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How to Defeat the Pro-Suffering, Pro-Hunger Policies of Trump's GOP
Food insecurity has long been a feature of Republican politics, not a bug.
Nov 16, 2025
Once upon a time, in what increasingly feels like the fairy tale world of the 1970s, Democrats and Republicans agreed that hunger was immoral. This consensus was embodied by the collaboration to champion the Food Stamp Program between Senate Agriculture Committee leaders and political icons, namely Republican Robert Dole and Democrat George McGovern. They had essentially revived a farm support program launched under FDR during the Great Depression, turning it into a cornerstone of the anti-hunger struggle and eventually an entitlement program, in which anyone who qualified for benefits could receive them regardless of Congressional appropriations.
While America never evolved into a welfare state like many of our European allies, through food stamps and other nutrition programs, we were able to hold the line on the lowest common political denominator: that in the midst of abundance no one should starve. As the poor balanced precariously on the knife edge of poverty, the food stamp program helped to prevent people from falling into the abyss of unfettered capitalism. And it did so not by giving the poor cash to spend as they chose but through vouchers redeemable for food at grocery stores. In the process, the food stamp program also created a powerful ally in the food industry, for which these benefits came to comprise a significant portion of their sales. This partnership became a double-edged sword, protecting the program during times of crisis, while strengthening an industry heavily reliant on worker and environmental exploitation.
By the 1980s, much of the progress made in previous decades was under challenge. Ronald Reagan threw one million people off the food stamp program rolls, reviving the Calvinist trope that the poor were lazy, scamming, and otherwise undeserving of public aid. Globalization led to stagnating wages, faltering labor unions, and disappearing manufacturing jobs. In response, the anti-hunger sector — comprising advocacy organizations, churches, food banks, and other community-based groups — responded predictably to meet the food need through expanding food charity exponentially. In subsequent decades, as the Clinton Administration’s welfare reform legislation arguably further drove the expansion of the charitable sector, the anti-hunger sector also sought to increase benefits and remove barriers to participation in the food stamp program.
However, what the anti-hunger community largely failed to do was to develop an analysis of the underlying causes of the crisis and the long-term alliances to build power. In other words, anti-hunger groups could have mobilized their community to increase wages, facilitate unionizing, or regulations that would limit businesses’ ability to offshore jobs. Instead, they focused on food provisioning and bolstering nutrition assistance programs. And they partnered with corporate America, which donated food and money, served on their boards of directors, and lobbied together. In essence, the anti-hunger community had triangulated, positioning itself as neither on the right nor the left but as a morally-centered and centrist sector.
As a result of their efforts — which were compounded by the desperation of the Great Recession and the Covid-19 crisis — the food stamp program (now known as SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program) participation swelled to some 42 million persons. SNAP evolved into a work support program, subsidizing low-wage employment, with over three-quarters of SNAP households having at least one employed adult.
Fast forward to November 2025, when the administration had been fighting tooth and nail not to fund SNAP during the government shutdown. But the conventional wisdom among the media explaining this resistance has been incomplete.
First, the press highlighted the cruel and callous nature of the administration, given that the immorality of hunger amidst abundance no longer motivates policy. The media pointed out MAGA’s belief in a dog-eat-dog world, bifurcated into winners and losers. These beliefs are the “roid rage” version of the Reagan-era meme of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen.
Second, the media called out the administration for using the poor as pawns in the political battle over the government shutdown. They interpreted the administration’s actions to be of a more tactical nature — that is, as leverage to defeat the Democratic Party in the shutdown battle (which was arguably successful).
While both of these observations hold much water, they are missing additional context. Consider the following:
- Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” threatens the integrity of the SNAP program, forcing states to shoulder more of the costs, reducing future potential benefit increases, and tightening exemptions for work restrictions. According to the Food Research and Action Center, these changes will “increase hunger, push more families into deep poverty, and shift costs onto already strained state budgets.”
- The Administration ended $1 billion of food donations to schools and food banks through the termination of the Local Food Purchasing Act.
- USDA cancelled the purchase of $500 million of surplus foods, known as bonus commodities, for food banks. For decades, these commodities had been purchased to stabilize farming sectors and distributed to charitable organizations.
- In the international realm, the elimination of USAID and $128 million of food aid annually will “threaten decades of progress in reversing malnutrition.”
- Last month, the USDA announced it would no longer issue its annual report on the state of food insecurity, despite having done so since 1995. This report has been widely touted by academics as the gold standard in measuring hunger, and has been deployed by numerous other countries.
