
Cuts to food benefits stand in the way of RFK Jr.'s goals for a healthier national diet
McLoyd, 64, receives a small monthly payment through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps.
'They don't give you that much to work with,' she said. To fit her tight budget, she eats ramen noodles — high on sodium and low on nutrition — multiple times a week.
If she had more money, said McLoyd, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and heart problems, she'd buy more grapes, melons, chuck roast, ground turkey, cabbage, and turnip greens. That's what she did when lawmakers nearly doubled her SNAP benefit during the pandemic.
But now that a GOP-led Congress has approved $186 billion in cuts to the food assistance program through 2034, McLoyd, who worked in retail until she retired in 2016, isn't sure how she will be able to eat any healthy food if her benefits get reduced again.
McLoyd said her only hope for healthy eating might be to resort to peanut butter, which she heard 'has everything' in it.
'I get whatever I can get,' said McLoyd, who uses a walker to get around her senior community in southwestern Georgia. 'I try to eat healthy, but some things I can't, because I don't have enough money to take care of that.'
The second Trump administration has said that healthy eating is a priority. It released a 'Make America Healthy Again' report citing poor diet as a cause of childhood illnesses and chronic diseases. And it's allowing states — including Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah — to limit purchases of unhealthy food with federal SNAP benefits for the first time in the history of the century-old anti-hunger program.
President Donald Trump also signed a tax and spending law on July 4 that will shift costs to states and make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP by expanding existing work requirements. The bill cuts about 20% of SNAP's budget, the deepest cut the program has faced. About 40 million people now receive SNAP payments, but 3 million of them will lose their nutrition assistance completely, and millions more will see their benefits reduced, according to an analysis of an earlier version of the bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Researchers say SNAP cuts run counter to efforts to help people prevent chronic illness through healthy food.
'People are going to have to rely on cheaper food, which we know is more likely to be processed, less healthy,' said Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
'It's, 'Oh, we care about health — but for the rich people,'' she said.
About 47 million people lived in households with limited or uncertain access to food in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency's research shows that people living in food-insecure households are more likely to develop hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The Trump administration counters that the funding cuts would not harm people who receive benefits.
'This is total fearmongering,' said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in an email. 'The bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP for those who need it by implementing cost-sharing measures with states and commonsense work requirements.'
McLoyd and other residents in Georgia's Dougherty County, where Albany is located, already face steep barriers to accessing healthy food, from tight budgets and high rates of poverty to a lack of grocery stores and transportation, said Tiffany Terrell, who founded A Better Way Grocers in 2017 to bring fresh food to people who can't travel to a grocery store.
More than a third of residents receive SNAP benefits in the rural, majority-Black county that W.E.B. Du Bois described as 'the heart of the Black Belt' and a place 'of curiously mingled hope and pain,' where people struggled to get ahead in a land of former cotton plantations, in his 1903 book, 'The Souls of Black Folk.'
Terrell said that a healthier diet could mitigate many of the illnesses she sees in her community. In 2017, she replaced school bus seats with shelves stocked with fruits, vegetables, meats, and eggs and drove her mobile grocery store around to senior communities, public housing developments, and rural areas.
But cuts to food assistance will devastate the region, setting back efforts to help residents boost their diet with fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious food and tackle chronic disease, she said.
Terrell saw how SNAP recipients like McLoyd ate healthier when food assistance rose during the pandemic. They got eggs, instead of ramen noodles, and fresh meat and produce, instead of canned sausages.
Starting in 2020, SNAP recipients received extra pandemic assistance, which corresponded to a 9% decrease in people saying there was sometimes or often not enough food to eat, according to the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Once those payments ended in 2023, more families had trouble purchasing enough food, according to a study published in Health Affairs in October. Non-Hispanic Black families, in particular, saw an increase in anxiety, the study found.
'We know that even short periods of food insecurity for kids can really significantly harm their long-term health and cognitive development,' said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. Cuts to SNAP 'will put a healthy diet even farther out of reach for these families.'
The Trump administration said it's boosting healthy eating for low-income Americans through restrictions on what they can buy with SNAP benefits. It has begun approving state requests to limit the purchase of soda and candy with SNAP benefits.
