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'Heartless and Cruel': New Trump Rule Would Take Food Aid From More Than 6 Million People
"The Trump administration is doubling down on making it harder for people to feed their families, after already enacting the deepest cuts to SNAP in history."
Nov 11, 2026
The Trump administration on Tuesday rolled out a proposed rule that would further restrict access to the United States' largest and most effective anti-hunger program, taking benefits from more than 6 million people—including many children—as grocery prices continue to rise and food bank demand surges nationwide.
The US Department of Agriculture's proposal, published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, targets a policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE), which allows states to deem recipients of other federal benefits eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Experts say the policy reduces administrative burdens for states and individuals by streamlining the SNAP application process.
Under the new rule, households with annual gross incomes above 130 percent of the poverty line—roughly $35,500 per year for a family of three—would lose SNAP benefits, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a liberal think tank.
"In the midterm elections, the public indicated they want their elected officials to focus on making life affordable. Yet the Trump administration is doubling down on making it harder for people to feed their families, after already enacting the deepest cuts to SNAP in history," said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at CBPP. "These attacks are part of the administration’s broader policy agenda that has raised costs and made it harder for working families to afford their basic needs, all to partially pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts heavily weighted to the wealthy and fund its extreme and aggressive immigration detention apparatus."
According to the Trump administration's own analysis, the proposed rule would strip SNAP benefits from 3.2 million households—or around 6.3 million individuals—in fiscal year 2029, the first year the rule would take full effect. The USDA's proposal is open to public comment for just 30 days.
The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) warned in a statement Tuesday that the impact of the rule "could be far worse" than the administration's projection, pointing to the disastrous and ongoing effects of SNAP cuts enacted under the 2025 Trump-GOP budget law. An estimated 5.5 million people—including roughly 1.5 million children—have lost SNAP benefits since the budget law's enactment, an outcome that Trump administration officials have celebrated.
Condemning the new proposal as "unconscionable," FRAC warned the rule's impacts would extend beyond the SNAP program, including by reducing access to free school meals, "making children hungry at home and at school."
"Children who lose SNAP are no longer automatically eligible for free school meals. Some would no longer be eligible for free school meals; others would be at risk of falling through the cracks when they go through the school meal application process," the group said. "The proposed rule would also negatively affect babies and toddlers, and pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding parents who are automatically income eligible for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), because they participate in SNAP. This rule would make it more difficult for households that lose SNAP to apply for WIC. Losing both SNAP and WIC would harm hundreds of thousands of infants and young children during their initial stages of development."
BBCE has long been a target of right-wing policy architects and Republican lawmakers. Project 2025, the policy blueprint released by the conservative Heritage Foundation, called for reforming the policy.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, condemned the USDA's proposal as "heartless and cruel," warning it would make it harder for families "to meet basic needs" and undercut states' efforts to "streamline federal programs."
"SNAP is a highly effective and efficient program when it is allowed to work as designed," said Craig. "Unfortunately, the Trump administration and the outgoing Republican majority in Congress have undermined the program’s integrity at every turn, harming millions of vulnerable Americans in the process."
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House Dems Press Trump USDA Over Aid Cuts as Seniors 'Struggle to Put Food on the Table'
"No senior should have to choose between putting food on the table, paying rent, or affording lifesaving medication."
Oct 27, 2026
A group of almost 20 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday pressed US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to explain the adverse effects of President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act on older Americans, including the administration's plan to eliminate a program serving nearly 700,000 low-income seniors and expanded food stamp work requirements.
"At a time when Americans continue to face elevated grocery costs, Washington Republicans enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will reduce federal [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] spending by approximately $187 billion through 2034," 18 House Democrats led by Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to Rollins.
"The law expanded SNAP’s three-month time limit and associated work requirements to certain adults ages 55 through 64, restricted states’ ability to obtain geographic waivers from those requirements, and made additional changes to state cost-sharing requirements expected to reduce SNAP participation and benefits," the letter continues.
