Latest news with #foodassistance
CNN
2 days ago
- Health
- CNN
Cuts to food benefits stand in the way of RFK Jr.'s goals for a healthier national diet
Belinda McLoyd has been thinking about peanut butter. 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.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The biggest political fights over Trump's megabill are converging in Nevada
When it comes to President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' few places could be impacted more significantly than Nevada — one of the country's most closely divided swing states. For starters, Nevada is expecting the law's changes to Medicaid and food assistance to boot hundreds of thousands of residents from crucial social safety net programs. Like other states in similar predicaments, lawmakers will have to scramble to figure out how to find money in the state budget to keep many of those people covered. But the impacts of the law on that budget and the state's broader finances could be even more significant than in many others because Nevada has no state income tax, and therefore is extremely limited in how it can find new revenues. Then there are the new law's tax provisions related to tipped employees and gamblers that will have an outsize effect on a state whose economy relies almost exclusively on casinos and hospitality. The implementation of the new law in the coming months and years will occur as Nevada is set to play a key role in the next midterm and presidential elections. In 2026, Gov. Joe Lombardo — who has walked a fine line between offering praise for certain aspects of the megabill while pushing back against others — is seen as the most vulnerable Republican governor up for re-election. And Nevada's battleground 3rd District, represented by Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, will be a key race in the fight for the House majority. And in 2028, Nevada will likely again host critical contests for the White House and Senate. Democrats are already eager to go on offense against the law. State Rep. Steve Yeager, the Democratic speaker of the state Assembly, said he's already been contacted by many constituents who have expressed 'concern about what this bill might mean for them' and how they could be impacted by its changes to Medicaid, food assistance, energy credits, taxes on tips and gambling. Yeager added he was going 'to make sure that every single voter who goes to the ballot box here next year in 2026 knows about this bill and knows about the impact.' 'A low-revenue state' Approximately 1 in 3 Nevadans are on Medicaid, according to data from the state and KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, due in part to a massive expansion of the program back in 2013 by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, one of the first Republican governors to embark on Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Trump's law will institute steep cuts to Medicaid and food aid benefits mostly by establishing new work requirements, restrict state-levied fees on health care providers that are mostly used to fund Medicaid, and preclude the federal government from being responsible for reimbursing states any longer. In Nevada, as many as 100,000 people could fall off Medicaid as a result, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But unlike some other states, which may be able to shift funds around in their budgets to build financial support for affected residents, Nevada's hands are largely tied. It has no state income tax and has a state constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds majority to raise revenue. 'We don't have the funds to be able to fill these critical gaps,' Yeager said. 'We're a low-revenue state. … We're in a really tough place.' Nevada is also likely to be uniquely impacted by a pair of tax provisions. Starting in 2026, gamblers will have to pay more taxes under the GOP's new law. That's because the law will limit what gamblers can deduct from their yearly taxes to 90% of their losses. Bettors can currently deduct the entirety of their losses — up until their winnings. Bettors have expressed concerns that the provision could cause professional gambling in the U.S. to fold. And Nevada Democrats say it's all but certain to impact the bustling and crucial industry in the casino-laden state. 'This means if someone wins a big jackpot in Las Vegas and then loses that one jackpot later on, they would still be liable for 10% in taxes on gaming 'income,' even though they had not brought home anything,' Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said last week on the chamber floor. 'That's not just bad math, it's bad policy.' Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans have boasted of the law's provision that they call 'no tax on tips.' Trump unveiled the concept during a 2024 campaign event in Nevada, which is among the states with the highest concentration of service workers who rely on tips. 