3 Million Americans Lose Critical Food Safety Net, as Dramatic Cuts to SNAP Take Effect

American Community Media briefing with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · May 8, 2026

By Kainat Rajput 

The Scale of the Cuts

Last summer, Congress passed HR1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill — and cut nearly $1 trillion from health and food safety programs. The biggest hit landed on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Its budget was slashed by $187 billion through 2034, the largest single cut to the program since it launched in 1964. By January 2026, more than 3 million people had already lost their benefits.

That number keeps climbing.

SNAP is the main reason millions of families in this country don’t go hungry. It helps children, elderly people, and people with disabilities buy food. It also pumps money into local economies — small grocers depend on it, and food banks feel the difference when it disappears. When those benefits go away, the ripple effects show up in hospital admissions, in school performance, in the impossible math of paying rent and buying groceries on the same fixed income.

“People are really hurting,” said one Southern California attendee at the briefing. “A lot of people are in need of food. Food banks are becoming essential.”

Who Gets Hit Hardest

The questions reporters brought to the May 8 briefing revealed just how many angles this crisis has. How will cuts hit AAPI communities, especially refugees and recent immigrants? What happens to mixed-status families where children are citizens but parents are undocumented? Are single mothers whose spouses have been deported now doubly exposed — losing a wage earner and a food benefit at the same time?

The fear piece is real and measurable. Immigrants who are legally eligible for SNAP are simply not applying — afraid that showing up to a government office might make them visible to ICE. The political environment is driving people away from the very programs designed to help them. You can be entitled to a benefit and still be too scared to claim it.

Arizona has cut more recipients from its SNAP rolls than any other state. The new rules tied to HR1 include stricter work requirements and tighter eligibility thresholds, and states with aggressive implementation are moving fast. California — which has one of the highest SNAP caseloads in the country — faces a compounding problem: as the federal share shrinks, states must cover a bigger slice of the funding. For a state already strained by housing costs and a high cost of living, that gap is significant.

Tracking the Impact: The Congressional District Health Dashboard

On April 29, the Congressional District Health Dashboard released new data tracking SNAP participation for every congressional district in the country, updated quarter by quarter alongside 40 other health and economic metrics. It lets reporters and advocates see exactly how cuts are playing out locally — not just nationally, but in specific districts tied to specific representatives.

Dr. Lorna Thorpe, the dashboard’s Methods Co-Principal Investigator, walked attendees through a live demo during the briefing. The data draws on the American Community Survey, Census data, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, among other sources. Full technical documentation is available at congressionaldistricthealthdashboard.org.

Dr. Giridhar Mallya of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also pointed reporters to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ SNAP tracker as an additional state-level resource: cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker.

What Comes Next

The cuts are not easily reversible. HR1 locked in reductions through 2034, and while a future Congress could restore funding, the structure of the cuts makes that a heavy legislative lift. Several reporters asked whether states could sue the federal government or whether California might tax corporations to offset the loss — possible in theory, untested in practice, and slow even if pursued.

What people can do right now is report every incident of food insecurity, connect affected families to local food banks and community organizations, and press elected officials at the state and local level on what they are doing to fill the gap.

 

About the Speakers

 

Dr. Giridhar Mallya Senior Policy Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Giridhar Mallya, MD, MSHP, is a public health physician and health policy expert at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest health-focused philanthropy in the United States. He develops strategy in emerging health and social policy areas, supports organizations advancing equity-focused policies, and works directly with city, state, and federal leaders on the Foundation’s policy agenda. Dr. Mallya previously served as Director of Policy and Planning for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. He is a board-certified family physician and an adjunct assistant professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Pennsylvania. Contact: gmallya@rwjf.org

 

Dr. Lorna E. Thorpe Methods Co-PI, Congressional District Health Dashboard · Chair, Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine Dr. Lorna Thorpe is the Anita and Joseph Steckler Professor and Chair of the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on population-based surveillance, social determinants of health, and translating findings into policy. She designs and leads studies on leading causes of disease among disadvantaged populations. A former Deputy Commissioner for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene overseeing epidemiology, Dr. Thorpe began her career as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in international tuberculosis control. She lived and worked in China and Indonesia before completing her PhD in epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also holds an MPH from the University of Michigan and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Thorpe serves as Co-Principal Investigator of both the City Health Dashboard and the Congressional District Health Dashboard. Contact: lorna.thorpe@nyulangone.org

 

 

Looking Ahead

The cuts to SNAP are not happening in isolation. They are part of a broader dismantling of the federal safety net — one that will take years to fully feel and longer still to reverse. For the 3 million people already cut off, and the millions more who may follow, the consequences are immediate: skipped meals, growing debt, crowded food banks, and the quiet indignity of not being able to feed your family.

State and local governments, community organizations, and advocates are scrambling to fill a gap that was never theirs to fill. Some will manage. Many won’t.

The briefing was hosted by American Community Media in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The next session will continue examining the fallout from federal budget cuts on communities across the country.

For more information, contact Sandy Close at sclose@americancommunitymedia.org or Sunita Sohrabji at ssohrabji@americancommunitymedia.org.