"These cuts come as the same law provides substantial tax benefits that will help disproportionately benefit the rich, with CBO finding that the law will decrease resources available to households towards the bottom of the income distribution while increasing resources for households toward the top," the lawmakers noted.
The letter decries Trump's stated goal of eliminating the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which the lawmakers described as "the most extensive hunger-relief federal program for seniors and services to nearly 700,000 low-income seniors across the nation."
"The administration justified the elimination of this crucial program by focusing 'on supporting seniors through the SNAP program' as they passed a law to make SNAP more inaccessible for seniors," the letter laments. "Congress has been responsible for keeping the CSFP fully funded and maintained while the administration continues to threaten this critical federal food assistance program."
"Even so, as Americans—particularly seniors—struggle to put food on the table, you have failed to meet the urgency of this affordability crisis, even as the department you lead reports that food prices have climbed another 3% in the past year," the Democrats added.
The letter requests state-by-state figures showing how many adults ages 55 to 64 have lost or suffered reductions in SNAP benefits because of expanded work requirements, as well as how many have received exemptions. The lawmakers are also seeking data regarding the health and financial consequences of eliminating the CSFP and how the administration would ensure seniors retain access to nutritious food. The legislators requested a written response from Rollins' office by November 6.
"You have failed to meet the urgency of this affordability crisis."
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), approximately 5.5 million people, including roughly 2 million children, have lost SNAP assistance since Trump signed the OBBBA in July 2025. This, despite more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—living in food-insecure households.
Seniors are experiencing their own unique set of hardships, given that many of them have limited resources.
"Many seniors rely heavily on fixed or limited incomes from Social Security, retirement savings, and pensions, leaving them particularly vulnerable as the cost of living continues to rise," the letter states, adding that "rather than protect older and low-income Americans from rising costs, you and the Trump administration continue to pursue policies that threaten to make it harder for them to afford basic necessities."
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'Hunger Disaster Unrolling Before Our Eyes': Alarm Grows Over Trump Food Aid Evisceration
“SNAP participation is falling because the Trump administration has intentionally kicked people off of the program—leaving Americans hungry and still struggling to afford food,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Oct 23, 2026
An analysis published Thursday showed that millions of Americans have lost critical food assistance since President Donald Trump signed last year's massive Republican tax giveaway for the superrich, with soaring grocery prices and cuts to school meals exacerbating the crisis.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), approximately 5.5 million people, including roughly 2 million children, have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) assistance since Trump signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025.
The legislation approved the deepest cuts to SNAP—also known as food stamps—and Medicaid in those programs' histories while slashing billions of dollars from other essential social programs to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
This, at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 US children—are living in food-insecure households.
The 5.5 million people who have lost SNAP represent 13% of the program's recipients, according to CBPP. The decline is far below projections made by the Congressional Budget Office.
"The declines are especially pronounced in some states," the report noted. "SNAP participation fell in Arizona by nearly 51%... The caseload declines are 20% or more in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oklahoma, and—using more recent state data—in Indiana, Kansas, and Texas."
In absolute numbers, Texas saw the biggest loss of SNAP recipients, with 709,435 fewer enrollees. Florida lost 665,935 SNAP enrollees, while Arizona had 408,204 fewer and California lost 333,062.
The CBPP report follows an analysis released Tuesday by Unrig Our Economy and Americans for Tax Fairness that showed how Latino SNAP recipients have been disproportionately affected by food stamp cuts. The groups estimated that 1.5 million Latinos have been kicked off SNAP since Trump signed the OBBBA, with Texas (396,164) and Arizona (200,124) hardest-hit.
More cuts are highly likely, as "starting in October 2027, most states will have to pay between 5-15% of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states," according to CBPP.
"The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates incentivized states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it meant delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people," the analysis warns.
The OBBBA's SNAP cuts, combined with stricter eligibility requirements, have forced schools across the country to scale back universal free meal programs amid declining federal reimbursements.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that school districts are experiencing ballooning unpaid lunch bills and struggling to ensure children are fed. In rural Indiana, one district’s share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals plunged from 66% to 44% in a year, while its lunch debt has already reached $10,000. In San Antonio, Texas, the number of schools offering free meals to every student under a federal program fell from 48 to 16. Nationwide, the average number of children receiving free school lunches dropped by 600,000 between fiscal years 2025 and 2026.
