What You Actually Need to Start
A rod, a reel, line, a handful of hooks, and about sixty dollars. Everything else is optional for longer than the internet will tell you.
Walking into a tackle shop is the point where most beginners spend too much money on the wrong things. Here is the short version.
Buy a rod and reel combo. A 6'6" medium spinning combo, pre-matched, around forty to sixty dollars. It will handle nearly every freshwater fish you are likely to meet for the first year. Do not buy a baitcaster yet. They backlash, and learning to fish while also learning to cast a baitcaster is how people give up.
Line. Ten pound monofilament. It stretches, which hides the mistakes you are about to make, and it is cheap enough to replace when it gets old. It does get old. Sunlight kills it, so re-spool once a season.
Terminal tackle. A pack of size 8 bait hooks, a pack of 3/0 offset worm hooks, split shot, a couple of small floats. Perhaps fifteen dollars total.
Pliers. Not optional. You will hook a fish deeper than you meant to, and a swallowed hook without pliers is a bad outcome for both of you.
What to skip: a tackle box with four hundred lures, a fish finder, waders, and anything described as a "system". Catch some fish first. Worry about getting better at it after that.
Get a license. Every state sells them online. They cost less than a tank of gas, and the fine for skipping one costs a great deal more.