Today’s Action: Tell our leaders to reverse Trump’s changes to food stamps

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (or “food stamps”), is one of the most highly-regarded social safety nets in our country, helping to feed more than 42 million Americans a year. Predominantly serving families with children, the elderly, and disabled Americans. SNAP is an absolute lifesaving necessity.

Which, of course, is why Trump is wrecking it.

Trump has proposed changes to SNAP that are expected to knock millions of Americans off the program, an 11% reduction in beneficiaries. Nearly 700,000 Americans will lose benefits due to work requirements that have already taken effect (for the heartbreaking reality of what this looks like, check out this Atlantic article).

Two other changes, concerning how most states automatically enroll families into SNAP if they receive other benefits, will cut SNAP access entirely to 3.7 million households, reduce monthly benefits for 5.2 million, and bump nearly 1 million students off of free or reduced lunch programs.

Call or email your Members of Congress and State Reps, and tell them to take legislative action to reverse Trump’s recent attacks on SNAP. And follow your call with a letter to the editor of your local newspaper… because the loss of SNAP is something every American should be moved by.

The work-requirement rule has existed in other forms since 1996, but with state ability to waive the restriction. Trump’s change eliminates the waiver, cementing the policy.

And local areas that tested pilot programs of the Trump version of this plan saw a severe increase in food instability and pressure on local charities to pick up where SNAP dropped off. This so-called right-wing ‘solution’ to unemployment is completely inhumane, unsupported by research and testing, and an unwelcome throwback to an American era before social safety nets existed.

We must speak up now for those with fewer resources to fight for themselves, and keep SNAP the catch-all for poverty-driven hunger that it was designed to be.

Email or call (202.224.3121) your Members of Congress and State reps, and tell them to speak out and reverse Trump’s changes to SNAP. And, reach Republican and Democratic voters alike by writing a letter to your local newspaper editor.

Trump’s stigmatization and punishment of the poor and hungry is a betrayal of those most in need, and we cannot allow this to happen without a fight.