Washington D.C — New reporting from NBC News sheds a spotlight on the harm that congressional Republicans’ cuts to SNAP are having on hundreds of thousands of children and their families. One mother included in the piece says that she has been secretly eating ice and ignoring her own hunger so she can save food for her children. In total, at least 1.1 million children have been unable to access SNAP since the passage of the Republican Tax Law – all so Republicans in Congress could give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
NBC News: ‘Mom, are we OK?’ Children worry their families can’t afford food after Trump’s SNAP cuts
Key Points:
- In Texas, a 6-year-old stood in front of her family’s refrigerator, hoping food would magically appear. In Delaware, an 11-year-old wondered why her family could no longer afford Cinnamon Toast Crunch. In New Jersey, four siblings wanted their mother to buy groceries — but she had to tell them she couldn’t.
- Across America, the government’s policies are making children hungry.
- Some parents said they have tried to hide what’s happening. The mother in New Jersey didn’t tell her children that she had been eating ice to save food for them.
- More than 1 million fewer children have federal food benefits since the Trump administration slashed funding last summer to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, state data shows.
- The Congressional Budget Office projects the cuts to the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative will amount to $211 billion over a decade.
- [T]he Trump administration has unleashed a crisis, removing a critical lifeline for many struggling parents and alarming their children, who are asking for food their parents can’t afford, according to 19 parents who said their nutrition benefits were halted or delayed.
- Food bank leaders, anti-hunger advocates and state health and human services officials echoed the parents’ alarm.
- For households on SNAP, unexpectedly losing benefits — even temporarily — can be catastrophic. Families say they are prioritizing groceries over other essentials, causing a ripple effect: a utility bill that can’t be paid, resulting in gas being shut off in a household with two young children. A car with a broken engine that’s too expensive to fix, leaving a family without transportation. Ballooning credit card debt to pay for what’s often hard to find at food pantries — meat, fish, fresh produce.
- Some parents said their benefits were finally restored after a monthslong delay, but the financial fallout lingered. Some are getting much less than they were before, for reasons they don’t understand. Others have given up on applying for SNAP, even though they believe they qualify
- Damarys Mejia, the New Jersey mother who had been trying to ignore her hunger by eating ice, received over $900 a month from SNAP until she said the state didn’t call for her scheduled renewal interview and cut off her benefits for July. For weeks, she couldn’t get anyone on the phone to help. About half of the money was restored recently, but she doesn’t know why the amount was reduced or how to get back what she needs.
- The food stamp reductions arrived with President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” a sweeping change to the nation’s tax code passed last summer that the White House called “the most pro-family legislation ever crafted.” While the law reduced taxes for many Americans, it overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy through tax breaks and harmed lower-income people through cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
- And because children have historically constituted about a third of the over 37 million SNAP participants nationally, kids’ getting kicked off was a natural consequence.
- Since the law took effect, SNAP participation has plummeted by over 4.5 million people, and at least 1.1 million of them are children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzes federal budget choices. The number of children covers only 22 states with available data, the think tank said, so the true count is likely higher than 1.5 million children nationwide.
- States are under enormous pressure to reduce the number of errors in payments or face financial consequences beginning in October 2027. That has led states to make changes to the approval process, including requiring more proof from applicants.
- “All of these policy changes have been intentionally designed to cut off eligible people,” said Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.
- After LaCrystal Hubbard, a married mom of three, was laid off from an HR job in February, she applied for SNAP. She said she never received a call to complete her client interview, though, and her file was closed. She went to a local SNAP office this month to follow up — and was told it would take 30 more days to process her application.
- In the meantime, she said she is eating less so there are leftovers if her children want second portions
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Unrig Our Economy is a national campaign to fix the rules of our economy to make it work for working people. We know that when the middle class does well, all of us do well — which is why we’re fighting on behalf of working Americans and holding corporations, their wealthy executives, and the politicians who enable them accountable.