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    I’m an American relying on food stamps. This country has turned us into lab rats

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    It is 10 November, and my refrigerator is almost empty.I am, in fact, hungry as I write this. It is not that I do not have food at all; it is that I do not have the inclination to eat a can of tuna for breakfast, nor do I have the time to cook the winter squash my neighbor gave me.I am one of 41 million Americans who rely on Snap to make ends meet. When I offered to write about my experience during the government shutdown, it looked like we were not going to get any food assistance at all. And then we were. And then we weren’t.For weeks, the administration has been using our precarious survival as a bargaining block. Will they eat, or won’t they?This is what life is in Mapleton, Oregon, population 527. One white-spired church, one general store, one diner, one bar, one food bank where people line up two hours before the doors open.Roughly one in six Oregonians rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) to buy groceries, but it it worse here in the sticks. Our 22% poverty rate is double the state average, and even higher for young families: 44% of the kids in this school district live below the poverty level.I am not writing this with self pity. I do not have kids and my rent is very low, due to the generosity of friends. I understand that my version of poverty – the kind where you are down to canned tuna and raisins – is not the same as starvation. I feel fortunate to live in one of the states with a governor who has stood up to the federal government. That was heartening – especially after weeks of stress.But it still seems to me that we, America’s low-income people, have been treated like lab animals in a sick political experiment. Oh good, they’re giving us food! Oh wait, they’re not.When I say “giving us food”, it makes it sound like we do not work or do for ourselves. That is simply not true. Even with a regular allotment of Snap benefits and a handout from the food bank, it takes true ingenuity to get through the month. And while we are cooking beans from scratch, we are also working or hustling to find work.Take for instance, my cousin’s daughter Alissa, 24, who pays $1,000 a month to live in what she describes as “a roach-infested” slum in a nearby town, where it is slightly easier to find work.Her partner was a fisher but now works at a fishing supply store in order to spend more time with his family. Alissa used to be a full-time barista, but her $13.50 an hour did not make sense if it all went to daycare. She still hustles jobs in the so-called gig economy, but it is not enough. After taxes and rent, there is barely enough to cover their bills. She is reliant on Snap for their food.When I talked to her a week ago, she was stressed.“I’m really worried,” she said. “Not just about my family but the whole town. There’s not a lot of food banks to begin with and their funding was already cut earlier in the year.”The problem is that most people who get Snap benefits are like me: we were already running low on food before the end of October. We have been scrambling for weeks. And out here in rural Oregon, we make do with what is in front of us. “It’s hunting season so he’s out in his spare time,” Alissa said of her partner. They also forage for wild food.All this hunting, foraging and cooking from scratch might sound romantic, but less so when you consider she is living in a crap apartment and breaking Instacart rules by bringing her daughter on the job.“There’s too many people that simply don’t have the insight into what life is really like for the majority of us,” she said.For decades, I survived without relying on the government safety net that our tax dollars fund. But in recent years, everything has been getting harder. AI ate up most of my contract work. Competition is stiff so I cannot raise my rates – I make the same amount per hour that I did five years ago, but it has about half the buying power. I began racking up credit card debt to pay my bills.Last fall, I was awarded $250 in Snap benefits. It was not enough to survive the month. Then my Snap benefits were reduced, first because I found meager part-time work and then again for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, grocery prices soared.I quit being choosy at the food bank, and started picking up stuff I would not normally eat – AKA stockpiling food. Off-brand mac and cheese, a can of peaches. The thing about food insecurity is that you are always worrying. You are always doing mental math, figuring out how to substitute key ingredients or spruce up the pot of lentils you have been eating all week.And then there’s shame. At first, I refused to go to the food bank because I worried I would run into someone I knew. Now I realize the fallacy of that: if I run into someone at the food bank, it’s because we’re in the same boat – or they are there to help. I don’t feel shame any more. I feel solidarity and anger.I am angry there are so many of us. That I cannot make a living from hard work at a job I am good at. That I have been writing about my own food insecurity for 15 years.I am angry that I have worked so hard to get here, and I am angry for all the people who have had it worse. The furloughed workers who have not been paid. My friend Kevin who is unable to work because an insurance agency has denied him back surgery for an injury he got on the job. My friend Mel, who has been working for a hotel chain for seven years, and lost her Snap and healthcare assistance because she got a minuscule raise. All the people with toothaches they cannot treat, all of us with overdue electric bills.Every month the lines are longer at our food bank while rich people scheme ways to avoid taxes and blame us for the problems their policies create. Now it looks like some Democrats at the federal level are willing to play nice with the Republicans for political gain – at the expense of essential healthcare subsidies for the working poor and middle class? That doesn’t strike me as moral, either.I am not alone in my anger. I am part of a rising tide.