody informed enough to have an opinion. Trump has doubled down on his desire to resume nuclear weapons testing.
There's a lot of random chatter and signals that the U.S. is still staging for the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela. Hurricane Melissa has caused a massive amount of damage in Jamaica. King Charles has turned his brother Prince Andrew into just plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. It seems like a move to end questions concerning the Epstein files.
The already horrific situation in Sudan has deteriorated even more. The word massacre is being used to reference events in multiple locations, including an incident at a maternity hospital. In U.S. news, Republican preloaders in Congress haven't voted since mid-September. It was announced that they won't be working next week either.
This is happening while they travel around calling working class Americans freeloaders because the bill they passed was too bad to pass the Senate. Trump called for Republicans to scrap the filibuster. Republican leadership said no. This was incredibly unhelpful for Republicans. It showed that their rhetoric about Democrats totally blocking them is false.
They just don't want to deal with the political fallout. A federal judge ordered the USDA to use contingency funds to pay for SNAP. A different judge has stopped Trump's shutdown layoffs for now. The Trump administration sent out emails suggesting the shutdown could last another 30 days. In cultural news, MTG trashed Republican men again.
She's finding out that the Republican Party doesn't actually care about women in a very public way.
Amid conservative infighting, former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, quote, Last I checked, conservatives should feel no obligation to carry water for anti-Semites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.
As Americans attempt to deal with rising health care costs, snap cuts, and potential snap freezes because of Trump's policies, he decided to post photos of a remodeled Lincoln bathroom and bragged about the marble. As an aside, it is as hideous as you think it is. It looks like Tony Montana's bathroom.
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Chapter 3: How is Trump influencing foreign policy and military decisions?
But every Lib or left channel seems to believe the Democrats are finally winning a messaging war. What's going on? Republicans are being duped by creative presentation of statistics. A majority of Americans don't blame Trump. That's a statement of fact. But it's being presented in a way to suggest they blame Democrats. That's false. 45%, so not a majority, blame Trump and the GOP.
Only 33% blame Democrats. There's a large group, 22%, who say they're not sure who's responsible. you could look at approval of running the federal government to see which way the undecideds lean. 63% of Americans say they disapprove of Trump's management of the federal government.
That's likely to mean most of the undecideds lean towards blaming Trump because a majority of Americans already disapprove of his general managerial skills with the government. I've been watching for years, but this is the first time I've had a question to ask.
While I appreciate that when SNAP stops, the consequences that recipients will experience carry the greatest moral weight, I'm also curious about likely consequences for the companies that supply the food purchased with SNAP. I mean, some back of envelope math tells me that Walmart takes in about $2 billion each month from SNAP, never mind its labor practices around SNAP.
And while I'm hardly about to suggest that people stand up for Walmart, I'm wondering what can be expected or done around getting Walmart to stand up for them. Well, not actually stand up for them, but get them to stand up for themselves in a way that provides collateral assistance to the people.
Also, although I'm using Walmart as an example because they're the biggest, I don't think it's restricted to them. Costco, Kroger, etc. all stand to get hammered, too, when Snap stops. Yes, Trump's nonsense will pull billions per month out of the economy, about $8 billion. Larger companies can eat that for a month, maybe two, but it's the smaller companies that create a chain effect.
And the money that enters the grocery sector to make up for snap freezes now won't enter other sectors of the economy. As an example, If Jack gets 100 bucks in SNAP normally and that doesn't show, the 100 bucks will have to come from another part of Jack's budget. Maybe the light bill, maybe medical, maybe gas.
We honestly don't know what's going to happen in the long term because there isn't something really comparable to look at. Can you explain why people on SNAP should be eating lobster? Are they though? The idea that this is happening on any significant level is based entirely on markings that identify lobster as SNAP eligible.
It's eligible because it's under meat, poultry, and fish, which is SNAP eligible. There's a lot of things that are SNAP eligible, like garden seeds. Think of it like this. You, or whoever's complaining about this, are free to buy lobster every night. But you probably don't because you can't afford it. People on SNAP have less means.
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