About 5.5 million fewer people receive food stamps than the day Republicans’ 2025 budget law took effect, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ reading of the latest Department of Agriculture data. The Congressional Budget Office predicted the law would cost the program 2.8 million participants in an average month this year. The real figure is running at 4.5 million.
Black families sit close to the center of that loss. Nearly 3.9 million Black households receive SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, according to 2023 Census Bureau figures compiled by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. In 2023, 23% of Black households were food insecure, meaning they could not always afford enough to eat, according to USDA. Nationally, one in eight Americans uses the program.
The numbers come from USDA’s monthly counts. Just under 36.1 million people took part in July 2026, the most recent month published. Fiscal year 2026 is on track to average about 37.6 million, against the 39.3 million the budget office had projected. Spending tells the same story: the office expected SNAP outlays to fall about 6%, and they fell 10.3%, close to $11 billion.
The law did what it was written to do. Adults 18 to 64 with no dependent children under 14 must now show 80 hours of work a month within three months of enrolling, or lose benefits for three years. Legal immigrants, refugees and asylum recipients lost eligibility. But the cuts reach people the law did not name. A CBPP analysis of 25 states covering 60% of participants found that children account for 43% of the decline, and it estimates that more than 1.5 million children have lost benefits. Priya Fielding-Singh of George Washington University told PBS NewsHour: “For kids to lose that benefit is really devastating.”
Part of the reason is states bracing for a bill. Beginning Oct. 1, 2027, states must pay a share of benefit costs based on how often they make payment errors, so many are adding paperwork and denying applications to protect their budgets. Paperwork falls hardest on people with the least time to fight it.
The work rule was sold as a nudge toward jobs. For Black adults it has little to nudge: the Urban Institute found in March 2025 that 81% of SNAP households with Black adults already worked full time.
One gap matters for readers. The sources reviewed give no breakdown of the losses by race. Black households are far more likely to depend on SNAP, so a cut this size cannot land evenly, but no one can yet say how many Black families lost their benefits. USDA should publish that count.
Congress can still act before the cost shift arrives in 2027. CBPP is urging lawmakers to delay it. With Democrats about to take the House, that fight now has a majority to wage it.
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