“The amount of propaganda and gaslighting the government has been doing is sickening,” Alissa said. “Any amount of either is a sign of a failed system in my book. I mean truly imagine having to trick someone into agreeing with you because you knew they’d be against your policies if you were upfront.”She is part of a family group chat where they discuss health, parenting, and politics. “My Maga grandma definitely thinks I’m a dumb liberal, even though I’m not a liberal,” she said with a laugh. “What more people need to understand is it’s never me versus you, Democrat versus Republican, or Maga versus lib. It’s the people versus exploitation.”Here is your report from rural America: the stress, frustration and disgust are off the charts. Conspiracy theories swirl and some don’t sound that crazy to me. Two I heard this week: either they want to push people to rebel so they can invoke the Insurrection Act, or they want us all so broken that we do not have the energy to defend our rights, or even be there for one other.It’s hard to speak up when your teeth hurt. It’s hard to stand up when you are hungry. It’s hard to show up when you can’t afford gas. More

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      US agriculture department tells states to ‘undo’ Snap benefits for families in need

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      The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is directing states to “immediately undo” any steps that have been taken to send out full food aid benefits to low-income Americans, following a supreme court order on Friday that temporarily halted a lower court order requiring those payments.The USDA’s directive, issued in a memo on Saturday, followed a supreme court order granting the Trump administration’s emergency request to pause an order for the USDA to provide full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits during the ongoing federal government shutdown, which is now in its 40th day.That lower court ruling, issued on Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the Snap program for November by Friday, rather than issuing only partial benefits. The ruling led to some of the roughly 42 million Americans enrolled in Snap – commonly known as food stamps – to begin receiving their full benefits on Friday from the states, which issue the payments of federal dollars.But on Friday night, the program was thrown into chaos again when the supreme courtagreed to temporarily pause the order to allow an appeals court to review the Trump administration’s appeal.In response to the supreme court’s decision, the USDA, which delivers the money to the states, issued its directive that any payments that had been made under the prior orders are considered “unauthorized”.“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of agriculture, wrote to state Snap directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”The memo warned: “Failure to comply with this memorandum may results in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administration costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”As the Associated Press reports, it remains unclear if the directive applies to states using their some of their own funds to sustain the program, or just to ones relying entirely on federal money. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for clarification from the AP.Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator for Alaska, said it would be “shocking” if the order applied to states using their own money to support the program.“It’s one thing if the federal government is going to continue its level of appeal through the courts to say, ‘No, this can’t be done,’” Murkowski told the AP. “But when you are telling the states that have said this is a significant enough issue in our state, we’re going to find resources, backfill or front load, whatever term you want, to help our people, those states should not be penalized.”On Sunday several state leaders criticized the memo.Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, refused to abide by the directive.“No,” Evers said in a statement responding to the memo. “Pursuant to and consistent with an active court order, Wisconsin legally loaded benefits to cards, ensuring nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, including nearly 270,000 kids, had access to basic food and groceries.”He added that the Trump administration had “assured Wisconsin and other states that they were actively working to implement full SNAP benefits for November and would ‘complete the processes necessary to make funds available”, adding that “they have failed to do so to date.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our administration is actively in court fighting against the Trump administration’s efforts to yank food assistance away from Wisconsin’s kids, families and seniors and we are eager for the court to resolve this issue by directing the Trump administration to comply with court orders and provide the certainty to the many Wisconsin families and businesses who rely on FoodShare,” Evers said.Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, also condemned the directive in a statement on Sunday, saying: “If President Trump wants to penalize states for preventing Americans from going hungry, we will see him in court.”“Massachusetts residents with funds on their cards should continue to spend it on food” she said. “These funds were processed in accordance with guidance we received from the Trump Administration and a lower court order, and they were processed before the Supreme Court order on Friday night.”“President Trump should be focusing on reopening the government that he controls instead of repeatedly fighting to take away food from American families,” she added.Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota, also criticized the memo, saying that “cruelty is the point”, adding: “It is their choice to do this.”Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      US judge orders Trump administration to fully fund Snap benefits in November