'Thank you to the governors of Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska for their bold leadership and unwavering commitment to Make America Healthy Again,' said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a press release about the requests. 'I call on every governor in the nation to submit a SNAP waiver to eliminate sugary drinks — taxpayer dollars should never bankroll products that fuel the chronic disease epidemic.'
Although states have asked for such restrictions in the past, previous administrations, including the first Trump administration, never approved them.
Research shows that programs encouraging people to buy healthy food are more effective than regulating what they can buy. Such limits increase stigma on families that receive benefits, are burdensome to retailers, and often difficult to implement, researchers say.
'People make incredibly tough choices to survive,' said Gina Plata-Nino, the deputy director of SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, and a former senior policy adviser in the Biden administration.
'It's not about soda and candy,' she said. 'It's about access.'
Terrell said she is unsure how people will survive if their food benefits are further trimmed.
'What are we thinking people are going to do?' said Terrell of A Better Way Grocers, who also opened a bustling community market last year that sells fresh juices, smoothies, and wellness shots in downtown Albany. 'We'll have people choosing between food and bills.'
That's true for Stephen Harrison, 22, whose monthly SNAP benefit supports him, along with his parents and younger brother. During the pandemic, he used the extra assistance to buy strawberries and grapes, but now he comes into A Better Way Grocers to buy an orange when he can.
Harrison, who is studying culinary arts at Albany Technical College, said his family budgets carefully to afford meals like pork chops with cornbread and collard greens, but he said that, if his benefits are cut, the family will have to resort to cheaper foods.
'I'd buy hot dogs,' he said with a shrug.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
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Los Angeles Times
40 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Criminalization or support? President Trump's executive order on homelessness gets mixed reaction
An executive order signed by President Trump purporting to protect Americans from 'endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks' attributed to homelessness has left local officials and homeless advocates outraged over its harsh tone while also grasping for a hopeful message in its fine print. The order Trump signed Thursday would require federal agencies to reverse precedents or consent decrees that impede U.S. policy 'encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.' It ordered those agencies to 'ensure the availability of funds to support encampment removal efforts.' Depending on how that edict is carried out, it could extend a lifeline for Mayor Karen Bass' Inside Safe program, which has eliminated dozens of the city's most notable encampments but faces budget challenges to maintain the hotel and motel beds that allow people to move indoors. Responding to the order Friday, Bass said she was troubled that it called for ending street homelessness and moving people into rehabilitation facilities at the same time as the administration's cuts to Medicaid have affected funding 'streams for facilities for people to stay in, especially people who are disabled.' 'Of course I'm concerned about any punitive measures,' Bass said. 'But first and foremost, if you want to end street homelessness, then you have got to have housing and services for people who are on the street.' Kevin Murray, president and chief executive of the Weingart Center homeless services and housing agency, saw ambiguity in the language. 'I couldn't tell whether he is offering money for people who want to do it his way or taking money away from people who don't do it his way,' Murray said. Others took their cue from the order's provocative tone set in a preamble declaring that the overwhelming majority of the 274,224 people reported living on the street in 2024 'are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.' The order contradicted a growing body of research finding that substance use and mental illness, while significant, are not overriding factors in homelessness. 'Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes. An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.' A February study by the Benioff Homeless and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco found that only about 37% of more than 3,000 homeless people surveyed in California were using illicit drugs regularly, but just over 65% reported having regularly used at some point in their lives. More than a third said their drug use had decreased after they became homeless and one in five interviewed in depth said they were seeking treatment but couldn't get it. 'As with most executive orders, it doesn't have much effect on its own,' said Steve Berg, chief policy officer for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. 