Republicans are winning the war on people having enough to eat

There is no reason to believe that there was less need for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in December 2025 than there had been in July 2025 – no great increase in employment or wages, no sudden surge of a sense of prosperity across the nation – but 2.5 million fewer people were participating in SNAP in December than July.

This is not the immediate, clicky news of the day. As I write this, the secretary of the Navy, a big Trump donor with no relevant experience in, you know, running the Navy, has been fired while the Navy is blockading Iranian ports as part of Donald Trump's disastrous war. He is being replaced by someone whose impressive record as a naval officer is somewhat eclipsed by two failed runs for office in Virginia (as a Republican, obviously) in which he said that Monterey, California, is "a very dark place now, with a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over and we can’t let that happen in Virginia," and claimed, "I'm 100% disabled, you know, because just from being blown up in combat many times," despite having none of the medals that he would have gotten for being injured in combat.

That is all very bad. The senseless, cruel war entered into at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's behest with no realistic goals or understanding of the risks. The now former secretary of the Navy whose chief qualification was having raised a lot of money for Trump. The new acting secretary of the Navy who lied about his own combat injuries and the Wiccan takeover of a small city across the country from where he was running for office.

Probably by the time you're reading this, there will be some fresh hell to click on. It will feel more immediate than SNAP data from several months back.

But for 2.5 million people – probably more, since December – who are not on SNAP, food insecurity is presumably a very immediate problem. A do-we-have-enough-to-eat-today kind of problem.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this decline started before Republicans passed their "big beautiful bill," but accelerated after it. That's likely because:

Starting in 2027, most states will have to pay between 5 and 15 percent of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states. And the amount a state will have to pay will be based on current error rates, factoring in errors that states are making today. The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people.

That's just the beginning – the overall cut to SNAP through 2034 is $187 billion, estimated to take food away from 4 million people in a typical month at the height of the bill's impact.

The average SNAP benefit per person is $174 to $177 per month. Roughly two in five people getting SNAP benefits are children, one in five is elderly, and one in 10 is disabled – 79% of households participating in SNAP include someone in one of those categories.

$175 per month is not a lot of money for food – about $1.95 per meal if you want to eat three meals a day. The expectation is that it is a supplement to people's existing food budgets (it's right there in the name), but by definition it's a supplement people are getting because they need it, with 73% of households getting SNAP falling below the poverty level. With rent and basic utilities a stretch for many households, $1.95 per meal is a lifeline.

The 2.5 million people not getting that lifeline shows the signature Republican legislation of the past 15 months working according to plan.