Please, sir, I want some more
With passage of Trump’s big, bad, bloodthirsty bill, estimates are that $285 billion dollars will be cut in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (SNAP), also known as food stamps, in the next decade. That’s $285,000,000,000.00 for food that hungry children and adults in our country will be denied.
Tenor. Scene from “Oliver Twist.”
Even before the bill passed last week, the Greater Boston Food Bank and Mass General Brigham reported that more than one in three Massachusetts households faced food insecurity in the past year. Twenty-four percent of Massachusetts residents experienced “very low food insecurity,” defined by the US Department of Agriculture as a situation when households experience reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns due to a lack of money or other resources for food. 1,700,000 people in our state without enough to eat. Out of a population of 7,136,000.
Even before the bill passed, The Daily Table, one of the largest food banks in Boston, announced its closing. After serving more than three million people throughout the city for more than a decade, high food prices and an “uncertain funding environment” forced them to close.
Even before the bill passed, other pantries across the country “were struggling to stay open after the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March 2025, quietly cut $1 billion in 2025 funding for food relief programs that have historically supported the nation’s most disadvantaged communities,” according to The Hill.
Even before Trump’s bill passed, the USDA cut funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which supported food banks, and canceled the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, “USDA-led initiatives that paid farmers and ranchers to produce the food that pantries and schools distributed to those in need,” as reported in The Hill. “Funding is no longer available,” a USDA spokesperson told Politico. Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Brooke Rollins called the programs “non-essential.” The programs, which not only provided nutritious food for children, but also “a stable market for small- and medium-size farms,” were considered by Rollins to be “an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary,” as reported in Edible Berkshires.
Even before Trump’s bill passed, Massachusetts was facing $3.3 million in federal cuts that would directly impact aid to the food insecure. The Greater Boston Food Bank was expecting to lose 122,000 cases of essential food items.
And now, the bill has passed. Millions who receive SNAP will no longer qualify and will lose their benefits altogether; others will receive less than they do now. Many food banks and pantries will close. More children will go to bed hungry. Those statistics we mentioned at the beginning of this letter? That one in three Massachusetts households faced food insecurity in the past year. That 24 percent of Massachusetts residents experienced very low food insecurity. It will get worse. Over the next decade, the new cuts will increase hunger and cause irreparable damage to the health, education, and future of a generation.
“It is critical that we continue to sound the alarm, even as all indications are that the 'leaders' in DC are not listening,” Ted Wilson, interim executive director of Bootstraps in Beverly, told Leading Ladies. “The bill creates devastating cuts to programs that are essential to care for children and families facing food insecurity. Elimination of exemptions from certain time limits for caregivers will only make it harder for single parents, grandparents raising their grandchildren and unpaid caregivers to qualify for food assistance. Time limits make it harder for people with low incomes to access the benefits that they need and disproportionately harm women and people of color in low-paying jobs. The bill also strips SNAP eligibility from some lawfully present immigrants, including asylees and refugees, who fled persecution and are trying to rebuild their lives from nothing. The anxiety surrounding these cuts is already driving more Beverly-area people to our food pantry on a daily basis. That is certain to increase when these cuts become actual.”
What can we do?
Give to our local food banks and pantries. Think Bootstraps locally and the Greater Boston Food Bank. You can also find a bank or pantry near you here.
And work for midterm candidates who are committed to fighting for legislation that will protect the vulnerable among us. We will begin sharing the platforms of midterm candidates in close contests in a few weeks.
The fight isn’t over. We can’t let it be.
No one should go hungry in the richest country in the world. Now or ever.
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team