Exactly one week after voters handed Democrats the House, the Department of Agriculture proposed a rule that would end SNAP food aid for 6.3 million people. By the department’s own count that is 3.2 million households, about 17% of everyone in the program. Nearly one in four SNAP participants is Black, according to figures Word In Black cited, so the cut would land in Black kitchens as surely as anywhere.
The proposal, published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, would end what is known as broad-based categorical eligibility. Since 2008 it has let states enroll families in SNAP automatically when they receive some other help through the welfare block grant, TANF, such as child care subsidies or job training. Forty-six states use it. Under the new rule, only cash-style TANF assistance would count, and the “non-cash or in-kind” services that now open the door would not.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group that has long defended the provision, says a family of three earning above $35,500 could lose SNAP under the change. Many of the households affected are working. They earn too much to qualify on a strict income test and too little to feed a family without help.
The USDA says the change would save $44.6 billion in federal spending from fiscal 2027 through 2031. It would not take full effect until fiscal 2029. The department’s case is blunt. A spokesperson said broad-based categorical eligibility “has bloated the welfare rolls for decades.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has argued in public that the rules let people sign up without proper identity checks.
The rule would also reach children’s lunches. About 1.78 million children would lose automatic eligibility for free school meals. The USDA’s own analysis says roughly 97% of them would still qualify through a standard income review, which is the strongest argument the department has. It still leaves some children without free meals, and it adds a paperwork step for every family that has to prove its income again. Ariel Taylor Smith of the National Parents Union warned of a “disproportionate impact on students from historically underserved communities and children with disabilities.”
Critics call it a cut in a different costume. “This is not reform. This is a benefit cut dressed up as paperwork,” said Jenique Jones of WhyHunger. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat, said: “The cruelty of the Trump Administration has no limits.” Cindy Long, a former USDA administrator, said the rule would “dramatically narrow” the services that qualify a family.
The timing matters. Congress already cut SNAP in the 2025 budget law, and states are still absorbing the losses. An agency that cannot get another cut through a Democratic House can write one itself. A proposed rule needs no vote. It needs only that the public not notice, and that the comment line stay quiet.
That is where readers come in. Comments are open on regulations.gov through Dec. 10, and the USDA is required to read and answer them before the rule becomes final. Governors in the 46 states that use the provision, and the new Democratic majority in the House, should say now whether they will let a quiet rulemaking take food from a sixth of the households who rely on it.
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