Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 9.2% (124 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0%
• Availability Heuristic - 12.1% (164 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 4.6% (62 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 2.6% (35 hits)
• Framing Effect - 13.7% (185 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 1.8% (24 hits)
• Status Quo Bias - 2.4% (33 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 1.4% (19 hits)
• Optimism Bias - 1.2% (16 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 5.8% (79 hits)

Article text

Trump’s SNAP Cuts Leave States and Counties Facing Spiraling Hunger Crisis

One year after President Donald Trump signed legislation that slashed federal health care and food assistance to pay for tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy, officials on the front lines of the nation’s affordability crisis say the costs to state and local governments of filling holes left by Congress in the safety net are unsustainable.

Demand for food assistance is rising as children and the elderly go hungry and millions struggle to afford the rising prices, leaving state and local governments in a tight fiscal squeeze.

At the Flagstaff Family Food Center, the central food bank in Flagstaff, Arizona, president and CEO Ethan Amos said the number of people coming in for hot meals has nearly doubled over the past year, and the demand for take-home groceries continues to rise.

“We are a typical food bank operation, and we’ve seen the needs in the community increase so much … it’s just a skyrocketing need that has been increasing over time,” Amos told Truthout.

Trump signed H.R. 1 — sweeping austerity legislation that he misleadingly named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — into law on July 2025, and it remains one of the GOP’s only major legislative achievements since winning a congressional majority in 2024.

Along with cutting $1 trillion from federal programs that help people maintain health coverage, H.R. 1 cut the funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $187 billion and shifted the costs of preventing starvation and malnutrition onto state and local governments.

Experts say that SNAP (commonly known as “food stamps”) has become the United States’ most effective tool for fighting hunger by putting small amounts of money to buy groceries directly in the hands of people in need.

Nearly two-thirds of SNAP benefits go to families with children, and the cuts to food stamps are rippling across local economies, affecting everyone regardless of their income, officials say.

“You are going to see higher health care costs, because hungry people generally cost the health care system more, and you’re going to see it in your schools; hungry kids are more expensive to educate,” said Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha in a call with reporters on Wednesday.

“These costs don’t ever go away; they just shift somewhere else.

So that is the choice facing counties if the [state] legislature can’t make up for the gap from the feds.”

Funded largely by Congress but administered by state and county governments, SNAP plays a critical role in reducing poverty and hunger by improving health and economic outcomes, supporting low-wage workers, and serving as “the first line of defense against hunger during economic downturns,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

However, the SNAP program has suffered the deepest cuts in its history under Trump and the GOP, which cut funding and shifted costs onto the states in order to pay for tax cuts.

Millions of people are losing support they need to buy groceries as the price of food and gasoline continues to rise due to inflation.

In the 12 states where data is available, more than 1.6 million people have lost SNAP assistance since Trump signed the H.R. 1, including 700,000 children, according to the CBPP.

As of February, about 4.3 million people had lost access to food stamps nationally.

Trump promised to bring down inflation but then sabotaged that goal by placing tariffs on international trade and launching a war on Iran that has strangled global energy supplies.

By early June, consumers in the U.S. were spending 4.2 percent more for food and energy than they were a year earlier, marking the highest rate of inflation over 12 months recorded in the past three years.

On top of rising housing and energy costs, many consumers experience sticker shock when buying food for their families.

“When families aren’t going to grocery stores, workers are getting less hours, and the ripple effects are just devastating in my opinion,” said Sarah Benatar, the treasurer of Arizona’s Coconino County, in an interview.

“This is impacting so many individuals who weren’t impacted before.”

Arizona has been hit the hardest by the SNAP cuts among the states.

Between July 2025 and March 2026, about 53 percent of SNAP recipients in Arizona lost the food assistance.

About 450,000 Arizonans now find it more difficult to put food on the table, pay bills, and stay housed, including the families of 196,000 children, according to the Arizona Center for Economic Progress.

Unless Congress reverses the cuts to SNAP, Benatar said Arizona lawmakers will be forced to choose between raising taxes or addressing a spiraling hunger crisis that damages local economies.

Trump’s cuts “are not really saving money, it’s just shifting the burden, it’s shifting the costs onto states,” Benatar said.

“So, what happens with state legislatures, they are trying to balance a budget, and in doing so counties are receiving less of the revenue we need to provide services.

At the same time, there is a great need.”

Coconino County is the second largest in Arizona and includes vast rural areas and Native American reservations, and Benatar said elderly people with fixed incomes are calling her office for support because they can no longer afford to pay the property taxes on their homes.

Benatar’s office often refers people to service providers, including Ethan Amos and his team at the Flagstaff Family Food Center.

“When SNAP was cut, I believe that many elected officials put a lot of confidence in food banks, thinking we could cover the gap,” Amos said.

“I think their confidence in food banks is misled.

We’ve already been overworked and have been doing so much, doubling our numbers even from a couple years ago.”

Amos estimates the SNAP cuts alone have increased demand at the Flagstaff food bank by about 23 percent, and the number of hot meals served on a daily basis has roughly doubled since July 2025.

When Amos first started working at the food bank four years ago, about 335,000 hot meals were served during community dinners over the course of a year.

In the first six months of 2026, the food bank has already served 330,000 hot meals.

“They are so grateful for the support we can provide them,” Amos said.

“And if we get them in the line for a few minutes, the second talking point after gratitude is really just that they are struggling to afford the groceries.

Housing, utilities, transportation, and food costs are forcing more people to rely on community meals.”

Benatar said Republicans in Congress hid the depth of SNAP cuts behind new requirements that are supposed to prevent fraud but, in reality, just push vulnerable people out of the program.

Able-bodied adults must now prove they are employed or looking for work to receive SNAP benefits, which requires state and local governments to spend money on expensive bureaucratic systems instead of food assistance for the vulnerable.

“We know that when you add work requirements you don’t increase work, you just increase need, and you drive people off [the program] in an unintended way,” Blaha said.

“And we know that if you cut off benefits like this, then you affect the whole economy.”

The Trump administration is also penalizing states for making “errors” when approving or denying applications for SNAP benefits.

As a result, states collectively owe the federal government an estimated $9 billion that would have otherwise gone toward feeding people, according to the CBPP.

In Arizona, where the “error rate” exceeded a 6 percent threshold imposed by Congress, officials are facing a $208 million penalty despite more residents losing their benefits there than in any other state.

If Trump and Republicans in Congress refuse to fully fund SNAP, then policymakers must at least give states until 2030 to adjust to the new bureaucratic costs of meeting these requirements, Benatar said.

“States need time, counties need time, and communities need time to have this implemented,” Benatar said.

“We’re already seeing the struggle today.

It’s not going to get any better.

It’s going to get significantly worse, and it’s going to impact everyone.”