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      A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits for November.The ruling by US district judge John J McConnell Jr gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, though it is unlikely the people that rely on it will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund Snap,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial Snap payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”The Trump administration said last month that it would not pay benefits at all for November because of the federal shutdown. Last week, two judges ordered the government to pay at least partial benefits using an emergency fund. It initially said it would cover half, but later said it would cover 65%.The plaintiffs want the benefits to be fully funded.The US Department of Agriculture said last month that benefits for November wouldn’t be paid because of the federal government shutdown. That set off a scramble by food banks, state governments and the nearly 42 million Americans who receive the aid to find ways to ensure access to groceries.The program serves about one in eight Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8bn per month nationally. More

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      Snap cuts are leaving one in eight Americans hungry. Here’s how you can help

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      As the US government shutdown continues, nearly 42 million people face a threat to their food supply. Funding for the Snap program – commonly known as food stamps – expired on Saturday, leaving recipients’ fate uncertain. “It comes down to paying for my medications and my bills or buying food for myself and for my animals,” a Missouri veteran told the Guardian. A California resident described being “housebound because I need a couple of spinal cord surgeries so this is really gonna hurt me because I cannot work, and thereby earn money to put food on the table”.Last week, a judge blocked the Trump administration from suspending benefits entirely. But on Monday, the administration said it would provide those enrolled in the program with only half of what they usually receive. Now, food banks are struggling under the weight of “unprecedented demand”, said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer of Feeding America, a network of food banks across the US. “One in eight people in our country right now don’t have enough to eat, and if you’re one of the seven who does, it’s time for you to activate.”If you are directly affected by the Snap cuts, you can find a nearby food bank here. Otherwise, here’s how you can lend a hand.Donate to food programsThanks to relationships with retailers, farmers and other food industry sources, “the cost per pound for food when a food bank is sourcing it is really, really, really low,” Nageotte said. “We can provide far, far more meals’ worth of food with $1 than you could if you took that same dollar and went to the grocery store.”With that in mind, you can donate funds to larger organizations such as Feeding America or New York City’s City Harvest, or to a local site. In the US, you can find a food bank near you via Feeding America, via the website FoodFinder, or via a quick Google search for food assistance programs in your area. Another option is FindHelp.org, which identifies a huge number of aid programs, including food assistance.You can also host your own food drive. Check in with a local bank to learn what is most needed and then encourage friends, family or co-workers to donate canned goods and other non-perishable items. Or you can help at a food bank near you by volunteering.“We need donations of money. We need donations of food. We need people who can volunteer and help us sort and pack boxes so that they can quickly be distributed to neighbors who need them. And we need folks who want to lift their voice and advocate” for a reopening of the government and full Snap funding, Nageotte said.Mutual aid programs also offer support – the Mutual Aid Hub is a good place to start. Or you can contribute to local community fridges (here are some examples in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles), which provide free food for neighborhoods.Support your neighbors directlyPerhaps there’s someone in your area who needs a hand paying for food or going to the grocery store. If so, you might offer to be a “grocery buddy” who goes shopping with a neighbor, or pitches in needed funds or a gift card. The phenomenon has grown during the shutdown, with people posting in neighborhood forums and Facebook groups to volunteer, CNN reports.You might also see whether your local school has a “backpack” meal program that helps ensure kids can eat outside school hours. Or you could organize and schedule a Meal Train, building a team of people to ensure a friend is getting regular meals. And if you enjoy Italian food, neighborhood ties, or Garfield the cat, you might consider becoming a volunteer chef in a lasagne-based program aiming to build close-knit communities.View image in fullscreenA bit of inspirationFaced with neighbors in need, people across the US are taking action.In the San Francisco Bay Area, restaurants are offering free meals; a pasta maker is giving free food to anyone who uses the not-so-secret code word. A Minneapolis breakfast spot is giving out pancakes to anyone who wants them, while a museum is providing free admission to Snap recipients, among many similar efforts across the city. Outside Boston, restaurants are banding together to donate a portion of their gift card sales to a food-recovery non-profit. In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel has opened a food donation center.Others are busy contacting their representatives, demanding an end to the shutdown and the hunger crisis. Feeding America and 5Calls offer templates to help you do the same.“I’ve been in this work for over 30 years, and if there is one thing that is true when there is a crisis, it is that the best of humanity shows up in full force,” Nageotte said. More