Making matters worse, many eligible immigrants are not applying for SNAP benefits out of fear it could affect their citizenship prospects.
Food banks and other charities are having to meet needs the government once addressed.
“It’s been getting out of control since last year,” Paco Vélez, president and chief executive of the Feeding South Florida food bank, told the Post. “It’s all created a situation where families are needing more and more assistance.”
The CBPP and Post reports came on the same day as a "Food Misery Index," published by the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), offered a detailed view of how the combined impact of SNAP cuts and skyrocketing grocery prices—exacerbated by Trump policies including tariffs, the deadly immigration crackdown, and the illegal war of choice on Iran—"has stripped more than $22 billion from American families since July 2025."
“SNAP participation is falling because the Trump administration has intentionally kicked people off of the program—leaving Americans hungry and still struggling to afford food,” Warren wrote Wednesday in a letter to US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“Instead of reaching for tools to mitigate these threats to families and working to bring down costs, the administration continues to sit idly by, peddling false narratives about the drop in SNAP participation, while delivering a one-two punch to American families who are struggling to put food on their tables," the senator continued.
"With grocery prices and food insecurity on the rise," Warren added, "I urge the administration to work with Congress to immediately reverse its harmful cuts to SNAP."
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'Let Them Eat Cake': How Trump Family Pocketed Nearly $3 Billion While Millions of Americans Lost Food Aid
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families," said the co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition. "Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business."
Oct 15, 2026
A report released Thursday details how the family of President Donald Trump "pocketed more than $2.9 billion"—including "in cash and gifts from crypto ventures, legal settlements, a luxury jet from a foreign government, and corporate deals"—while Republican cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program left millions of Americans without critical food aid.
The report, "Let Them Eat Cake: Cost of Corruption," was published by the Not Above the Law Coalition—a group of more than 150 advocacy organizations mobilized against the Trump administration's corruption—and cites data from the Center for American Progress revealing over $2.9 billion in cash and gifts received by the Trump family since the 2024 election.
The bulk of that amount—more than $2.4 billion—comes from the cryptocurrency industry. Trump has boasted about how his administration won't investigate alleged crypto-related crimes.
Not only has Trump embraced crypto deregulation, he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023. Binance has provided critical support for World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture enriching the Trump family.
"The Trump family cashed in on the presidency while American families paid the price," Not Above the Law said in a statement. "Over the same period, Trump signed a budget law that cut almost $187 billion from SNAP, leaving 5.2 million fewer people with help buying groceries."
That law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ushered in the biggest cuts to both SNAP and Medicaid in those programs' histories.
According to the report, "The Trump family's take alone could cover a full year of groceries for about 1.3 million people on SNAP."
"At the same time, Trump's pardons let wealthy allies and fraudsters walk away from nearly $1.7 billion owed to victims and taxpayers," the publication adds.
Not Above the Law noted that "foreign money flowed straight to the [Trump] family" via an investment vehicle controlled by the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser, who "put $500 million into World Liberty Financial, and the administration soon cleared advanced [artificial intelligence] chip exports to the UAE."
The report highlights that "Trump also accepted a roughly $400 million luxury jet from Qatar."
Not Above the Law said that, in addition to groceries for 1.3 million people for a year, the $2.9 billion could buy "more than 600 million free school lunches, or three months of groceries for the 5.2 million people who lost SNAP benefits."
In addition to the nearly $3 billion the report says Trump's family pocketed, the coalition noted "companies backed by Trump's sons have collected $3.2 billion in federal funds, including a fast-tracked $620 million Pentagon loan" to a business in which Donald Trump Jr. invested.
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families. Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business," said Lisa Gilbert, Not Above the Law co-chair and co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "While the Trumps collected nearly $3 billion from crypto schemes, foreign governments, and corporations seeking favors, millions of Americans lost help putting food on the table. Congress must stop the self-dealing and hold this administration accountable."