'If you're a restaurant worker, a server, a valet, a bellhop, a bartender, one of my caddies … your tips will be 100% yours,' Trump said of the policy idea during a January visit to Las Vegas shortly after he was sworn in for his second term. The law allows for a deduction on federal taxes of up to $25,000 in tipped income. At first glance, it appears it could be a boon for workers who rely heavily on tips. But economists at the Yale Budget Lab have written that 37% of all tipped workers don't earn enough money to even pay federal income tax, meaning that these people wouldn't gain from the new deduction. In addition, critics note the cap is relatively small and that it phases out once workers enter a higher income bracket ($150,000 per year). Plus, the provision only runs through 2028. Democrats also note that the law froze nearly all of the clean energy funds the state had received under President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Nevada, where scorching temperatures have led to soaring energy costs for voters and businesses, was among the states that claimed the most IRA funds used to incentivize clean energy investments and jobs, as well as home energy rebates. As those funds dry up, so too could financial relief for residents and businesses. 'With the undoing of some of the Inflation Reduction Act, losing monies that were in the bill, we're going to lose solar jobs — and I am confident that our power bills are going to increase,' Yeager said. A key gubernatorial race Those impacts will loom particularly large in next year's governor's race in Nevada. Even before Trump enacted the law, Lombardo, who won his 2022 election over Democrat Steve Sisolak by just 1.5 percentage points, was the only Republican governor up for re-election next year whose race was rated by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report as a 'toss-up.' Nevada Democrats have already aggressively sought to link Lombardo to the 'big, beautiful bill.' 'Lombardo will have to reckon with the damage done to Nevadans' lives and livelihoods because he was too cowardly to stand up to Trump,' said Nevada Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno. Lombardo, for his part, has praised some of the tax provisions in the law, but he also warned Congress not to make changes to Medicaid funding ahead of its passage. 'While my administration continues to assess this bill as it moves to get signed into law, Nevadans should be excited about the potential impacts of tax cuts, investments in small businesses and American manufacturing, and efforts to help secure our border,' Lombardo wrote on X the day before Trump signed it into law. A spokesperson for Lombardo declined to comment for this story but referred to that post on X, in which Lombardo also lauded the law's 'no tax on tips' provision. The spokesperson also referred to the letters Lombardo wrote to Congress and state legislators expressing his concerns about the bill's impact on Medicaid, plus a letter he wrote to Trump urging him to reconsider the gambling losses provision. Lombardo was also among just seven Republican governors who did not sign a May letter in support of Trump's proposed 'big, beautiful bill.' That tension underscores the bind many Republican incumbents are likely to find themselves in during next year's midterms as they seek to take credit for some of the tax-saving mechanisms of the bill while distancing themselves from the cuts that Democrats are already hammering them on — all while trying to avoid running afoul of Trump. Responding to questions about the political impacts of the law, John Burke, a spokesperson for the Lombardo-supporting Better Nevada state PAC, said in an email, 'Under Governor Lombardo's leadership, Nevada is finally getting back on track, and the people of our state are seeing results.' He pointed specifically to accomplishments on affordable housing and education. 'The Governor has been vocal about his support for eliminating taxes on tips and supports a return to previous law on gambling losses,' Burke added. State Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is so far the only Democrat who's entered the race against Lombardo, slammed the law for its impacts on health care and food assistance. He said 'servers and bartenders and hospitality workers are going to be getting played' by Republicans' 'no tax on tips' claims. This article was originally published on
New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Should Food Stamps Pay for Soda?
Should Americans on food assistance be able to use that money on soda? Starting in 2026, the answer in six states will be no. At least six others have proposed similar restrictions, and some states are also disallowing candy purchases. Each month, more than 40 million low-income Americans use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, to buy a portion of their groceries. Right now SNAP dollars can be used to buy any food or beverage from a grocery store except alcohol or hot food. Most of the current proposals to eliminate soda from SNAP come from reliably Republican states, but the partisan lines aren't straightforward. New York City applied for a similar exclusion in 2010 and Maine did as well in 2015, but both were denied permission by the Department of Agriculture. The recent Republican push to ban soda from SNAP coincides with changes to the program's funding and work requirements, via President Trump's policy bill, that could cause millions of Americans to lose benefits. The renewed soda scrutiny also raises more fundamental questions about the purpose of SNAP: Is restricting what you can buy with food assistance a common-sense public health policy, or an overreach that penalizes poor people? Note: States were categorized as "Change proposed by state" if their governor has moved to submit a waiver in 2025. Source: U.S.D.A. and various news reports on individual state proposals. Note: Changes to SNAP start in 2026. States were contacted directly to confirm any unclear language in their waivers, but not every state responded. Flavors of Capri Sun made with 100% juice would still be eligible for purchase in all states. Source: U.S.D.A. waivers. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Hakeem Jeffries Breaks House Record With Speech Bashing Trump's Tax Bill