'It tells the federal agencies to do different things. Depending on how the federal agencies do those things, that's what will have the impact.' In concrete terms, the order seeks to divert funding from two pillars of mainstream homelessness practice, 'housing first,' the prioritization of permanent housing over temporary shelter, and 'harm reduction,' the rejection of abstinence as a condition of receiving services and housing. According to the order, grants issued under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should 'not fund programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called 'harm reduction' or 'safe consumption' efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.' And the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development should, to the extent permitted by law, end support for 'housing first' policies that 'deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.' To some extent, those themes reflect shifts that have been underway in the state and local response to homelessness. Under pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California legislature established rules allowing relatives and service providers to refer people to court for treatment and expanded the definition of gravely disabled to include substance use. Locally, Bass' Inside Safe program and the county's counterpart, Pathway Home, have prioritized expanding interim housing to get people off the streets immediately. Trump's order goes farther, though, wading into the controversial issue of how much coercion is justified in eliminating encampments. The Attorney General and the other federal agencies, it said, should take steps to ensure that grants go to states and cities that enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering and squatting. Homeless advocacy organizations saw those edicts as a push for criminalization of homelessness and mental illness. 'We'll be back to the days of 'One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest,' 'Berg said, referring to the 1962 novel and subsequent movie dramatizing oppressive conditions in mental health institutions. Defending Housing First as a proven strategy that is the most cost-effective way to get people off the street, Berg said the order encourages agencies to use the money in less cost-effective ways. 'What we want to do is reduce homelessness,' he said. 'I'm not sure that is the goal of the Trump administration.' The National Homelessness Law Center said in a statement saying, 'This Executive Order is rooted in outdated, racist myths about homelessness and will undoubtedly make homelessness worse.... Trump's actions will force more people into homelessness, divert taxpayer money away from people in need, and make it harder for local communities to solve homelessness.' Murray, who describes himself as not a fan of Housing First, noted that key policies pressed in the order—civil commitment, encampment removal and substance use treatment—are already gaining prominence in the state and local response to homelessness. 'We all think if it came from Trump it is horrible,' Murray said. 'It is certainly overbearing. It certainly misses some nuances of what real people with mental illness and substance use are like. But we've started down the path of most of this stuff.' His main concern was that the order might be interpreted to apply to Section 8, the primary federal financial tool for getting homeless people into housing. What would happen, he asked, if someone with a voucher refused treatment? 'It might encourage more people to stay on the streets,' he said. 'Getting people into treatment isn't easy.'


NBC News
41 minutes ago
- NBC News
The next big health care fight that's splitting Republicans: From the Politics Desk
Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team's latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail. Happy Friday! In today's edition, Sahil Kapur notes that a looming Obamacare deadline is dividing Republicans on Capitol Hill. Plus, Kristen Welker breaks down the political fallout thus far from the Jeffrey Epstein saga. And Scott Bland answers this week's reader question on Texas Republicans' redistricting efforts. — Adam Wollner The next big health care fight that's splitting Republicans By Sahil Kapur After passing President Donald Trump's sweeping megabill that included steep cuts to Medicaid, Republicans have another big health care fight on their hands. GOP leaders are facing growing calls from their members to extend a bucket of funding for the Affordable Care Act that is set to expire at the end of this year as some look to avert insurance premium hikes and millions of Americans losing their health coverage. But the cause faces opposition from conservatives who detest Obamacare and don't want to lift a finger to protect it. Some argue it'd be too expensive to continue the premium tax credits, which cost over $30 billion per year and were initially adopted as part of a Covid-19 response. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that about 5 million Americans will lose their insurance by 2034 if the money expires. The divide: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., who represents a swing district that Trump lost in 2024, said that Congress should continue those ACA tax credits in order to avoid price increases. 'I think we gotta be doing everything to keep costs low across the board — health care, groceries, energy, all of the above. So I am currently working on addressing that as we speak,' he said. But Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said he 'absolutely' wants that funding to end. 'It'll cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Can't afford it,' he said. 