When viewed together, these actions certainly highlight an administration and political movement devoid of a moral compass on the matter of food insecurity. Yet, if we consider these shifts in conjunction with their other policies — such as ending collective bargaining for federal employee unions, restricting minimum wage in federal contracts and for certain workers, and virtually dismantling the National Labor Relations Board — it becomes evident that Trump’s pro-hunger policies are part and parcel of a decades-long shift in the balance of power to from labor to capital, harking back to at least the 1980s. Profoundly, Trump’s policies reflect a desire to reverse the social gains of the progressive and civil rights movements of the 20th Century.
In economic terms, anti-hunger programs such as SNAP, school meals, or food banking (which only provides one-ninth of the food of the SNAP program) have a complex relationship to wages. When benefits are tied to work requirements, these programs, along with Medicaid, enable businesses to avoid paying fair wages and provide health insurance, bolstering corporate profits. On the other hand, robust social assistance can drive up pressure to increase the minimum wage, as stronger safety nets theoretically keep more people, such as single mothers, out of the labor force (hence the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tightening of work requirements).
So, what’s Trump’s endgame for nutrition programs? He appears to be at odds with much of the American public, which does not buy into the cruelty of driving more people to desperation. Certainly, hunger has become a political football, highlighting his transactional nature. He appears to hold the erroneous but commonly held belief that the recipients of nutrition assistance are people of color, and if they’re not going to vote for him, then why should he help them?
Yet, to understand the deeper threat to this country, we also need to see the patterns behind his polices for what they are: an assault on progressive policies that reduce inequality, all as a means of shifting the balance of power even further towards plutocracy. Trump’s policies are not new; they follow the same neoliberal logic of the past 45 years, which has led to the rise of food banks. What is new is the brazen disregard for the poor, the callousness, and the disregard for the immorality of hunger. The veneer of care has been stripped off, the soft power of food aid trashed in favor of naked political gain.
This pro-hunger, pro-suffering movement will only be defeated when we build a mass movement — one that empowers the anti-hunger community to mobilize its tens of millions of donors and recipients, not to retreat into Bush’s “kinder gentler nation,” but to demand a new America defined by an equitable distribution of wealth.
This story was reprinted with permission from The MIT Press Reader. It was written by Andrew Fisher, the author of “Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups.”
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Trump Is Making Older Americans Unsafe, and He Doesn't Care
When before has a president been so personally and negatively intrusive in the lives of seniors?
Nov 13, 2025
Aging, like time, ticks on, day by hour by day. Then, suddenly, it’s there, mocking our inability to sweep aside, should we even want to, this iron curtain. For seniors, the concept of time itself differs from that of younger people, because the future is in the everyday.
But aging in a Trumpian world brings fear and destruction as strand by strand of the safety net is plucked away until it’s shredded. And Donald Trump doesn’t care.
Seniors make up an ever larger American demographic that’s being made ever more unsafe in the richest country in the world. Social Security, healthcare, even access to food, not to speak of general well-being are all under threat. Trump doesn’t care.
The President’s Heavy Hand
Social Security is a return on what workers have paid into the federal government over many years. The recent fright about Social Security offices closing or seniors having to prove they’re eligible (or that they even exist) in order to continue receiving what workers 62 and over are owed is not only demeaning and insulting but also saps confidence, threatens well-being, and challenges life in America as we’ve known it. And count on one thing: Trump doesn’t care.
An aging society now under siege should be everyone’s problem since (if we’re lucky) we all get old.
The Social Security Department is run extremely efficiently and had no need for Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and crew remaking it. Less than one penny of every dollar it gets is spent on its administration, while the other 99 cents come back in benefits.
Social Security has been called a crucial guardrail against government change, a rail that, unfortunately, seems to be weakening, month by month, in the second era of Donald Trump amid changes so thoughtless that they take one’s breath away. For example, some Social Security offices are now being closed, ensuring that many elderly or infirm people who are housebound will no longer be able to reach them by phone to register to receive their checks. Yes, cruelty before our very eyes. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has insisted that we must defend this lifesaving program, which lifts 27 million Americans out of poverty each year.
In recent weeks, President Trump has announced an end to the issuing of the paper Social Security checks that now arrive by mail, rather than being deposited directly into a bank account. Doesn’t he know that it’s the oldest, sickest, and poorest among us who may not have a bank account, or be able to get to a bank, or make the change via computer, or who—yes!—may not even have a computer? Of course, Trump doesn’t care.
Health Care in Danger
Worse yet, Americans face drastic cuts to an entire healthcare system: Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).
