Study: New Mexico ranks 4th in the nation for childhood hunger
According to Feeding America's 2025 Map the Meal Gap national study, New Mexico places 4th in the nation for childhood hunger. Roadrunner Food Bank said the data is similar to years past. According to the study, 1 in 6 people in the state, and 1 in 4 children, are food insecure. 'There is plenty of food in this country. There is plenty of food in this state. There is plenty of food to feed everyone who needs it. It is access that is the problem,' said Communications Manager for Roadrunner Food Bank Jimmy Himes-Ryann.
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Access is what Roadrunner is working to improve. The food bank worries about potential cuts to SNAP benefits. That's why they were in D.C. on Wednesday, testifying at a hearing to discuss SNAP benefits, raising concerns about potentially shifting the burden of paying for SNAP onto the states. The food bank worries about the potential need for more food bank services if fewer families have access to SNAP.
'Drastic cuts and changes to SNAP will cause hunger to grow at a exponential rate,' said Vice President of Strategy, Partnerships, and Advocacy at Roadrunner Food Bank Katy Anderson at the hearing. 'It would mean more than tripling our current food distribution output simply to ensure comparable access to what is available today.'
Roadrunner Food Bank said their services are especially important right now as children are on summer break and may be missing out on the only meal they depend on during the school day. 'The state of New Mexico provides around 300,000 meals to students who go to public schools in the state. The need in the summer is exceptionally high because a lot of students are getting that third meal at school exclusively,' said Himes-Ryann.
According to the study, the counties with the highest rates of childhood food insecurity include Catron, McKinley, and Luna.
To learn more about volunteering or donating, click this link.
The KRQE Cares Food for Kids program also has donation bins at Smith's stores in the metro, where community members can drop off non-perishables, diapers, and more throughout the summer.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Chicago Tribune
14 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Stacy Davis Gates: Chicago families deserve to go back to fully funded schools
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We need a partner in our governor and the Democratic supermajority, not just a debt that's past due. We need being a blue state during Trump's authoritarianism to mean something. As much as is spent to try to demonize our union, we're more in-line with the people of our state than anyone arguing for cuts or to deny our children the education they deserve. Ninety-one percent of Illinoisans, when asked, believe in the right to a public education and 71% support increasing funding for schools. When asked where that money should come from, 63% of Americans say raise taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich. States such as Massachusetts are proof positive that this isn't rhetorical, it's successful. There they implemented a millionaire's tax that raised $2.2 billion in its first year alone — double what was expected. This revenue was used for universal free school meals, free community college and transit improvements. No millionaires fled the state. 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Stacy Davis Gates is president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Chicago Tribune
14 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘A terrible position': Illinois sprints to lower new SNAP costs without booting people who need it
As an outreach coordinator for one of the Chicago area's largest food banks, Joann Montes is already seeing an impact from President Donald Trump's reductions to public assistance programs even before those cuts take effect. Anxious older adults who for years received what were once called food stamps are approaching Montes at senior centers to ask if those benefits will continue and whether they'll have to return to jobs 'to be able to feed themselves.' 'Our folks who are 60 and older are asking questions about whether they're going to be able to receive SNAP,' Montes, who works at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, said about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 'Will they have to go back to work?' A little more than a month after Trump signed into law a sweeping Republican domestic package that expanded work requirements for SNAP benefits to previously exempt groups such as adults ages 55 to 64, the state and people receiving benefits are getting ready for a recalibration. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker's administration is sprinting to figure out how to avoid a potential $700 million price tag by changing operations to achieve a level of payment accuracy that the vast majority of states currently do not meet. At the same time, Illinois also must handle the federally mandated work requirements on new groups that experts say could lead to people losing benefits. 'It would be almost easier if the federal government just did what they set out to do, which is say, 'You are no longer going to be eligible for this program.' But instead, they are putting states on the front line to create bureaucratic barriers to turn individuals and families away,' Grace Hou, the deputy governor covering health and human services, said at a panel discussion in Joliet on Friday. 'These cost savings in the Trump spending bill will result in families getting kicked off their benefits because they can't manage the red tape.' In all, about 1.9 million Illinoisans receive aid through SNAP, which provides assistance for low-income families to buy food. The program's benefits have been fully funded by the federal government for six decades, while the administrative costs have been split between the federal government and states. Monthly benefits in Illinois among people receiving assistance averaged $192 for each member of a household in fiscal 2024, or $6.33 per day, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. But state officials say the changes written into the new federal law could place hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans at risk of losing those benefits. That jibes with a recent Congressional Budget Office report that estimated about 2.4 million fewer Americans will receive food assistance as a result of the new work requirements. 'Here the state is with less money and more challenge, going to have to take lemons and turn it into lemonade,' said Danielle Perry, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Food Depository, which, on top of its work as a food bank, helps people apply for and keep SNAP benefits. The GOP-led megabill that Trump signed into law July Fourth extends tax breaks that were set to expire and expands spending for the military and border security, funded in part by cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. 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What's more, many Illinois SNAP recipients have been exempt from work requirements altogether for years because of a waiver tied to unemployment in the state. But that exemption is expected to end this year, as the new bill hikes the state unemployment threshold. States are awaiting guidance from the federal government on the new work requirements, including the timeline for implementation. 