The new analysis follows a report published earlier this year by a group of Democratic US senators accusing the president and his family of turning “the power of the presidency into eye-popping profits,” with Trump increasing his personal net worth by more than $2 billion during his second term alone, according to official disclosures.
Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported on companies and billionaire CEOs who donated a combined $333 million to Trump’s White House ballroom project, as well as previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon, government contracts, and at least one closed federal investigation.
"This is what corruption is all about," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the Post report. "We don’t want a government of, by, and for the billionaire class. FIGHT BACK."
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'A Devastating Gut Punch': New Trump-GOP Cuts to Food Aid Take Effect Amid High Grocery Prices
"This is a plan to wreck state SNAP programs and push millions off of SNAP and into hunger."
Oct 05, 2026
The Republican budget package that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer included a change requiring states to fund a larger portion of the costs of administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to tens of millions of Americans.
That change, which advocates and experts warned would impose unsustainable burdens on some states and potentially result in more cuts to food aid, took effect late last week, amid a nationwide affordability crisis that has forced many Americans to turn to food banks and other sources of support to meet their families' needs.
Katie Bergh, a food policy expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), explained that—under the Trump-GOP budget law—"every state now gets half as many federal dollars to ensure SNAP gets to eligible families on time and in the right amount."
"Some states didn't increase state funding to make up for this federal funding cut, which could lead to staff shortages, backlogs, and low-income families waiting months for help," Bergh warned. "Other states and counties are weighing property tax increases or cuts to other services to fill the gap."
CBPP has estimated that more than 5 million people, including more than a million children, have lost SNAP since Trump signed the Republican budget measure into law last year.
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) condemned the newly implemented SNAP changes in a statement, noting that Trump and the Republican Party have created new work requirements—and thus new bureaucratic burdens for states and aid recipients—while also slashing administrative funding, a potentially disastrous combination.
"It’s a devastating gut punch and it’s intentional," said Brown. "This is a plan to wreck state SNAP programs and push millions off of SNAP and into hunger."
The Food Research & Action Center estimated in a recent analysis that the new cost burden for states "ranges from $3 million in Wyoming to $168 million in New York."
"States are being asked to administer a more complicated program with fewer federal resources. That is not an efficiency strategy. It is a fiscal transfer," the group said. "Ultimately, this policy does not simply affect state agencies. It affects every family waiting for an application to be processed, every community experiencing rising food insecurity, and every state budget attempting to balance growing needs with fewer available resources."
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US Food Banks Under Strain as Trump Policies Drive Up Costs
"It’s really hard for people in the United States to understand the scale of hunger."
Sep 28, 2026
Two of President Donald Trump's signature policies—the illegal war with Iran and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—are putting pressure on food banks throughout the country in the form of higher demand from clients and increased shipping costs.
In a Sunday report from Meidas News, reporter Scott MacFarlane published interviews with several food bank officials who said the increased cost of energy caused by Trump's Iran War has strained their ability to serve their communities.
From a demand side, more families have been relying on food banks because the increased cost of gasoline has left them with less money to spend at the grocery store.
And from a supply perspective, record-high diesel prices have hurt food banks' budgets by increasing transportation costs for staple items.
Craig Rice, chief executive officer at the Manna Food Center in Maryland, told MacFarlane that his organization is "seeing so many people come to us, who’ve never come to [the food bank] before."
"It used to be people who were working hourly-wage jobs," Rice added. "Now we see people who are salary employees. They may have been stable at one price, but suddenly they’re impacted by gas prices."
Amy Beros, president of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, similarly told MacFarlane that organizations in her region have seen demand for food services increase by between "20% to 60%" over the last year.
"It’s really hard for people in the United States to understand the scale of hunger," Beros said, "because it doesn’t look like it looks on TV."
The strain on food banks isn't just limited to one state or region.
Greta Faworski, associate director of Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes, said in an interview published Monday with Michigan advance that she's seen a 56% increase in people who are reaching out to her organization for help.
