This blatant refusal to use required money for SNAP is part of a larger trend. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have cut grants for food banks and school meals; incinerated 500 tons of emergency food meant for children; passed the largest SNAP cuts in history (nearly $187 billion) in the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB); imposed tariffs that have increased food prices; prevented states from being reimbursed for covering the cost of SNAP benefits; and even hid evidence to conceal the harms of these cuts.
Below, we detail five specific ways the Trump administration has already been salting the earth for food banks and hungry families, making its shutdown tactics even more harmful.
Freezes and cuts to meals for vulnerable families
In January, the Trump administration chaotically froze federal funding, leaving farmers reeling and nonprofits serving the needy worrying about steady access to support from SNAP and Meals on Wheels. In March, the administration cut more than $1 billion of funding from two programs that supply schools and food banks with food from local farms and ranches. These cuts affected schoolchildren and small farmers in all 50 states. At the time, a West Virginia dairy farmer said that employing people and getting food into schools “just doesn’t seem [like] it’s a priority for our federal government.”
During the spring, food banks across the country faced so much uncertainty that they held back inventory; told clients and allies to expect shortages; and spent valuable resources scrambling to find new storage and distribution support. The largest food bank in Central Florida said it would deliver 1 million fewer pounds of fresh food because of the USDA funding freeze. Michigan food banks warned of shortages in March: Eleanor’s Pantry in Paw Paw, Michigan, said its plan to cope was to “offer less.” In addition, Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels was unsure how long food deliveries could be made, with CEO Barbara Niess-May declaring, “This didn’t have to be a catastrophe.” Illinois’ Mendota Area Christian Food Pantry went into “panic mode” when it learned the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement was shut down in March. The Greater Cleveland Food Bank said it risked losing millions of pounds of food without a steady federal grant. Texas’s Tarrant Area Food Bank was forced to rely on donors after it lost federal funding.
Beyond the uncertainty, communities lost much-needed food, and anti-hunger organizations are still struggling. The Central Texas Food Bank cancelled 716,000 meals after federal cuts. The Food Bank of Wyoming lost a $535,000 grant. Lutheran Services of Iowa cut staff. Food pantries in Maine were left with empty shelves in April, as need increased more than ever. A food bank in Jackson, Mississippi, went from three pallets to one pallet of food per month to distribute. Federal funding cuts left Virginia food banks “in a chaotic state.” One of Boston’s largest food banks shut down over high prices and uncertain funding. St. Mary’s Food Bank in Arizona was 1 million pounds of food short after federal cuts. Feeding South Dakota was providing nearly 2 million fewer meals thanks to federal cuts.
Cutting and eliminating programs that put fresh local food in food pantries and school cafeterias not only hurts hungry families but also disrupts business for local farmers. The chaos and tumult brought by the Trump administration made it extremely difficult for farmers to plan for the year, and it has hurt business for small farms from Arizona to Wisconsin.
A trade war that puts food at risk
Tariffs have caused food prices to rise, limiting the amount of food available to food banks and putting more financial stress on households already struggling to afford enough food. Meanwhile, millions of bushels of soybeans are sitting idle in silos across the country as a result of Trump’s trade war with China. And, in perhaps the starkest example of cruelty put on display, the administration burned 500 tons of food aid for children overseas due, in part, to chaos created by DOGE cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that caused distribution delays and allowed the food to expire.
The Trump administration and congressional Republican SNAP cuts to help fund tax breaks for the wealthy
In July, Trump signed BBB into law, which included the largest cuts to SNAP in history, totaling $187 billion—or nearly 20 percent of estimated outlays through 2034—to facilitate an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the poorest families in the country to the richest. The largest cuts to SNAP came from expansions in ineffective and burdensome paperwork requirements to include families with children as young as 14; older Americans as old as 64; veterans; individuals experiencing homelessness; and youth aging out of foster care. Because USDA told states this change needed to be implemented by November, families will soon receive notices that they have to demonstrate they are working enough hours to avoid being kicked off of SNAP. Additionally, existing state waivers to these requirements are being cut short. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates this added layer of administrative burden will reduce SNAP participation by 2.4 million people in the typical month going forward.
BBB also contains a provision to shift a portion of SNAP benefits to states for the first time starting in 2027 depending on the state’s payment error rate, a measure that combines overpayments and underpayments to households. This change will result in states shouldering “tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars” of new costs each year, totaling up to 15 percent of benefits in a given state. Considering the substantial and unpredictable strain this will place on state budgets—alongside the increasing share of administrative expenses states will have to pay for (also because of BBB)—the CBO estimated that 300,000 people would have their benefits reduced or eliminated entirely by 2034. The CBO suggests that some states may leave the SNAP program altogether.
Hiding the effects of the administration’s cuts by cancelling the official source of food insecurity data
Just a few months after the passage of BBB, USDA announced that it was cancelling the annual food security survey. This resource is the official government measure for tracking how many Americans faced difficulties getting enough food, and it is the best source for nationally representative data on food insecurity. Democratic and Republican administrations alike acknowledged the importance of these data—going back to a task force assembled under the Reagan administration that called for such data to be collected—but President Donald Trump’s USDA is attempting to conceal the harms of BBB’s SNAP cuts to families across the country.
Illegal refusal to provide SNAP benefits for hungry families
During the ongoing government shutdown, USDA contradicted guidance from prior shutdowns and its own, now-deleted lapse of funding plan from late September by claiming that no money was available to pay SNAP benefits for November and that the contingency funds could not be used for this purpose. By illegally withholding these funds, the Trump administration is choosing to let 42 million Americans go hungry ahead of Thanksgiving.
A USDA that truly cared about hunger would not only release the contingency funds but also use every available funding source to ensure that November benefits are paid in full, just as the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) was protected from lapsing in October. As soon as November 1, food banks are bracing for massive demand spikes that will follow after SNAP recipients start seeing that their benefits have not been refilled.
The Center for American Progress’ Trump’s Take tracker shows that Trump and his family have taken in more than $1.8 billion since he was elected president in November. That amount could pay for the $190.59 average monthly SNAP benefits for 9.4 million people.
Conclusion
All year, the Trump administration has been strategically dismantling the network of organizations and supports that keep millions of Americans from going hungry. Its illegal withholding of SNAP benefits for all 42 million recipients is only part of its broader agenda that is harming farmers, stretching food banks beyond their limits, and causing hunger and poverty to spike. Gutting food assistance was always part of the Trump administration’s plan: Project 2025 and the Republican Study Committee budget envisioned a transformative dismantling of federal nutrition assistance programs. Once again, the Trump administration is happy to follow through on this agenda at the expense of regular people.