'That was a Covid-era policy. Newsflash to America: Covid is over.' For now, top Republican leaders are keeping their powder dry about whether — or how — they will take up the issue. 'I think that goes to the end of the calendar year, so we'll have discussion about the issue later. But it hasn't come up yet,' House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said when asked about an ACA subsidy extension. 'But it's on the radar.' A midterm warning: Veteran GOP pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward recently released a memo warning that extending the health care tax credits is broadly popular, even with 'solid majorities of Trump voters and [s]wing voters.' They warned that the GOP will pay a 'political penalty' in the competitive districts in the 2026 midterm elections if the funding expires on schedule. Analysis by Kristen Welker The Jeffrey Epstein saga is the political headache that won't go away for President Donald Trump, as the drip-drip of new reporting on his past relationship with the convicted sex offender and repeated attempts to deflect have only fed the story. It's the first time we've really seen Trump's base break with him to this degree. Even though the impulse to rally around their leader remains as each new story breaks, no matter how Trump tries to change the subject, the calls for his administration to release more information from the Epstein files are only growing louder. The issue transcends politics — it's a devastating reminder of the victims of the crimes committed by Epstein and those who enabled him. As far as how it's playing out on Capitol Hill, Democrats and even some Republicans are trying to hold the Trump administration's feet to the fire. Both parties believe the GOP could pay a political price on the issue as they look to defend their congressional majorities in next year's midterms. That includes Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of our guests on 'Meet the Press' this Sunday. 'People will become apathetic again. They'll say, we elected President Trump. We gave him a majority in the House and the Senate, and they couldn't even release evidence of an underage sex trafficking ring. They couldn't even bring themselves to release that. I thought we were the party of family values, and I guess we're not,' Massie said this week on the 'Redacted' podcast. And Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna of California — another one of our guests this Sunday — argue the issue has salience on multiple fronts. They note it divides Trump and his base while also making a relatively popular appeal for transparency, one piece of a broader Democratic line of attack that the administration isn't being open with the American people. While it's unsurprising that Democrats overwhelmingly disapprove of how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein files, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 71% of independents disapprove, too. And Republicans are about evenly divided, with 40% approving and 36% disapproving of the administration's handling of the issue. The political cost for Republicans isn't clear yet. Will it depress the enthusiasm of voters Republicans are scrambling to motivate to turn out with Trump not on the ballot? Will it force the party onto the defense at a time where it needs to be cementing public sentiment about its landmark tax cuts and spending bill, which Democrats are already weaponizing as a key midterm issue? Could Democrats overplay their hand if it overshadows their message on the most important issue to many voters, the economy? We'll discuss this and more on this Sunday's 'Meet the Press.' In addition to Khanna and Massie, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will also be joining us. Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week's reader question is on Republicans' attempts to draw new congressional maps in Texas. 'Is it legal what Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans want to do for Trump?' To answer that, we turned to senior politics editor Scott Bland. Here's his response: Redistricting happens every decade after the decennial census, so that each state has representation in the House of Representatives reflecting its official population and each district in a state has the same number of people in it. But this isn't the first time someone has moved to change the maps mid-decade. In fact, this isn't even the first time it's happened in Texas. In 2002, Texas Republicans gained full control of the state Legislature, and they decided the following year to draw a new map to replace a court-drawn one that had been imposed for that decade — and to increase the GOP advantage in the state. 'I'm the majority leader and we want more seats,' Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters at the time. What flies in Texas doesn't necessarily fly everywhere, though. Colorado Republicans also tried to redraw maps in their state in 2003, but the state Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution forbade revisiting the maps more than once per decade. While Democrats are eager to fight back against the GOP's effort to draw more red seats in Texas, such obstacles could stand in their way. As New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs told Politico this week, 'I understand those in New York who are watching what's happening in Texas and Ohio want to offset their unfair advantage.' But, he added, 'The [state] Constitution seems pretty clear that this redistricting process should be done every 10 years.'