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      Share how the ongoing US government shutdown could affect your access to food or health insurance

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      More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.Meanwhile, Democrats are also refusing to vote to end the shutdown because health insurance costs are set to go up dramatically as insurers prepare for a lapse in subsidies. Senate Democrats are demanding that any short-term government funding deal include an extension of the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, while Trump and the Republicans have said they will not negotiate until the government is back up and running. Extending the subsidies would require $350bn in federal spending over the coming decade.We’d like to hear from Americans who are about to lose Snap food assistance due to the shutdown, as well as from people whose healthcare may become unaffordable due to rising premiums. Have you received any notices or paperwork that your insurance will change soon? Tell us. More

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      Americans brace for food stamps to run out: ‘The greatest hunger catastrophe since the Great Depression’

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      Two decades ago, Sara Carlson, then a mother of three, was newly single because of a traumatic event, and the US’s food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), helped her feed her children with free food supplies.“I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live,” said Carlson, 45, who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and now works as an operations manager for a wealth-management firm and serves on the board of Channel One Regional Food Bank, which works to increase food access.While the food stamps helped her, the government cut her off after a couple years because she started making too much money, which meant she again had to worry about having enough food.Now, nearly 42 million people around the country could face the same fate if the federal government shutdown continues and funding for Snap is cut off on 1 November.While Republicans have sought to blame Democrats for the potential loss in benefits that people who make little money rely on, those who work in the food-insecurity space say that is misleading because Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act already eliminated almost $187bn in funding for Snap through 2024, according to a congressional budget office estimate.Should funding run out at the end of the month, “we will have the greatest hunger catastrophe in America since the Great Depression, and I don’t say that as hyperbole”, said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America.Snap supports working families with low-paying jobs, low-income people aged 60 years and older and people with disabilities living on a fixed income, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.Snap participants generally must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. The average participant receives about $187 a month, the center reports.The Department of Agriculture recently sent a letter to regional Snap directors warning them that funding for Snap will run out at the end of the month and directing them to hold payments “until further notice”.More than 200 Democratic representatives have urged the USDA to use contingency funds to continue paying for Snap benefits.“There are clear steps the administration can and must take immediately to ensure that millions of families across the country can put food on their table in November,” a letter from the lawmakers to the USDA states. “SNAP benefits reach those in need this November would be a gross dereliction of your responsibilities to the American people. We appreciate your consideration of these requests.”Democrats have refused to pass a funding resolution to reopen the government because they want the legislation to include provisions to maintain healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration cut and are set to expire at the end of the year.A USDA spokesperson blamed Democrats for the upcoming loss in Snap benefits.“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats,” the spokesperson told Fox News. “Continue to hold out for healthcare for illegals or reopen the government so mothers babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive timely Wic [special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children] and Snap allotments”.That claim is inaccurate: undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Affordable Care Act subsidies.While his organization is focused on food insecurity, Berg supports the Democrats in fighting for healthcare subsidies because “this has grave repercussions for the people we represent”, he said.“The population getting the healthcare subsidies may have a marginally higher income than people getting Snap, but there is certainly a lot of overlap,” Berg said.Brittany, a 38-year-old mother of three, lives in Greenup, Kentucky, and works 35 to 40 hours each week as a home health nurse.She also has received Snap benefits for a few years.“It’s not like I receive benefits and not work,” said Brittany, pushing back against the misconception that people who receive food stamps just sit on the couch.They allow her to get “most of the necessities throughout the month and then I just pay cash for the rest of them”, said Brittany, who did not want her last name used.If the Snap funding is cut off, she said, she would have to work on the weekends to make up the difference, which would mean she would have “hardly any time with my children”.Still, she supports Trump and blames Democrats for the shutdown because “they are not agreeing on anything that the Republicans offer”. More