Congress was until recently shut down thanks to the opposition of the Democrats to a bill that contains huge cuts to Medicaid and doesn’t extend subsidies for Obamacare. Such cuts, if carried out, will affect millions of seniors and result in the closing of nursing homes and clinics, especially in rural areas and inner cities. If that bill were to pass into law, millions of people would lose a substantial part of their healthcare, with the most damaging and profound effects felt by an aging population.
It’s no secret that seniors have more healthcare problems than younger people. In an aging population, health and wellness are spiraling situations filled with sudden problems like falls, or slowly developing problems like arthritis and osteoarthritis, or simply the endless strain on worn-out joints and ligaments. Cancer, too, is more prevalent in people over 65.
Women, in particular, would feel the pain of such cuts, were they to happen.
Women use the healthcare system more than men do. Recently, Ms Magazine pointed out that women make up the majority of Medicaid recipients, both because they’re more likely to be caregivers and because they’re more likely to need long-term care as they age.
Veterans who fought in the Vietnam War of the last century and the Gulf wars of this century are also in that aging demographic. And like all aging bodies, theirs will register more health needs as the Trump administration cuts the Department of Veteran Affairs and VA hospital staff whose numbers have fallen every month since Trump was inaugurated a second time.
How all of this will affect or damage individual mental health is still being discovered. As a start, however, sickness, hunger, and the lack of enough money for emergencies can result in depression, fear, and far worse. And right now, sadly enough, the heavy hand of the Trump administration continues to press down on the general well-being of seniors (especially those on disability).
Unprotecting Seniors
Clearly, the Trump administration is more interested in self-care than senior care. Why else enact a bill to remove earned healthcare protections that have long been the expected staples of an aging life? When before has a president been so personally and negatively intrusive in the lives of seniors?
Food insecurity is now a fact of life in an aging demographic where nutrition is synonymous with health and longevity, in short with life or death. Though nutrition is necessary for young and old alike, it’s a must for the aging body. Yet food insecurity is now being experienced by millions of seniors, a future threat that has become a present reality.
I’ve written of hunger before, what it feels like to be a poor child growing up. Now, the question must be asked again in a different context: What does it feel like to be old and hungry? Trump doesn’t care.
At a time when the cost of living for essentials—food, rent, and healthcare—continues to rise, the dependence of seniors on the government’s care for the safety net is being whittled away.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP (think food stamps), is having its funds cut drastically. Until recently, SNAP provided significant amounts of food for poor families, though it was never quite enough. Supplies of food from farms and elsewhere that help stock rural as well as inner-city food banks have also decreased due to cuts in funds, including for food banks run by state, city, and church organizations.
Presently 4.8 million seniors 60 and older receive food via SNAP. However, it’s estimated that many more eligible seniors are not receiving food help. Attention must be paid: Seniors do not have enough to eat and—dare I repeat this in the richest country in the world?—Trump doesn’t care, but we must.
Past administrations have opted for less government but without tearing away as much of the safety net as the Trump administration continues to do. His cuts are careless, dangerous, and done without either significant thought or understanding. An aging society now under siege should be everyone’s problem since (if we’re lucky) we all get old.
Recently in Great Britain huge numbers of the elderly turned out en masse to shout ENOUGH, give us what we need, what we’ve earned, so that we can live with food, shelter, and our earned rest after years of work. Isn’t it time for elderly Americans, too, to turn out en masse to shout out our anger, dismay, and refusal to be placed in such a dangerous situation?
Project 2025, Russell Vought’s project to reshape the government in a second Trump presidency (about which Trump swore, during the election campaign, that he knew nothing) chronicled well ahead of time all that he and his administration are now doing to the detriment of us all, but especially to seniors. The Trumpian version of the invocation that we should all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in no way takes into account the millions of people who have no boots with straps to pull up.
It’s also important to emphasize that all of this is happening in the richest country in the world, one that spends tens of millions of dollars to build a single jet fighter plane, and yet is now cutting funds to programs that help people get enough to eat. Our fury needs to be demonstrated.
The destruction being visited on an aging demographic doesn’t discriminate. It includes many seniors who wear MAGA caps, too. (Perhaps Trump doesn’t care about them either.) We can only hope that their support for a president determined to offer them so little and take away so much will diminish.
At a time when the cost of living for essentials—food, rent, and healthcare—continues to rise, the dependence of seniors on the government’s care for the safety net is being whittled away. Trying to keep the heat and electricity going, the water running, and food on the table is hard enough on a fixed income without having to worry about what President Trump and his Project 2025 cronies plan to take away from us next.
So many of today’s seniors have been workers, activists, parents, and more, all of which has contributed to the well-being of this country, and they have earned care and rest, as well as access to enough food, healthcare, and shelter to get by in a reasonably comfortable fashion. Trump doesn’t care.
