“Starving Americans to Secure Submission”
Trump’s Cynical, Deadly Plan to Stop Food Assistance--And How We Can Respond
This piece originally appeared on Fran Quigley’s blog Housing Is A Human Right on October 30, 2025.
Photo by James Gathany, Mary Anne Fenley, USCDCP on Pixnio
In Lessons from Eviction Court, I wrote about a client of ours who I called Ashley. (Not her real name.) Ashley made $13.50 per hour at two home healthcare jobs. That was not enough income to cover both rent and food for her and her two children. So Ashley skipped meals—a lot.
As the saying goes, “the rent eats first.“
The adage reflects the cruel zero-sum reality where Ashley’s family and millions of others try to survive on incomes that do not meet survival needs. So the trade-offs sometimes go the other way, too.
This week in class we watched the excellent, heartbreaking Netflix documentary, Lead Me Home, which follows several homeless people and families. One family, which like Ashley’s is a mother and two daughters, is living out of their car. When an outreach worker asked how the family became homeless, the mother described a mid-month food vs. shelter conflict caused by losing access to food stamps aka SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Now the money you have allotted for rent has to pay for food,” she explained. “Because what is an immediate concern? Your child eating that night, or the rent that’s due in two weeks? I’m going to feed my kids.”
With SNAP benefits scheduled to shut down on November 1st, many of the 42 million low-income people who rely on the program are going to face the same horrible choices. Beyond hunger, I shudder to think of the avalanche of housing and other problems that will gather momentum if food help is cut off.
“A Nation of Breadlines and Soup Kitchens”
The back story starts with the federal government shutdown. Trump and Congressional Republicans are insisting that any government funding legislation remove help for people paying health insurance premiums. Democrats won’t agree, pointing out that the elimination of the healthcare funding would cause millions of Americans to lose health coverage. Public health researchers at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania calculate that the Republican plan could lead to more than 51,000 people dying every year.
Four weeks into the impasse, the Donald Trump administration has announced it will refuse to continue funding food stamps during the shutdown, cutting off the one in eight people in the U.S. who rely on the program. There are billions of dollars in available reserves to keep the nutrition assistance flowing, but Trump refuses to release them.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published an excellent explainer about Trump’s legal obligation to access those funds to keep food benefits going. And 25 states have sued the Trump administration, asking for a court order forcing the program to continue.
Beyond the legal analysis, the most accurate “real talk” assessment of the situation I have seen comes from Abby J. Leibman, president of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger and co-founder of the California Women’s Law Center. She published an article in Ms. Magazine article this week entitled “The Trump Administration’s Latest Power Play: Starving Americans to Secure Democrats’ Submission.”
“Even suggesting that Republicans are protecting this program while Democrats are trying to destroy it is like an abuser blaming his victim for getting in the way of his fist,” she wrote. “Let’s be clear: SNAP is a federal entitlement program, and providing funds to keep benefits flowing is not optional for the administration. There are billions in contingency funds already allocated for SNAP by Congress for precisely this purpose.”
We are at risk of becoming “a nation of breadlines and soup kitchens,” Leibman wrote. She is right. Given the zero-sum game that comes with living on poverty wages, I expect the eviction court lines will start getting longer, too.
Mazon is one of many organizations coordinating action campaigns that enable us to quickly reach out to our senators and representatives to insist that food assistance continue. Click here for the link to the Mazon “Take Action” portal .
I just used it to reach out to my senators and member of Congress—it took less than three minutes. On behalf of Ashley and her daughters and 42 million other Americans, I hope you do, too.
