SNAP changes are reshaping America's food safety net, threatening food access for millions

A new white paper from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Global Food Institute at The George Washington University finds that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provisions enacted one year ago under H.R. 1, the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," are already producing far-reaching consequences across the nation's food safety net, with millions of Americans losing access to federal nutrition assistance and related benefits.

The report, One Year Later: How H.R. 1's SNAP Policy Changes Are Reverberating Across the Food System, examines the first year following enactment of H.R. 1 and concludes that the law represents the most significant restructuring of SNAP in the program's 50-year history and has far-reaching implications across the entire food safety net. The authors argue that the legislation's sweeping cuts to food assistance stand in stark contrast to the administration's stated goal of improving Americans' diets and reducing chronic disease through its Make America Healthy Again initiative.

According to the analysis, H.R. 1 reduces federal SNAP funding by an estimated $187 billion over the next decade-a roughly 20 percent reduction in program funding. Since the law's passage in July 2025, SNAP participation has already declined by more than 4 million people, representing a 10 percent drop nationwide - with more reductions in participation expected.

"It is impossible to reconcile the Administration's MAHA rhetoric on reducing chronic disease in childhood with the cruel cutbacks to SNAP brought about by H.R. 1," said Joelle Johnson, deputy director for healthy food access at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a co-author of the white paper. "Whatever MAHA initiatives CSPI might have otherwise supported are completely subsumed by the biggest cut to SNAP in the program's history."

Researchers found little evidence that improved economic conditions explain the decline in SNAP participation. Instead, losses appear to be driven by new work reporting rules, restrictions on immigrant eligibility, increased administrative burdens, and state-level implementation changes.

The white paper also highlights the impact of eliminating SNAP-Ed, which previously accounted for nearly 45 percent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutrition education funding. In 2024 alone, SNAP-Ed programming reached more than 1.2 million participants through nutrition education, healthy cooking instruction, budgeting assistance, and physical activity initiatives.

"If we are serious about improving Americans' health, we need policies that make healthy food more accessible, not less," said Priya Fielding-Singh, director of policy and programs at the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and co-author of the white paper. "Cutting off food assistance for millions of families undermines MAHA's stated goals of improving diet quality and preventing chronic disease. Food security and public health go hand in hand."

Beyond SNAP itself, the report documents significant ripple effects throughout the broader food safety net. Because SNAP enrollment serves as a connector to other federal programs, reductions in SNAP participation are expected to create barriers to enrollment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), free school meals, energy assistance, and other support programs.

The report warns that many families who lose SNAP will no longer qualify for automatic enrollment pathways, forcing them to navigate separate application and verification processes that can result in delayed or lost benefits.

Schools may also face challenges as fewer students will be auto-enrolled into free school meals through direct certification and fewer schools will meet eligibility thresholds for the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools and districts serving a disproportionate share of low-income students to provide free meals to all students, according to the white paper.

Among the populations expected to be most affected are children, older adults, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, immigrant families, and rural communities. The report notes that more than 776,000 children in states reporting age-specific data have already lost SNAP benefits since enactment of the law.

The authors further express concern that the federal government's ability to measure the impact of these changes has been weakened by the discontinuation of the USDA's long-running national food security survey, which served as the primary tool for tracking hunger and food insecurity in the United States for nearly three decades.

"The populations bearing the greatest burden of these cuts-children, older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, and communities already facing the highest rates of diet-related disease-are precisely those for whom food and nutrition access matter most," the paper concludes. "Reducing food insecurity and improving diet quality are not competing goals. But they will be difficult to simultaneously achieve by cutting food assistance for vulnerable households. If the administration's health objectives are to be realized, the deep contradictions between H.R. 1 and the MAHA agenda will need to be reckoned with."

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Tags

• SNAP
• WIC
• Trump
• School Foods

Topics

• SNAP
• CSPI
• Government Accountability

Contact Info: , CSPI or , Global Food Institute at GW