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      Republicans take aim at subsidies that help tens of millions of women

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      As they prepare to take control of the White House and Congress next month, conservatives are eyeing cutbacks to federal programs that help tens of millions of women pay for healthcare, food, housing and transportation.Slashing or overhauling social support programs, long a goal of Republican lawmakers, could be catastrophic for women experiencing poverty. Supporters contend the social safety-net programs are already grossly underfunded.“With this new administration that is coming in … I really am concerned about the lives of women. We are seeing so many policies, so many budget cuts,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women.Republicans say they want to keep campaign promises to cut government spending, and three major programs make easy targets: Medicaid, the joint state/federal health insurance program for people with lower incomes; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a cash-allowance program that replaced welfare; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), widely known as food stamps.While conservatives frame cuts as making government more efficient and even restoring freedom, advocates for and experts on families with little or no income say reducing these programs will throw more people – especially women and children – further into poverty.“It is going to fall heavily on women,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization.Predicting precisely what Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration will do is difficult. Congressional leaders are close-mouthed about negotiations, and the president-elect has not finished putting together his advisory team. None of the spokespeople contacted for this story returned calls or e-mails.But organizations known to advise top leaders in Congress and the previous Trump administration have laid out fairly detailed roadmaps.Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming administration, denies its proposed changes will harm women, saying instead that marriage and “family values” will improve their economic situations. “Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways,” reads the section on proposed changes to TANF and Snap.Numerous other groups that have studied the problem say forcing or even encouraging marriage will not make poverty disappear. And a recent study by a team at the University of South Carolina found that when state laws make it harder for pregnant women to get divorced, they’re more likely to be killed by their partners.Trump has promised not to attack the two most expensive and popular government programs: social security and Medicare. But he and Congress are up against a deadline to extend his 2017 tax reforms, which raised the federal deficit. They’ll have to cut something, and social spending programs, especially the $805bn Medicaid program, are low-hanging fruit for conservatives.Trump repeatedly tried to slash Snap during his last tenure in office: his 2021 budget proposal would have cut the program by more than $180bn – nearly 30% – over 10 years. Conservatives in Congress have continued these efforts and, with majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to get them through next year.The Republican Study Committee, whose members include about three-quarters of the House Republican caucus, recommends more work requirements for Snap and TANF.“SNAP and our welfare system should embrace that work conveys dignity and self-sustainment and encourage individuals to find gainful employment, not reward them for staying at home,” their plan, released in March, reads.A large body of research questions whether widening work requirements does anything other than force people off benefits without helping them find employment. “I think there is a misperception that people in need of help are not working,” said Mei Powers, chief development and communications officer at Martha’s Table, a non-profit aid organization in Washington DC. “People are a paycheck, a crisis, a broken-down car away from needing services.”Snap currently helps 41 million people buy groceries and other necessities every month. Women accounted for more than 55% of people under 65 receiving Snap benefits in 2022, according to the National Women’s Law Center, a gender justice advocacy group. About one-third of them were women of color, the NWLC said.Among other things, cutting these programs will trap women in dangerous situations, the NWLC said: “SNAP helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault establish basic economic security.”TANF, which provides cash assistance, overwhelmingly benefits women. In 2022, 370,000 TANF adult recipients were female and 69,000 were male, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.Perhaps Medicaid is the most tempting target for conservatives because they can use it to undermine the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The GOP has been gunning for the ACA since it was signed into law without a single Republican vote in 2010.The federal government shares the cost of Medicaid with states. The ACA aimed to make Medicaid cover more people by offering to pay for virtually all the extra costs. Many Republican-led states resisted for years, but as of November, all but 10 states had expanded coverage to an extra 21 million people, or about a quarter of all Medicaid recipients.Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the US, plus it covers new mothers for post-pregnancy-related issues for 60 days. It also pays for medical care for 60% of all nursing home residents, more than 70% of whom are women.According to the health research organization KFF, expanding Medicaid helped improve care for women before and during pregnancy and after they gave birth.But most Republicans in Congress have never approved of this federal spending. Proposed cuts to Medicaid funding, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars, are laid out by the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health thinktank headed by Brian Blase, a top health adviser to the first Trump administration.Experts predict states would be unable or unwilling to make up the difference. “Facing such drastic reductions in federal Medicaid funding, states will have no choice but to institute truly draconian cuts to eligibility, benefits and provider reimbursement rates,” Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an analysis.That would mean women, children, older adults and people with disabilities would lose coverage as facilities closed and providers stopped seeing patients.The effects, says the National Organization for Women, “will be widespread, devastating, and long-lasting”.This story is published in partnership with the Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world. 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      ‘Biden has failed me’: at a Michigan soup kitchen, people are torn between Harris and Trump

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      People on the east side of Saginaw city are more used to seeing buildings come down than go up. Bulldozers have erased houses, schools, department stores and factories over recent years as jobs disappeared and the population plummeted.But builders will soon be at work in one corner of the Michigan city constructing a sprawling extension to Saginaw’s largest soup kitchen after demand soared through the Covid-19 pandemic and then as rampant inflation hit a community where many people live on the edge financially.The East Side Soup Kitchen now serves meals to more than 800 people a day, double the number provided during the pandemic, which itself was up on previous years. It also distributes food to children through local youth clubs and churches.Few of those who use of the kitchen think that whoever is elected as president next week will slow the demand in a city with a 35% poverty rate, but that does not mean they don’t think it will make a difference. And their votes, too, are up for grabs in a bellwether county that Joe Biden won by just 303 votes in 2020.On the day that Harris campaign canvassers visited the soup kitchen, Angelica Taybron was eating lunch with her three-month-old daughter, Tyonna, sleeping at her side. Taybron, who is unemployed, could not say enough good things about the kitchen.“They really help me out here with my baby. They helped with formula and Pampers when I need it. They help me provide for my daughter,” she said.Help, said Taybron, is what she’s looking for in a president and so she’s voting for Kamala Harris.View image in fullscreen“She’s gonna help the people that’s lower. Trump is for people that’s higher. Kamala is for the people that’s struggling,” she said.Taybron’s partner, Darshell Roberson, also relies on the food kitchen as she struggles to find work. She sees it differently.“I voted for Biden but I really feel like Biden has failed me. I trust Donald Trump. In the last election I didn’t vote for him. I was kind of scared of him a little bit, but once I really got to watch him and look at him I liked him,” she said.The soup kitchen’s director, Diane Keenan, said those who arrive for a hot meal each day, and cake for dessert, come from every walk of life. Sitting at the large round tables dotting the dining room are elderly people struggling to get by on small pensions and those driven into debt by medical bills alongside former prisoners rebuilding their lives, and the unhoused, some of them brought down by drug addiction.“Many are working but they’re working poor,” said Keenan. “They work but they just don’t make enough money to make ends meet with the cost of food, the cost of gas, rent, mortgage payment, insurance, that type of thing. We have a lot of senior citizens and elderly come through. They’re on a limited income and sometimes they have to choose, do I get my medicine or can I get some food?”The need is so great that earlier this month the state donated $1m to help fund an expansion to the soup kitchen with a larger dining hall and kitchen, freezers big enough for forklifts to drive into.In a city with one of the highest crime rates in the US, Keenan is trailed by two security guards as she walks around the outside of the building to describe the closure of a neighboring road to provide a covered area for people to pick up meals by car.The drive-through began when the dining hall closed during the pandemic. Keenan kept it going because she said there are people in need of food who are too embarrassed to come into the building or are not well enough to do so.Keenan described the kitchen is “felon-friendly”, helping to provide a fresh start for those who have been in prison.View image in fullscreenStanley Henderson served 30 years for a non-violent robbery. After his release in 2015, he worked at a steel mill known for employing former prisoners and then volunteered at the soup kitchen. A couple of years later, he was taken on as a worker and is now in charge of providing coffee and soft drinks.Henderson has watched demand for the soup kitchen rise as Saginaw’s factories closed and jobs were lost. He hasn’t seen a notable improvement in economic conditions under the US president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The minimum wage isn’t enough for people to sustain themselves through a whole month. We see people coming in when their money runs out for groceries,” he said.The vice-president is promising to make the economy work better for ordinary Americans if she’s elected. Henderson is sceptical.