The end of the government shutdown last month restored funding for a critical food assistance program that keeps millions of families out of hunger.
But the weeks-long crisis over the fate of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps more than 40 million Americans pay for groceries, has only underscored the worsening rates of food insecurity across the United States.
New restrictions on who qualifies for SNAP are expected to squeeze millions of families off these benefits in the coming years. And President Donald Trump is threatening to cut even more Americans from the country’s largest anti-hunger program if they live in Democratic-led states.
Hundreds of food pantries and soup kitchens — already stretched thin by the pandemic, rising food prices and soaring cost of living — saw an increase in new clients during the shutdown. The vast majority are struggling to have enough food to meet growing demand, according to a recent survey from Hunger Free America.
Anti-hunger groups and food pantries have relied on volunteer support and donations to keep running, but seasonal donations and volunteering is easily outpaced by the escalating and compounded crises fueling what advocates are comparing to pandemic-level emergencies. “I don’t want to be the Grinch,” says Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America. “We’re in this challenge to welcome all the help we can get.”
New Mexico has the highest rates of SNAP enrollment in the country, with nearly half a million residents and their families relying on the program. The state spent $30 million to keep the program afloat during the shutdown — but it is only a fraction of the roughly $1 billion a year needed to keep it fully funded for all recipients.
“We saw panic. People were absolutely scared,” said Katy Anderson, vice president of strategy, partnerships and advocacy for Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico. The group saw an increase of 40 percent more people seeking food assistance from October into November.
“People were still struggling and still worried and unclear on ‘is this all the SNAP I’m going to be getting for the whole month? I don’t know how I’m going to get my family through,’” she told The Independent. “We’re seeing people come in that are just at the end of their rope.”
New Mexico is once again in Trump’s crosshairs: The administration has threatened to withhold SNAP funding from the state, and others, unless they provide detailed data on who is receiving the benefits, including their immigration status.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requested the data in February, and 22 Democratic-led states have resisted, citing privacy concerns and fears that the administration is simply trolling for data to support the president’s vast anti-immigration agenda, which has spanned virtually every federal agency.
USDA’s demand for data was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in October.
During a Cabinet meeting with administration officials December 2, Rollins said that “we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud to protect the American taxpayer.”
The administration is also implementing new work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries that went into effect with the passage of Trump’s sweeping tax and domestic policy bill in July.
More recipients will now have to work, go to school or volunteer to get benefits for more than three months, every three years. That includes adults ages 55 to 64, people experiencing homelessness, and people with children between ages 14 and 17.
That $187 billion cut to federal SNAP funding over the next decade “will result in more poverty and hunger,” according to the Food Research & Action Center.
Roughly 4 million people — including children, older adults, veterans, and people with disabilities — will experience cuts to their SNAP benefits or lose them entirely, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office.
“States are not in a financial position to take on these new costs. They simply cannot afford it,” Food Research & Action Center president Crystal FitzSimons said.
“States will be forced to radically cut the number of eligible families receiving food assistance or find other ways to cut spending or increase taxes,” she added. “If states can’t pay the tab, they will be forced out of SNAP entirely, eliminating SNAP for everyone who is eligible.”
Combined with a mounting affordability crisis and climbing food prices, the largest SNAP cut in the program’s history is likely to drive food inequality “from bad to worse,” according to Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America CEO.
“You’re really seeing things going from worse to worser, and the shutdown just exacerbated that,” he told The Independent.
After taking office, Trump eliminated the Department of Agriculture’s 27-year practice of collecting and publishing nationwide and state-by-state statistics on how many households experienced food insecurity. That research had been launched with bipartisan support in Congress in 1990, and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
More than 80 percent of families earning between $75,000 to $100,000 a year have faced higher costs of living in the past year, according to Hunger Free America’s latest report. Roughly two-thirds of those families said it was harder to afford what they needed.
SNAP provides roughly nine meals for every one meal provided by a food pantry, according to anti-hunger advocates.
The Trump administration’s cuts from the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” would eliminate the equivalent of 6 to 9 billion meals annually, according to Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief organization, which operates more than 200 food banks and serves more than 46 million people.
By comparison, the entire Feeding America network distributed 6 billion meals in 2024, according to CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot.
Virtually every food pantry and community food bank surveyed by Hungry Free America reported a spike in services over the last year.
“People in America have been inculcated into thinking we’re going to have some Frank Capra-esque happy ending, that everyone’s going to pass around the hat,” Berg told The Independent. “In reality, what happens is low-income people suffer more, and that’s what’s happening now. People are having to make even more choices between food and rent.”
Spain's leader find himself alone in defending immigration as other EU heads take a tougher line
Fighting rages on Thai-Cambodian border despite Trump's ceasefire claim
President of Peace? How Trump’s claim to have ended eight wars unravelled
Higher cost, worse coverage: Affordable Care Act enrollees say expiring subsidies will hit them hard
Trump says new Epstein photos are ‘no big deal’ but claims he hasn’t seen them: Live