'This will create a constant churn of applications as people fall on and off eligibility,' Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Rachel Otwell said in an emailed has already included funding in its budget for about 100 new caseworkers and operations staff with IDHS to begin addressing the added paperwork that is expected to be created from the new requirements, as well as changes to Medicaid. Officials with the Pritzker administration said they anticipated earlier this year that they would need additional staff even without knowing the specifics of the Republican-led tax bill. Now, the department is looking into the number of additional staff it might need to deal with SNAP changes, according to the governor's office. Beyond that workload, Illinois faces potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs. The Republican-led bill raises the administrative levy for states, which in Illinois would mean spending an additional $80 million, according to the governor's office. Those costs are expected to kick in October 2026, according to the Center for American Progress think tank. Plus, any further improvements to computer or communications systems will likely cost even more, at a time when the state will likely be looking to keep costs down, said Jeremy Rosen, director of economic justice at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. 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'We are working very hard to make sure that we've got a process for determining the eligibility of people, making sure we hit the error rate that we need to as best we can, and we're working very hard every single day to effectuate that, but it's going to take money to do that,' Pritzker said Wednesday, noting to reporters at an unrelated news conference in Springfield that the new requirements do not come with funds for implementation. Efforts to lower the payment error rate can result in people being removed from the food assistance program, Rosen and other experts said — an outcome the state says it's trying to avoid. Still, starting in October, the state said it will be in a yearlong sprint to bring down the error rate measure ahead of cost-sharing measures that go into place after the year is up. If the rate comes down below 6% — from more than 11% currently — by fall 2026, then Illinois could avoid the more than $700 million burden, which would take effect starting in fall 2027. The state has said it can't cover that expected contribution, which is close to the looming transit fiscal cliff or the entire amount by which Illinois increased its operating revenue for the current fiscal year. To bring down the rate, IDHS is using an existing contract with Deloitte to diagnose exactly where those mistakes happen and what changes could be made to the program, according to the governor's office, which did not provide an estimated timeline on those efforts. IDHS is also reviewing its own policies to see how it could reduce the error rate, according to the state. Close to half of the payment errors in Illinois come from inaccurate wage and benefits data, including errors in what people report as their income, the state said. As a result, the governor's office said Illinois is exploring whether it could implement more stringent verifications in some areas, rather than relying on self-reporting, which is typically faster. But trying to bring down the error rate while also needing to implement new work requirements poses a major challenge, experts and the state said. 'If the application process is more stringent … it will be definitely a challenge,' said the Rev. Gary Gaston, CEO at Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House, a social services organization that Pritzker visited earlier this summer to highlight the challenges to SNAP. 'People have gotten acclimated to the current process. Any new processes that will be put in place could be challenging.' In the East St. Louis area where Gaston works, people might have difficulty finding work to meet the new requirements, and in some cases also face a lack of transportation options to make appointments, he said. On top of that, the area is already considered a food desert, with no major grocery store in the city — 'a double whammy,' he said. Demanding more information and verification up front can make it harder for people to access benefits, which is likely to result in some people losing benefits, Rosen at the Shriver Center said. The Pritzker administration, for its part, argues that the loss of benefits that could come from efforts to reduce the error rate is an intentional move by the Trump administration to reduce benefits and, in turn, lower the cost of the program to the federal government. Still, the state said it's working to reduce the rate in a way that keeps as many people as possible from losing benefits, as lowering the measure is the only way to avoid the massive potential $700 million bill. 'We want to make sure that we're actually delivering to the maximum number of people that need SNAP,' Pritzker told reporters Wednesday at the state fair, emphasizing that both underpayments and overpayments are considered errors. 'Republicans don't care that we're under-providing. They just want to cut everybody off of SNAP, and that is why they've set this SNAP error rate so low.' Haywood Talcove, CEO for government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said he wants to see Illinois and other states simplify their application process for benefits — in an effort to both reduce fraud and improve the experience for people who need benefits — from lengthy paperwork with many self-reported boxes to basic identification information and verification. Republicans have cited fraud and waste as reasons to crack down on parts of the benefits program, and Talcove, who is based in Washington, testified at a Republican-led congressional hearing this year about benefits fraud. If states are pouring millions into benefits and changes to the program, Talcove said, 'I'd like you to fix it, please.' The governor's office has noted that SNAP fraud is not the same as the error rate and that any fraud comes out of $4.7 billion in SNAP benefits that the state issues each year. Statewide, Illinois found about 0.07% of SNAP cases had an intentional program violation, which would have resulted in an IDHS penalty and potentially a court penalty, according to the governor's office. Additionally, there were more than 23,000 claims that benefits were stolen from recipients last year and an estimated $12.5 million in that type of fraud, according to a report from IDHS to the General Assembly. Rosen of the Shriver Center said the state should aim to get the information it needs, 'without being in a world where we make people bring so much stuff so often that they fall off the program.' 'Because inevitably somebody's kid gets sick, so they miss the appointment, and they can't take the three-hour bus ride to get to the office, the website doesn't work and they can't upload something. Those are not good reasons for people to be cut off who are eligible,' he said. In six years at the food bank and more than two decades working in social services, Montes said SNAP has felt 'stable, as far as the rules are concerned.' Now, even the work requirements by themselves are 'going to isolate many people from food, from accessing food, just that alone,' she said. 'Personally, it scares me.'
