The government shutdown is laying bare the fact that the Republican Party is salivating at the chance to rip social-safety-net benefits away from the poorest Americans, whom they openly view as lazy ingrates.
Multiple GOP lawmakers have been attacking food-stamp recipients in recent days, as millions feared they would not receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds in November due to GOP’s shutdown.
On Friday, two federal judges ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to keep the program operational.
Trump and his administration had argued they couldn’t use those funds, hoping that a funding lapse would make Americans blame Democrats for their struggles.
"There are 22 million American households receiving SNAP benefits for groceries, at $4200 per year on average. Try to get your head wrapped around how many pantries you can stock with $4200 dollars in properly shopped groceries," Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana wrote in a post on X on Thursday. "Any American who has been receiving $4200 dollars per year of free groceries and does NOT have at least 1 month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack."
Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, shown in 2024.
Not only is Higgins' post incredibly offensive, accusing food-stamp recipients of being drug addicts, but it's also just wrong.
If the average household receives $4,200 a year in food stamps, as Higgins claims, that means they get $350 a month for groceries. Even the Department of Agriculture admits that is not nearly enough for a family of four to subsist on, estimating that the average monthly food cost for a family of three on a low-cost budget is north of $850.
It wasn’t just Higgins making disgusting comments about food-stamp recipients.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin—one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with a net worth of nearly $40 million—agreed with a Newsmax anchor’s wildly racist comment that falsely accused food-stamp recipients of using their benefits on beauty treatments. (SNAP benefits can be used only on grocery items.)
"People are using [their SNAP benefits] to get their nails done, to get their weaves and their hair. This is a really ugly program," Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt said, to which Johnson replied, "That program needs to be dramatically reformed."
Rather than introduce legislation to ensure people are fed, GOP Rep. Randy Fine of Florida said he would introduce a bill to block legal immigrants from getting food stamps.
"I'm introducing a bill that says if you're not an American, you can't get SNAP. It's not just illegal immigrants that are getting some of these benefits, it's legal immigrants. And frankly, if you're coming to America because you want to move here, you shouldn't be asking our taxpayers for free stuff," Fine said in an appearance on Newsmax.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves—whose state has 384,800 residents, or 13% of its population, on SNAP—announced on Friday that he would further limit what food assistance could purchase. It’s an insane time to make that announcement as hundreds of thousands of his own constituents fear going hungry.
Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, shown in 2023.
“[W]e're amending our food stamp rules to allow good sustaining food like rotisserie chickens and disallow sugary candy and drinks,” Reeves wrote in a post on X. “If the first ingredient is sugar or corn syrup, it won't be available with taxpayer money any more.”
Even more insane is what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Friday before the judges' order. She claimed that even if a federal judge told the Trump administration that the contingency funds Congress appropriated for SNAP could be used during the shutdown, she wasn’t sure the administration would release the money. In other words, the Trump administration would purposefully starve people for no reason other than political retribution.
“We're looking at all the options," Rollins said when asked if the Trump administration would follow a court order to release the SNAP contingency funds.
Sen. Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said Rollins’ comment gave away Trump and the GOP’s entire game.
“‘We are happy that this is considered a permissible use of these funds and will promptly release them to make sure no one goes hungry’ is actually very easy to say but so far they just won’t and it’s hard not to conclude that they are determined to withhold food aid,” Schatz wrote in a post on X.
Republicans have already made major cuts to the social safety net, slashing Medicaid and food stamps in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that the GOP passed this summer.
Now, they're using the shutdown to cause poor people even more pain.
For Republicans, cruelty has always been the point.
