More than 5 million Americans have lost SNAP food benefits since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which calls the drop the steepest in decades. The first help on offer is a one-time $100 payment from a charity.
Black households have the most to lose. About a quarter of all SNAP participants are Black, according to the center’s analysis of USDA data, in a country where Black people are roughly 14% of the population. No agency has published a count of the people cut off by race, so how much of the loss has landed on Black families is not yet known. That absence is a reason to demand the numbers, not to assume the answer is comfortable.
The scale is already clear. SNAP enrollment fell 13.5% nationally, from 42.2 million recipients to 36.6 million, as local TV station WILX reported in August. The Congressional Budget Office had projected about 2.4 million people would lose benefits over a decade. The law has done more than double that in a year.
The mechanism is the work rule. Recipients must now work, train or volunteer 20 hours a week, and the age limit rose to 64. Parents whose youngest child is 14 or older are newly covered. Veterans, people experiencing homelessness and former foster youth lost the exemptions they once held. The budget center estimates the law cuts $187 billion from SNAP through 2034, the largest reduction in the program’s history.
Food banks are absorbing the difference. In Michigan, where enrollment fell 8.2%, the Greater Lansing Food Bank has seen pantry visits rise 7.9% this year. Katelyn Cardoso of the food bank said, “We knew that we were going to see decreased enrollment and decreased benefits. But, it’s happening a lot faster than we thought.”
The charity response arrives Wednesday. GiveDirectly’s Thanksgiving SNAP Bridge Fund opens enrollment Nov. 4 through the Propel app and sends one-time $100 payments on a GiveCard that recipients can spend as they choose. It is privately funded. Dustin Palmer, GiveDirectly’s executive director of U.S. programs, described how families learn of a cut: “The way you find out is when you go to swipe your card and there’s no money on it, and that is so destabilizing.” He is also candid about the limit: “We know this $100 will not replace SNAP for a family.”
That candor is the story. A fund can soften one holiday week. It cannot replace a federal program that reached 42 million people, and it should not be asked to. Congress chose to take this food away in a bill that also cut taxes, and it is Congress that can give it back by repealing the work rules and restoring the exemptions. Until it does, Black families will keep checking their cards at the register to find out what the law decided for them.
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