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Newsweek
How Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Changed Benefits for Immigrants
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Debate has raged in recent months over the access immigrants get to federal benefits and how they pay into the system, with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act making some major changes to that access for some in recent weeks. With different immigrant types, from naturalized citizens to temporary visa holders, receiving different levels of access to health care, education, and financial aid, it has often been difficult to get a clear picture of the situation. On Friday, USAFacts published a breakdown of a range of common benefits, from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Section 8 housing, as well as the duties immigrants are expected to pay into, with the aim of making the topic clearer. "When I first started this, I naively thought that this would be a little bit simpler, that there would be hard and fast rules that all government programs follow the same process of who is eligible and who is not," Amber Thomas, a senior data visualization engineer at USAFacts, told Newsweek. "It turns out it's really varied, sometimes between programs and sometimes based on immigration status. "So I've included seven different immigration statuses here. These are not all of the immigration statuses that the government recognizes. There are many, many more. But these are the ones that we decided you're most likely to hear about." What Benefits Do Immigrants Get? Under President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and other legislation introduced to Congress in recent months, some eligibility is being revoked from certain immigrant groups. "The One Big Beautiful Bill obviously covers a lot of different legislation, and within it, there was a section that recategorized who is eligible based on immigrant status for a handful of programs, and that was specifically Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program), SNAP, and marketplace subsidies," Thomas said. Some of the most notable changes are coming for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients, who had a few months of access to some Medicare programs before that was undone by recent bills. Similar changes have been made for refugees and asylees in the United States. For those interested in participating in the Head Start school readiness program, eligibility is now limited to naturalized citizens, green card holders, refugees, and asylees. Applicants with pending asylum cases, DACA, or non-tourist visas are excluded. A nurse administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a man at a clinic targeting immigrant community members in Los Angeles on March 25, 2021. A nurse administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a man at a clinic targeting immigrant community members in Los Angeles on March 25, have argued that these changes were necessary in order to prevent illegal immigrants from fraudulently using federal government benefits, but immigrant advocates have warned that thousands of people will be left without access to vital health care and other services. "Republicans in Congress have succeeded in our mission to enact President Trump's America First agenda," House Republicans said in a joint statement on July 3. "And importantly, we did it in record time, so that the effects of this nation-shaping legislation can be felt by the American people as soon as possible." While the OBBBA did make some major changes to benefits eligibility for immigrants, other restrictions also remain in effect for new green card holders, with a five-year wait time for access to Social Security, Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) benefits. How Can Immigrants Participate in Society? During the 2024 presidential election campaign, and in recent months during the passage of Trump's budget bill, concerns were raised about the duties immigrants were able to participate in and the programs they were paying into. USAFacts also unpacked some of these, clearly explaining that naturalized citizens take part in all five listed above. All immigrants pay taxes in some way, while no other category has the ability to vote in federal elections. There are also varying levels of permissions to work legally and serve in the U.S. military. One area of tension with the OBBBA has been around health care. With all immigrants paying taxes, but not all being able to access Medicare, advocates have repeatedly argued that this is unfair. "We shouldn't be kicking millions of people off Medicaid and denying lifesaving care to fund the Trump administration's extreme deportation machine," Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer with the ACLU, said in a press release in June. "The American people did not vote for this. We will make sure that constituents remember the catastrophic harm this bill does and hold lawmakers accountable." Some of the policies are yet to take effect, with health access revoked in stages: in October 2026 and then in January 2027. Those using SNAP will likely see the changes take effect when they next try to verify their status.