Faworski said the recent surge in demand was akin to what she saw last year during a nationwide delay in SNAP benefits in the wake of a federal government shutdown.
"On an average day, we serve about 800 people a day," explained Faworski. "When there was notification because of the government shutdown that November SNAP benefits would not be released on time, in one week, we saw an increase to where we were serving 1,200 people a day."
The problem is expected to grow more acute because state governments starting next month will have to pay for a largest share of SNAP administrative costs due to provisions in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
A report published last week by Spectrum News 13 put a spotlight on how surging diesel costs are squeezing food banks in central Florida.
Greg Higgerson, chief development officer for Second Harvest Food Bank, told Spectrum News 13 that his organization's fuel bill is "somwhere around $15,00 per month," which he said was "up significantly from this time last year."
And like food banks elsewhere in the US, Higgerson said, the Second Harvest Food Bank is being forced to pay higher costs as demand for its services is going up.
“It’s going to be harder to make ends meet in the next few months,” Higgerson said. “There’s going to be more people. We know that, we see it already, and it’s going to cost more to help those folks.”
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Working People Are Fighting Back, Because That's What We Do
We need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
Sep 07, 2026
My mom worked harder than anyone I know. She wanted a good life for us. It was a hard life—I remember the Christmas she had to pawn our gifts to pay the light bill—but she made it special for us.
Now I have two kids of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that other children have.
The landscape is tough out there. Like many Americans, I can’t afford childcare, and finding work that accommodates my need to care for my young children is hard. With inflation, the little income I have doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.
I’m grateful to have assistance with food, housing, and healthcare through our social safety net programs.
Food programs like SNAP (also known as “food stamps”) and WIC (that’s the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have literally saved our lives when we’ve been hungry. I wouldn’t be able to feed my children without them. And thanks to Medicaid, we have healthcare.
But I’m sick with worry about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that are barreling my way. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed these programs last year so lawmakers could slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and some of the worst cuts will take place after this year’s midterms.
The uncertainty is causing so much stress. The first change I noticed is they cut off my eyeglasses subsidy. What’s next? Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up and up, outpacing wage gains for me and countless others. Our SNAP benefits cover much less than they did a year ago, and that’s before potential cuts take effect.
I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to drop on me and my kids, and I’m not the only one.
“The average minimum-wage worker must work nearly 116 hours per week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. That’s the truth—my own sister works three jobs and still has to live with roommates.
Lawmakers are telling us we can’t have healthcare now unless we work, even in areas with low wages. Yet those making the laws enjoy free government-socialized healthcare and high wages.
They say SNAP benefits can’t be used for a cake or soda for my child’s birthday. Yet no one would stop the wealthy from using their $1 trillion in tax cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill” to buy their kid a yacht.
Poor and low-income people deserve to be happy too. We deserve healthcare, food, housing, and even a child’s small birthday party. It feels like we’re being punished for working regular jobs—and like lawmakers want to keep us down so we don’t fight back against this inequality.
But we are fighting back.
I’ve started attending our local town hall meetings and hearing the stories of injustice and poverty. I started volunteering with a non-profit organization in my community. I help get goods to people in need, even as I am also in need, because that’s what we do. Poor and low-income people help each other out, because we understand what it’s like to see our kids go without while we work our fingers to the bone.
But we can’t do it alone. We need to demand from lawmakers that instead of cutting our healthcare, food, and housing benefits, we need to expand them to meet the great need in this country. We need a livable wage so we can afford market rent and rising food prices.
And we need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
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Feeding the World, Through Policy and Community
Such an immense issue as food insecurity cannot be wholly solved by one channel or one institution alone; it takes policy advocacy, community organizing, and self-reliance moving hand-in-hand.
Sep 05, 2026
Bread for the World recently held its annual Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. As a board member, I was honored to be part of conversations on how public policies affect people experiencing hunger and poverty. People from all walks of life and all backgrounds united with the common goal of developing institutions that advance food security.
