It’s been just over a month since the USDA made the initial announcement that due to the government shutdown, SNAP benefits would not be funded for the month of November. And though the news on whether or not a solution would be found was ever-changing in that first week or so, there was one constant amongst the majority of the American people. Panic.
Within the first few days of word getting out, my social media was flooded with video after video from those directly affected. A single mother wondering how she would feed her kids for the month. An elderly veteran who relied on snap for his next meal. Elementary school teachers who would now have to figure out how to teach and keep the attention of hungry kids. And of course I empathize with those strangers, but the thing that hit closest to home was when my own grandfather told me that our close family friends had been relying on SNAP, and that we’d likely be taking on the responsibility of making sure they had groceries if funding wasn’t restored.
As I interacted more with the videos of those who relied on SNAP, my algorithm also brought me to the people who were against the program. People who hated the idea of any portion of their paycheck going towards “lazy people.” who “didn’t want to work” and were glad that the program funding was paused. The irony of their attitudes was that most of them would be one medical emergency, lost job, or a few missed paychecks away from needing aid themselves. And though my main focus here is the ways in which both sides of our government are willing to weaponize the hunger of the vulnerable to get what the want politically speaking, I thought it should be noted how despite being closer to needing SNAP than having the wealth of any billionaire in congress, that so many people would struggle to empathize.
A common critique was how those who received SNAP would spend it. People tend to have a problem with the idea of someone buying “junk food” believing that if they really needed the money, they would spend it on meat and vegetables. The issue with this is that when you are on a program like snap, that only resets once a month, you have to budget. When you consider the shelf life of fresh foods as compared to something that comes in a cardboard box, the latter is easier to stretch throughout the month. Not to mention, we seem to have a rhetoric in America that poor people don’t deserve nice things. If the highlight of someone’s week is being able to use their EBT to get a bag of chips, then who am I, or anyone to judge?
After the initial panic and chaos of people trying to find out where they would get their food, and communities coming together to scramble and find a way to keep people fed, it became a waiting game to see what progress would be made by the government. With a refusal at first to use the contingency fund due to the government shutdown not being a natural disaster, federal judge John McConnell Jr. ordered The president to figure out a way to fund the program. After a long back and forth between McConnell, president Trump, and the Supreme Court, it was decided to allow the president to continue pausing snap. Funding was not continued until Nov. 12, when the government shutdown ended.
Now, it hasn’t even been a full month since the benefits were restored, and the SNAP program is under attack again by the Trump administration. Just as people may have been getting the chance to get back on their feet again after the uncertainty of November, the requirements to be eligible have changed with the due to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, increasing things such as the number of hours a person must work. Along with this, now states are being asked to hand over more data about who exactly have been receiving SNAP, with current claims that deceased people have been receiving SNAP. This data has not yet been published.
With this news, Trump has threatened democratic states that refuse to share the data of who is receiving benefits, by threatening to cut aid. The issue with this is that we have people in power yet again weaponizing the potential hunger of children, elderly, and disabled people, to push their own political agenda.
Whether or not the administration will go through with their word is unknown, as these threats to funding democrat leaning states have been recent, and vague. I however believe that regardless of whether or not the president is bluffing, that it is entirely inappropriate for a person in that position of power to ever threaten the people in that sense. Rich politicians on both sides, but especially the right, love to play around with the lives of the poor, using their suffering as bargaining chips for their political agendas. No food insecure person should need to give all of their personal information and data to the government or the USDA in order to get their next meal.