“I am hesitant to say that she will because I don’t know. I just don’t know whether there’s more jobs under a Republican or Democrats. I don’t know if the job environment is going to improve. It’s possible it will improve up under the Republicans. They may push employment harder than the Democrats,” he said.For all that, Henderson said there was “no question” that he will vote and that it was going to be “straight Democrat” because he believes the party does more to look after people living in poverty. He said his friends and neighbours were paying attention to the election in an area of the city with traditionally low turnout, and that he thinks most of them will vote.View image in fullscreenHenderson, who is Black, also thinks Harris’s race will bump up turnout in his part of the city, although not like for Barack Obama’s election.“She might encourage people to vote who don’t normally want to. I’d say about 5% more,” he said.But there are those who do not see the point in voting.Auralie Warren is retired and struggling financially after working at KFC for much of her life. Inflation has hit her limited income hard as she helps raise her grandchildren after her eldest daughter died of a brain tumor in February and her youngest daughter was diagnosed with stomach cancer.“It’s getting harder out there. Food prices are going up. [The soup kitchen] helps me because I’ve got a fixed income. So when I eat here it saves money on food that I can then spend looking after the grandkids,” she said.“I also come to mingle with people and then I get clothing for my grandkids. If you ask for something, like my daughter needed earmuffs because she has cancer and her ears get cold, they make sure to add them.”But Warren has never voted in her 76 years and has no plans to do so. Politics didn’t seem worth her time or effort.“Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. I figure, even if I go [and vote] it won’t make no difference. I mean, it’s shocking but I just never did. I got so busy, I just don’t bother myself, I guess,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      The hidden cost of a shutdown: America’s battle with food insecurity

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      With 1 October 2023 looming, a US government shutdown appears imminent, and the farm bill is set to expire. Members of both the House and Senate have been drafting proposals for its renewal, which happens every five years. The bill is responsible for financing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that many Americans rely on to feed their families.Though hunger prevention advocates are calling for Congress to renew the bill before its expiration, the likelihood of a freshly revised iteration being near completion by the end of the day is low. Yet, food insecurity continues to rise in America.More than 34 million people, including nine million children, are struggling to put food on the table.In a recent household survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, more than 26 million Americans said they did not have enough to eat during the 12-day period of the study that concluded this month. That sample represents nearly a 50 percentage increase during a similar window from 2021. This upsurge is due to a number of factors, including the end of pandemic-era aid.Another study released this month by Feeding America reflected a similar finding, emphasizing the far-reaching consequences of hunger.That report underscored how the pandemic reshaped the landscape of food insecurity and its lingering effects, signaling one of America’s gravest growing crises. Approximately 80% of Americans experiencing hunger believe that inflation and rising food costs have worsened the issue of hunger nationwide and 93% of those surveyed expressed concern that the situation will deteriorate even more. They highlighted factors such as rising housing costs, job loss, unemployment, the presence of chronic health conditions or disabilities, and an abundance of low-paying jobs as significant contributors and interconnected root causes of their food vulnerability.“The pandemic not only put hunger in the spotlight, it also revealed just how many Americans were put in a situation that kept them from accessing the food they needed,” a spokesperson for Feeding America, a network of over 200 food banks nationwide, said. “And now, food prices and supply chain disruptions are affecting food banks, and households’ budgets for millions of families are tightening.”Another element of the rise in food insecurity, which saw almost 50 million Americans turning to food pantries and soup kitchens in 2022, is cuts to social assistance and fixed-income programs like food stamps, the child tax credit and pensions.“When someone is on a fixed income, it’s usually due to a disability, or that they are seniors,” said Marian Hutchins, executive director of the Father’s Heart Ministries. “Someone on disability is not allowed to work if they are receiving money for social security disability. So unless they can work and have it be off the books, they cannot get resources to match the rising cost of food.”Many who work on the front lines, like Hutchins, say the pandemic exacerbated this epidemic and exposed deep-seated vulnerabilities in our food systems and economic structures.At the non-profit Hutchins runs on the Lower East Side of New York, she said many keep returning because they tell her they simply can’t afford basic necessities, including food, on their own. And that number continues to be staggering, compounded by the end of the extra pandemic-era Snap – formerly the Food Stamp Program, which is still commonly referred to as just food stamps – benefits.Among their other food programs and services, the Father’s Heart Ministries, founded in 1997, hands out roughly 1,100 food pantry bags in a two-and-a-half hour window on Saturdays. Pre-pandemic, they averaged 560 guests in that same window. That’s a 96% increase. They’ve also seen a rise in new guest registration. Before the pandemic, they averaged 13 per Saturday – (during the pandemic, it was 43 per Saturday) – now, it’s closer to 20. That’s a 53% increase.Many reports and similar organizations echo this stark and steady increase, correlating it to the nearly 60% historic increase in poverty.