NBC News
41 minutes ago
- NBC News
A global HIV/AIDS program that saved millions of lives faces cuts under the Trump administration
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering a dramatic cutback and eventual phasing out of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. program to combat HIV/AIDS in developing countries that has been widely credited with saving 26 million lives since its inception in 2003, according to multiple congressional and administration officials. Created during the George W. Bush administration, PEPFAR was launched with star-power support from U2 frontman and advocate for developing countries, Bono, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. In the two decades since, it enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress. But as the Trump administration has sought to cut costs across the U.S. government, particularly for global aid programs, PEPFAR has come up on the chopping block. The administration initially proposed a cut of $400 million from next year's budget, but that funding was restored at the last minute by the Republican-led Senate last week, keeping it going in the short term. Four congressional aides told NBC News that the program was virtually frozen, along with most funding for USAID, in early February. Contracts with providers were put on hold and funding was reduced to what they called a 'trickle.' They said that most promised State Department waivers for critical care did not materialize, and that 51% of current PEPFAR appropriations were either terminated or were not functional. 'They're sitting on the money,' congressional officials said. 'We're not seeing it in the field.' According to the aides, in April, the State Department's then-director of the Office of Foreign Assistance, Peter Marocco, working with Elon Musk's DOGE team to dismantle foreign aid, briefed Congress that PEPFAR would refocus on maternal and child HIV transmission, excluding LGBT individuals and most preventative care that the program has done for decades. Earlier this month, a senior State Department official told reporters, 'The program was actually drowning in too much money, in some cases, you know, sort of going beyond its core mandate.' The official said, 'So instead, we're going to focus on that lifesaving care' and 'work with countries on self-reliance' to ensure there is not a gap in coverage. The senior official said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is drawing a distinction between people who have HIV and need lifesaving direct treatment, and preventative care for sex workers as well as bisexual and gay men. The State Department official also said, 'It doesn't mean that the United States has to pay for every single thing around the world." "A lot of these countries, they've graduated to the point where their HIV rates are low enough and their economy is healthy enough that they can continue to pay for some of these things. We can get in, make positive change and then get out rather than paying forever so that every sex worker in Africa has PrEP," the official said, referring to HIV medication. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas testified to Congress last week that, overall, in the administration's budget request for the next fiscal year there is a 54% cut in PEPFAR's administrative, nondirect care funds. That is in addition to a 15% cut in the department's budget request for direct care in the same budget request. A global health staff of 700 people plus contractors in the field prior to President Donald Trump taking office has been reduced to 80 people after recent firings. Last month, White House budget director Russell Vought told a Senate committee, without providing evidence, that PEPFAR spent $9.3 million 'to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis.' Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Africa Subcommittee, told NBC News that PEPFAR had always planned to get countries that had developed their own hospitals and health care systems, such as South Africa, to take over funding the program by 2030. According to Coons, that transition is already underway. But he and other critics of the current budget cuts said that it is not possible in low-income conflict zones, such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti, to replace the U.S program anytime soon. Still, according to a draft planning memo reported by The New York Times, the State Department would shut down U.S. support in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Vietnam within two years. Nations with high HIV infection rates, including Kenya, Zimbabwe and Angola, would get three to four years, the Times reported, while lower-income countries would get up to eight years under the proposal. NBC News has not viewed the draft plan and a State Department official told NBC News it has not been finalized. Dr. Robert Black, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who evaluated PEPFAR for Congress, told NBC News, 'I think two years for a number of countries, for many countries in Africa, would be too short,' adding, 'I just can't imagine two years would be an effective transition.' Black also said maintaining prevention is 'clearly important" and that withdrawing funding for prevention, which is contemplated under the Trump plan, would increase HIV rates and expand the burden. Rubio, who as a senator supported PEPFAR and other foreign aid, defended $20 billion in overall proposed budget cuts to the Senate Foreign Relations committee in May, citing 'duplicative, wasteful and ideologically driven programs.' Asked last week about the PEPFAR cuts, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served in the Bush administration when PEPFAR was launched, told NBC News at the Aspen Security Forum, 'I do think PEPFAR is going to not only survive, I think it's going to be just fine. ... There will be some scaling back, and it's probably worth it to take a look at focusing on what we really need to focus on. We've become pretty dispersed and diffuse in the kinds of programs that we were running.' But, she added, 'what makes America different as a great power is that we have not led just with power, but we've also led with principle.' Later at the conference, Rice said launching PEPFAR was 'the proudest moment' in all of her government service. But she added that the U.S. also wants to build other countries' capacity and health care systems to sustain themselves. Former President Bush, in rare criticism of Trump's policies, praised fired foreign aid workers in a video last month. He told the State Department employees who had been fired, 'You've shown the great strength of America through your work, and that is our good heart.' Citing PEPFAR'S lifesaving work, Bush said, 'Is it in our interest that 25 million people who would have died, now live? I think it is. On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your hard work, and God bless you.' In a video, Bono told the foreign aid staff in verse, 'They called you crooks — when you were the best of us, there for the rest of us. And don't think any less of us, when politics makes a mess of us. It's not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick. If this isn't murder. I don't know what is.'