Yes, people of all ages feel the heavy hand of the Trump administration in their lives, but the elderly, the sick, and the poor feel it the most, especially those living on fixed incomes.
Our Rights, Our Dignity
Seniors must insist on their rights and respect for their dignity—and not only to each other but out on the streets of this country, supported by Americans of all ages. After all, seniors are someone’s grandparent, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin, neighbor, or friend.
Because anger at having needs refused, especially as you get older, eats away at your body and soul, expressing it is not only healthy but allows us to feel less alone and more empowered. The millions of us who went onto the streets on No Kings Day to say no to what this administration is doing demonstrated the power of numbers, which is not a small thing. In that context, taking senior fury to the streets, with the participation of younger people, couldn’t be more significant when it comes to publicizing the importance of our needs being met. To remain quiet, to “take it” (so to speak) will only help the Trump administration hide the devastation now being visited upon us.
At 79 years old, Donald Trump has all his health, wellness, and food needs taken care of. His life is the assured good life, with hours of rest at his golf clubs. We seniors need to disturb that rest.
Here are some of the worries being expressed daily by seniors:
If my Social Security check doesn’t arrive on time or the funds are mysteriously cut, how will I survive?
If Medicaid is cut, how will I be able to get cataract surgery, or hernia surgery, or steroid injections for my pain?
Without Medicaid, how will I afford an ambulance to get to a hospital in an emergency?
Will lack of funds close my food bank?
And those are just a sampling of the daily worries impeding the earned rest of us seniors.
Statistics: Cold numbers can tell a truth but still do not accurately represent the stress that cutting funds will cause. Follow the dots from those cuts to a small house in the rural south, a cold apartment in an urban high rise, or the “gray wave” of homeless seniors sleeping on the streets, and it’s there you can see such statistics in action, taking the form of worry, illness, hunger, and insecurity. And all of that is happening as Trump permits millions of dollars to be spent on upgrading and furnishing a gift plane from Qatar. Again: In the richest country on earth, how can we allow such treatment to go on without raising our voices? We can’t. We mustn’t.
At 79 years old, Donald Trump has all his health, wellness, and food needs taken care of. His life is the assured good life, with hours of rest at his golf clubs. We seniors need to disturb that rest, become the thorn in his side. We must loudly proclaim our right to feel safe, to be free from hunger and assured of our healthcare and shelter.
Trump rules by fear, the use of which keeps many of us from demonstrating our outrage publicly. Hopefully, seniors who have already lived long and experienced so much won’t be silenced by such fear. We have a collective voice. Numbers matter on the streets and at the ballot box, at town halls and in the hallways of Congress. Along with younger generations who will one day be seniors themselves, it’s time for us to shout NO to all the ways senior needs are now being undermined and ignored. How dare Trump tarnish our golden years!
Unfortunately, an entire society, both young and old, is today experiencing an authoritarian threat to our lives. The insecurity it produces has shaken the very foundations of our American world and so makes it difficult for an aging population to hold on, to remain steady. Yet seniors are the very people who have helped to build this country in ways too numerous to list.
The present leadership protects its power instead of its people. In particular, the Trump administration threatens Black and brown seniors in shameful, racist ways. History has shown that what’s now called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has long been part of the backbone of a thriving society. Among other things, Trump’s indiscriminate actions against immigrants are beyond immoral and reach into the homes of seniors, too. (Where does he think his grandparents, his mother, and two of his wives came from?)
As long as voices are raised, anger shared, and street corners filled with demonstrators, hope remains. Throughout history wrongs have been righted by significant numbers of people of all ages refusing to comply. Now is the time to do what history has taught us or, like a dropped ball of yarn, this society will spool too far away to retrieve.
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While Trump Posts Marble Bathrooms, Americans Go Hungry
Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.
Nov 08, 2025
I know what it means to be starved by those in power. As a little girl, if not for my grandparents' ancient walnut tree that fed us, and not for my grandma’s beloved chickens who laid eggs and now and then were a very special Sunday soup, if not for my sister—just a few years older than me—standing in line at dawn to fight adults for bread, I would have been significantly malnourished. I would watch my sister come home exhausted from those pre-dawn battles with full-grown adults, clutching a loaf of bread that meant we might be a little less hungry than we were the day before.
I never thought I'd see that kind of chosen starvation—the kind that Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for—in America. I was wrong.
Trump is Choosing to Starve Americans
On November 3, day 33 of a government shutdown, President Donald Trump's administration said it would provide only partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp benefits for November. This has a devastating impact on millions of Americans. And, this is after two federal judges ordered the administration to tap into emergency funds to cover food assistance. What’s worse is this partial aid Trump is willing to concede to give might not reach these families for months.