This moment was especially full of policy discussions as midterm season is in full swing across the country. Leaders are itching to advance on the campaign trail. They are more likely to be on the ground listening to what we have to say, so the opportunity is ripe to share what we care about. We can ask them what they will do to reduce hunger and improve food security for those in poverty. We can push for accountability.
But first, we must understand the current policies and context today that create and maintain food apartheid.
As of the 2017 Census, Black farmers were reported to own just 0.32% of US farmland, a number which has been continuously decreasing over the past century. They are denied grants disproportionately to their white counterparts and earn approximately one-seventh of the income that their white counterparts bring in. Land ownership is steadily being stripped from us.
Hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change.
In the last year and a half, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been on the chopping block many times. Since July of 2025, well over 3.5 million people have been pushed out of the program as a result of cuts in the federal budget. Newly enacted work requirements unjustly require people to qualify themselves to eat.
SNAP’s program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is facing even further underfunding. Recent cuts will take away over $141 million in funds to feed over 5 million new mothers and young children—particularly funds designated for fresh fruits and vegetables. They are literally taking food out of the mouths of children.
This says nothing of the centuries of racism, blocked resources, and stolen land that brought us here today. It barely scratches the surface of all the factors influencing security today. We are facing hateful rhetoric; regressive social policies; global instability; and widespread threats to Black, brown, and immigrant communities. All this uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable. It makes food security and, indeed, any economic stability more tenuous.
There is no question that we need change; now is the moment to demand it from our leaders. Just as there are policies that harm access to nutritious food, there are certainly policies that can expand access.
We can remove work requirements for SNAP that pick and choose who gets to eat without regard for what they are going through. We can expand funding and access so that no one is left without nutritious food to sustain them. We can enact reparations to return land and opportunities to Black communities, and we can support the Black farmers and organizations working to feed people.
But, as we raise our voices for policy change, we must not overlook actions in our own neighborhoods.
I will always fight for a more representative government which supports the needs of our people. However, the government is still imperfect to say the least; we cannot wait for them while hunger runs rampant. We can take matters into our own hands.
Community organizing and self-reliance offers security especially when our government fails us; this is what we work for at The Black Church Food Security Network. We meet people where they are. We grow the food ourselves and distribute it throughout the community. We work together to build autonomy within our own communities.
Such an immense issue as food insecurity cannot be wholly solved by one channel or one institution alone. It takes policy advocacy, community organizing, and self-reliance moving hand-in-hand. Progress is possible when we approach it as a united front.
As Bread for the World reminded us through the advocacy summit, hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change. If we come together to uplift our communities and advance essential policies, we can create an environment where people are not only fed, but they are in a better position to feed themselves.
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‘Obviously Going to Increase Hunger’: Trump SNAP Cuts Imperil Free School Meals for Millions of Kids
"Without congressional action to reverse the SNAP cuts, children will lose critical food benefits that help families keep hunger at bay."
Sep 04, 2026
Millions of children across the United States are at risk of losing access to free school meals due to the unprecedented federal nutrition aid cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer.
The 2025 Republican budget law enacted the largest cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) since its inception more than six decades ago. The cuts have already pushed SNAP enrollment to its lowest level in 17 years, with roughly five million people—including 1.5 million kids—losing aid. Because school districts across the US use SNAP participation rolls to automatically sign children up for free school meals, kids who lose federal aid are at risk of also losing access to free school-time meals.
“Cuts to SNAP are not going to stop at the grocery store,” Clarissa Hayes, deputy director of child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), told Stateline earlier this week. “They really are going to threaten children’s access to school meals, which is obviously going to increase hunger at home and in the classroom, and is going to have that negative ripple effect across children’s health and academic performance.”
FRAC estimated in a recent report that a record 55,362 schools nationwide "offered breakfast and lunch to all their students through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)" during the 2025-2026 school year.
But the number of children who are directly certified for free school meals determines schools' eligibility for CEP as well as the federal reimbursement schools receive under the program, meaning huge declines in SNAP participation could result in schools losing eligibility for CEP or leave them unable to afford it.
