Passing the bill would be a \u201chistoric accomplishment\u201d that will ensure \u201cthose in need can continue to receive the assistance they need<\/a>,\u201d said Rep. John Rose, a Republican from Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said the bill would focus resources<\/a> on the \u201cneediest\u201d Americans. \u201cIf you are a pregnant woman, your benefits are unaffected. If you have young children at home, your benefits are unaffected by this bill. If you are disabled, your benefits are unaffected by this bill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another analysis reached the same conclusion: Just last month, the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found there were 700,000<\/a> fewer children receiving food assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arizona has seen the nation\u2019s largest percentage decline<\/a> in SNAP participants; 205,223 children are no longer receiving the benefit since July 2025, a 55% drop. Louisiana had the second largest percent decline among children, 22%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, hasn\u2019t detailed the impact on children aided by the program, but initial figures show that compared to February 2025, 4.3 million fewer people<\/a> received SNAP nationwide in February 2026, leaving 37.8 million participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although children weren\u2019t the intended targets of the legislation\u2019s changes, they\u2019re increasingly \u201ccollateral damage,\u201d said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If states are trying to comply with the law\u2019s changes to SNAP, they\u2019re likely not focusing on making the program accessible, Bergh said. Other experts said that people may be pushed off the program because of increased paperwork requirements to remain eligible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n States are required to impose work requirements for most adult recipients, while preparing for two major cost shifts. In October, states will begin covering 75% of the program\u2019s administrative costs. States have been paying 50% of those costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, states will have to pay a larger share of SNAP benefits starting in October 2027, based on their error rate. Error rates<\/a> reflect overpayments or underpayments of SNAP benefits. While sometimes characterized as fraud, such errors are usually the fault of the state agency or the SNAP recipient, according to USDA, which describes them as \u201clargely unintentional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a state agency is facing staffing shortages and struggling to comply with new regulations, it will be harder for low-income families to access the benefits, Bergh said. \u201cFamilies are falling through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Massachusetts, for example, the share of SNAP applicants who called an assistance line and couldn\u2019t reach a worker rose from 61% in November to nearly 81% in March, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance<\/a>, which administers SNAP in the state. The state agency did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A USDA spokesperson did not address ProPublica\u2019s questions about the number of children who have lost access to SNAP. \u201cThere is no shortage of resources for the most vulnerable among us, including children,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three members of the House Agriculture Committee who defended last year\u2019s bill before its passage \u2014 Rose, Thompson and Johnson \u2014 did not respond to ProPublica\u2019s questions about their statements now that many children no longer receive SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked<\/a> Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was \u201cgood news\u201d that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, \u201cthat number\u2019s going to be into the millions\u201d when other states are included, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rollins responded, \u201cThe 700,000 number of children is not correct,\u201d contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were \u201cfraudulent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat is not a nonpartisan group that gave you that number,\u201d she said. (ProPublica independently verified the figures reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n McGovern said he has talked to people who have lost food assistance. \u201cThese are people who actually need and rely on this food assistance to provide basic nutrition for their families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pressure to lower error rates \u201ccreates a temptation for the states to bump off working families,\u201d said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University. Working families may have more volatile incomes, making it harder for state agencies to assess benefits accurately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen they say we want to preserve SNAP for those with the greatest need, they’re sort of acknowledging that they want the scale of the SNAP program to be smaller,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mariana Chilton, an expert in child hunger at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said a smaller program won\u2019t save money in the long run. Research shows that children who receive SNAP benefits are healthier, have better academic outcomes, use hospitals less often and have better mental health as teenagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She called the situation a \u201cpublic health crisis\u201d in the making. \u201cWhen children are not healthy, this affects children today and it affects them throughout their lifetimes,\u201d she said, likening hunger during early childhood to a brain injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Arizona\u2019s SNAP participation<\/a> drops, nonprofits are feeling the effects. St. Mary\u2019s Food Bank, the largest in the state, has seen a 15% increase in need this year, which translates into 300,000 more visits from people in search of food, said Milt Liu, the chief executive officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s important for everyone to realize that policies have implications for people on the edge, and we\u2019re seeing that in our line every day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a recent morning, Ana Alvarez waited in a line of vehicles at a St. Mary\u2019s food bank in Phoenix. Alvarez, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant, started coming to St. Mary\u2019s after she lost her SNAP benefits in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She reapplied for SNAP with the Arizona Department of Economic Security in December, but the application is still pending. The department did not respond to questions about its backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She clips coupons and has cut out trips to the zoo and restaurants with her children. The slow season at the restaurant where she works is about to hit. And as summer temperatures rise, Alvarez wonders how she will afford her electric bill, her rent and her car payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least once a week she contacts the agency about her application. The last time she called, a worker told her what others have in the past: She will have to keep waiting.<\/p>\n The post More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program<\/a> appeared first on ProPublica<\/a>.<\/p>\r\nRead More<\/h3>\n\n\n
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www.propublica.org Source link <\/a>\r\nAfter changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) linked to President Trump\u2019s reform, over 776,000 children have lost food assistance, contradicting Republican assurances that vulnerable populations would be unaffected. Despite claims of preserving benefits for needy families, analyses show a substantial decline in participants, with Arizona and Louisiana recording particularly steep drops. Increased paperwork and strict work requirements are believed to hinder access, disproportionately affecting low-income families. Critics warn this could lead to a public health crisis, highlighting rising food bank demand. Families, like Ana Alvarez’s, struggle with delays in applications amid growing financial strain.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a House committee debated President Donald Trump\u2019s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn\u2019t affect vulnerable people. SNAP reforms would \u201crestore integrity\u201d to the program and ensure it works for the \u201cmost vulnerable among us, including children,\u201d said Rep. Glenn \u201cGT\u201d…","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":2774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}