And what was Trump doing as families wondered how they'd feed their children? Posting 24 photos on social media of his newly renovated Lincoln Bedroom bathroom—covered floor to ceiling in black and white marble with (surprise, surprise) gold fixtures—as he headed to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend. He has already golfed multiple times during this shutdown and traveled internationally, something other presidents would have refused in order to focus on ending the shutdown that is devastating the country. Millions are unsure about what they’ll eat tonight, and Trump posts about the luxury renovations and packs his golf clubs while the government remains shut down.
Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We're watching. And we're remembering.
Ceauşescu was similarly fond of gold and glitz while the people starved. Like this Romanian dictator, Trump is demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House to build an over $300 million ballroom, removing commemorative magnolia trees planted in the 1940s for Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to White House aides, Trump spends hours obsessing over marble choices and column styles, even fidgeting with 3D-printed models of the ballroom during tense moments. Watch me, he seems to say. Watch me build monuments to myself while you starve.
Ceauşescu built his lavish palaces that included a golden bathroom with gold plated fixtures while my sister, a child, stood in line to fight for a half a loaf of bread to feed her family. Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.
The Policy Behind the Cruelty
Yes, by now we know full well, the cruelty is the point, it's policy. The "big beautiful bill" Republicans passed earlier this year delivers massive tax breaks to the ultra wealthy: Starting in 2029, those making $30,000 or less would see a tax increase, while the top 0.1% would receive an average $309,000 tax cut annually, more than three times what a typical American household earns in an entire year. Sixty percent of the tax cuts go to the top 20% of earners, while the bill is coupled with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that leave low-income Americans worse off on net.
The bill kicks more than 15 million people off health insurance, makes the largest cuts to nutrition assistance in history, and makes higher education less affordable. Congressional Budget Office analysis shows this bill adds over $4 trillion to the national debt while worsening inequality.
Masked Agents, Militarized Enforcement
Meanwhile, billions of dollars are being poured into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, with masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles conducting workplace sweeps and detaining our neighbors outside courthouses, with more than 75% of those booked into ICE custody in fiscal year 2025 having no criminal conviction other than immigration or traffic-related offenses. Trump is choosing to continue to fund, and even increase the funding, for the modern-day Gestapo, ensuring masked ICE agents can continue to brutalize our communities. But we do not have to look at other places to understand what is happening before our eyes. In the 1850s in the United States, the federal government enforced a policy to hunt down and “return” what the government dubbed to be “fugitive slaves,” people who were formerly and brutally enslaved and who had escaped captivity to flee north. No, we do not have to look at Nazi Germany to understand what ICE is doing, we have to look at our own history.
All of us Americans, who love our neighbors, who care for our families, who love our cities and our country, should see Trump for who he is. He is making a choice. This is a choice about who gets to have resources and who gets to suffer. This is about billionaires running the government and watching the people who actually make this country run—the workers, the families, the communities—go hungry while they build their ballrooms.
When the wealthy choose to watch their neighbors starve, when they fund masked agents to terrorize communities while slashing food assistance, this isn't leadership. This is corruption masquerading as governance. Ceauşescu did it. Now Trump is doing it. Sending social media messages from his golden toilet while we the people go hungry.
The Walnut Tree Didn't Ask Permission
They want us to be too hungry, too tired, too scared to fight back. They want us watching marble-bathroom reveals while we worry about our own children's empty stomachs.
We won't give them that satisfaction.
Every community that's ever survived oppression has known this truth: We have to take care of our beloved communities. You share what you have. You build networks of care that the powerful can't dismantle because they're not built on their permission.
Start a community fridge in your neighborhood, like many of us did during the pandemic. Organize a weekly soup kitchen. Form a food co-op. Create a network of families who share meals and resources. This is how we survive, this is how we resist.
And then, fed and strong, we organize politically. We vote out every representative who voted to starve their constituents to feed the rich. We primary the ones who won't fight. We run our own people, people who remember what it's like to be hungry, to watch your sister fight for bread, to rely on a grandparent's walnut tree.
Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We're watching. And we're remembering. Every marble tile laid while children went hungry. Every gold fixture installed while families lost food assistance. Every historic symbol of American’s greatness lying in rubble while more Americans lost access to healthcare.
But we're not just watching. We need to be building too. Building the mutual aid networks, the political power, the community resilience that will outlast any administration's cruelty.
The walnut tree that saved my life didn't ask permission to grow. Neither will we.
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