“The Feeding America network of food banks distributed 5.3bn meals in fiscal year 2023,” the organization’s spokesperson said. “The latest Feeding America food bank pulse survey data shows that around 70% of responding food banks report seeing demand for food assistance increase or stay the same in July 2023 compared to June.”The CEO of City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, Jilly Stephens, resonated those sentiments.“Average monthly visits to New York City food pantries and soup kitchens this year are up more than 60% compared to 2019,” she said. “City Harvest programs alone are seeing nearly 1m more visits each month than in 2019. In fact, the number of visits is nearly as high as at any point over the last three years. We know from previous crises that it can take years for food security levels to recover, and we expect the need to remain high for several years.”The pandemic has also particularly aggravated food insecurity among families with children and communities of color, who were already disproportionately affected by hunger before the outbreak. Many of these households don’t meet the eligibility criteria for federal nutrition programs, forcing them to turn to local food banks and other community food assistance programs for additional support. Research shows that there is a higher prevalence of hunger in African American, Latino and Native American communities that can be attributed to systemic racial injustices.Hutchins said food poverty is not as recognized of an issue as it once was because the glaring exigency of the pandemic has dwindled, so many Americans assume things are back to normal. But for many families struggling to feed their families, that’s far from the reality.“There was a lot of public awareness during the pandemic,” Hutchins said, “where media showed lines of people at soup kitchens and food pantries. People think it’s over now, but the same crazy food prices that we are all facing are being faced by those who have no alternatives but community food pantries. No one is talking about seniors or single-parent homes. Ignoring the problem could create more problems not only for our guests but for communities in general as people become desperate to survive.”That desperation to survive fueled by rising food costs is palpable. According to the Feeding America report, nearly 70% of Americans believe that the primary causes of hunger and food insecurity are inflation and increasing food prices.Food prices have been inflating in recent months due to factors such as supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index for food increased by 7.1% in July 2023 compared to the previous year.According to the recent food price outlook report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), it is expected that food prices will see a 5.9% increase this year.Specifically, prices for food at home – groceries from supermarkets – rose by 0.4% from June to July 2023 and were 3.6% higher compared to July 2022.The report also highlights expectations of continued price hikes across 10 food-at-home categories: beef and veal (4.2% increase), other meats (4.8%), poultry (3%), dairy products (4.1%), fats and oils (9.6%), processed fruits and vegetables (9.2%), sugar and sweets (9.3%), cereals and bakery products (9%), nonalcoholic beverages (7.6%) and other foods (7.4%).With no immediate end in sight, hunger prevention programs like the Father’s Heart Ministries have stepped in to fill the gap, turning to food organizations like City Harvest for ongoing support.Stephens said City Harvest supports grants and programs that provide funding and support for food access and justice solutions “led or informed by people with lived expertise, like the people that operate or participate in pantry services”.“Local food initiatives are critical to fighting food insecurity,” she continued, “because no one knows their neighborhood’s assets and challenges better than the people who live and work there.”Though many on the frontlines acknowledge there is no quick fix to food insecurity, they note that awareness is essential, and concerted efforts are needed to create lasting change and ensure that no one goes hungry. To address the widening gap of food deserts and overall insecurity in America, many advocates like Stephens and Hutchins are calling for increased Snap benefits, investing in workforce development and job training programs and initiatives, tackling the root causes of poverty and inequality through policy changes, and expanded access to food banks and other community-based food assistance programs.“One of the best ways to reduce food insecurity is a stronger farm bill,” Stephens said, “which is being reauthorized by Congress this year. The vast majority of the farm bill’s budget is devoted to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”While emphasizing the importance of transformative policy, Hutchins added that food insecurity is also a community-level issue.“Contributing and volunteering at places that are already providing food is the best way to start,” Hutchins said. “We can talk about the problem, but showing up to help is what our volunteers do.” More