Students who are no longer automatically enrolled in free school meal programs will have to apply, an often confusing process that requires family income documentation and other paperwork hurdles.
“Without congressional action to reverse the SNAP cuts, children will lose critical food benefits that help families keep hunger at bay, and the progress we have made on Healthy School Meals for All could unravel,” said Crystal FitzSimons, the president of FRAC, which estimates that nearly 28 million children attended a CEP school during the 2025-2026 school year.
A survey released last month by the No Kid Hungry campaign found that close to 60% of parents said "their child wouldn’t have enough to eat if it weren’t for the meals they receive during the school day," underscoring the potentially devastating impact of a large-scale loss of access to school breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
"An overwhelming majority (89%) indicate that school meals take some pressure off their family when it comes to feeding their children," the campaign said.
Democratic members of Congress are increasingly sounding the alarm over the 2025 GOP budget law's impact on school meals as the new school year begins.
US Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) wrote in a letter to the US Department of Agriculture last week that "no child should lose access to breakfast or lunch at school because a parent was unable to satisfy a new bureaucratic requirement for food assistance."
"And no school should be forced to jeopardize its meal program because federal policy has made it harder to identify children who qualify for assistance," Krishnamoorthi added.
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RFK Jr. Dismisses Impact of SNAP Cuts as Data Shows 5 Million People Have Lost Aid
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the US Health and Human Services Department, said he doesn't think the Republican Party's unprecedented cuts to food aid would have "that much effect."
Aug 27, 2026
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday dismissed the impact of massive food aid cuts signed into law last summer by President Donald Trump, saying he doesn't believe the cuts will have "that much effect" as new data showed at least 5 million people have lost assistance so far—including roughly 1.5 million children.
Speaking at a news conference on children's nutrition in Florida, Kennedy falsely claimed that "the only people kicked off of" the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the GOP budget law signed by Trump "were people who were not eligible for it," either "because their income is too high or because they were illegal aliens."
Kennedy's remarks came as a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that SNAP enrollment nationwide has fallen to a 17-year low following enactment of the Trump-GOP budget law, which will cut the program by around $190 billion over the next decade, enact stricter work reporting mandates, and require states to contribute a portion of benefit costs for the first time.
"'Not much effect?' Based on available data from 25 states, we estimate that well over 1.5 million kids nationwide have lost SNAP in the wake of the unprecedented cuts in the Republican reconciliation law," Katie Bergh, a policy analyst at CBPP, wrote in response to Kennedy's remarks. "Many of those kids and their families lost SNAP despite still being eligible."
Watch Kennedy's comments:
Q: “Are either of you concerned that the reduction in funding for SNAP and the reduction in eligibility for SNAP will reduce access to food for children and families?”
Sec. Kennedy: “I don't think it's gonna have that much effect.” pic.twitter.com/1h97NP6rcN
— BulwarkClips (@BulwarkClips) August 26, 2026
News reports, anecdotal accounts from impacted families, and expert assessments contradict Kennedy's insistence that only those who were no longer eligible for SNAP due to income or immigration status have lost benefits. An explosion of red tape due to the new work reporting requirements imposed by the Trump-GOP budget law has made it more difficult for eligible beneficiaries to continue receiving SNAP, forcing many to seek aid from food banks and take desperate measures—such as skipping meals and doses of medication—to make ends meet.
CBPP warned that the impacts of the cuts are likely to intensify once the budget law's provision shifting benefit costs to states takes full effect next year.
"The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people," the think tank said on Wednesday. "We’re likely seeing some of those initial effects in SNAP participation data."
A report published last month by a pair of food policy experts argued that the unprecedented assault on SNAP undercuts Kennedy's so-called "Make America Healthy Again" initiative, which purports to place nutrition "at the center of health."
“If we are serious about improving Americans’ health, we need policies that make healthy food more accessible, not less,” said Priya Fielding-Singh of George Washington University’s Global Food Institute. “Cutting off food assistance for millions of families undermines MAHA’s stated goals of improving diet quality and preventing chronic disease. Food security and public health go hand in hand.”
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