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke for eight hours and 44 minutes on the House floor on Thursday, in a marathon speech delaying the passage of = Donald Trump's Medicaid-and-food-assistance slashing, tax-gift-for-the-wealthy abomination of a reconciliation bill. The speech breaks the record for longest ever delivered on the House floor, previously held by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Jeffries spent much of his hours-long 'magic minute' speech reading statements, letters, and stories from individuals who have benefited from Medicaid and other programs, or have written in opposition to the legislation's cuts to the federal health care program for the disabled and poor. 'Donald Trump's deadline may be Independence Day. That ain't my deadline,' Jeffries said of the president's demand that the bill be sent to his desk for signature by the Fourth of July. 'We don't work for Donald Trump. We work for the American people. That's why we're right here now, on the floor of the House of Representatives, standing up for the American people.' The people are being set up to suffer, as Jeffries highlighted. 'People will die. Tens of thousands, perhaps year after year after year, as a result of the Republican assault on the healthcare of the American people,' he said. 'I'm sad. I never thought that I'd be on the House floor saying this is a crime scene. And House Democrats want no part of it.' Republicans dismissed the stalling tactic, which will only delay the House's final passage of the bill through Congress. 'The sooner we get this done, the better,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday. 'If Hakeem Jeffries would stop talking, we could deliver relief for the American people.' 'It's an utter waste of everyone's time, but you know, that's part of the system here,' Johnson told reporters. 'We'll land this plane before July Fourth.' While Jefferies is making the GOP wait to take their victory lap, the majority of the delays related to the bill's passage have stemmed from disagreements within Johnson's own party. On Wednesday night, another record was broken in the House when Republicans forced the longest vote in the history of the lower chamber, holding a rule vote open for seven hours while they attempted to browbeat the party's deficit hawks into submission. While Johnson may consider a lengthy speech a waste of his time, the over 11 million American who may lose health care as a result of the bill's Medicaid cuts would hope that their elected representatives delay passage as long as possible. Unfortunately for those affected, delay was all Jeffries' speech did, and the Democratic Party's accomplishments in the early months of Trump's second term haven't amounted to much more than symbolic theatrics. More from Rolling Stone One Minute Is Missing From the Epstein Video. Conspiracy Theorists Are Losing Their Minds Trump Maybe, Finally Realizes Putin Has Been Playing Him 7 Overlooked Provisions in Trump and the GOP's Ugly Tax Bill Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Uber Eats adds more grocery and convenience stores accepting SNAP, EBT
Americans who rely on government-funded food assistance can now use their benefits with Uber Eats for more than 50 grocery and convenience store chains across the country, including Albertson's, CVS, Smart & Final, Vons, Walgreens and more. On Wednesday, Uber Eats announced it was expanding its list of retailers for households using SNAP -- the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- or Electronic Benefits Transfer payments, commonly referred to as EBT, for purchases made on the delivery platform. "We believe that everyone deserves the convenience of delivery, and with this growing list of merchant partners we can continue to provide access to the fresh food that families and individuals need, especially those without access to reliable transportation for whom food delivery can be a lifeline," Hashim Amin, head of grocery and retail delivery at Uber North America, said in a statement. Uber Eats to accept SNAP benefits for groceries following announcement from Instacart In the months ahead, Uber said its teams will coordinate the addition of more retailers who will accept SNAP and EBT payments on Uber Eats orders. What grocery stores on Uber Eats accept SNAP, EBT? The following U.S. retailers now accept SNAP EBT benefits for Uber Eats orders: 7-Eleven ACME Albertson's Andronico's Balducci's Cardenas Markets Carrs Cub Food CVS Dierbergs Duane Reade El Rancho El Super Fairplay Foods Family Dollar Fiesta Mart Food Bazaar Food Town FoodMaxx Giant Eagle Gopuff Harveys Supermarket Hy-Vee Jewel Osco King's Food Market Los Altos Ranch Market Lucky Supermarkets Market District Meijer Morton Williams Pavilions Randall's Safeway Save A Lot SaveMart Sedano's Shaw's Shoppers Food Warehouse Smart & Final Speedway Sprouts Star Market Stew Leonards Super King Markets Superlo Foods Tom Thumb Tony's Fresh Market Vons Walgreens Wegmans Winn-Dixie Customers can browse through SNAP-enabled retailers and grocery items within the app via a new SNAP icon, which will highlight the eligible orders. Payments are powered by Forage, a mission-driven USDA-approved payments infrastructure company that processes government benefits. Solve the daily Crossword
