U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed new eligibility requirements for the nation’s largest food aid program that would cut some 6.3 million people from it.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a proposed rule (PDF) on Tuesday that would end automatic eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), removing current provisions that automatically make households eligible for the program if they meet state-administered requirements for another program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
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“These revisions would ensure that SNAP benefits target needy households that are eligible for TANF assistance while aligning categorical eligibility’s statutory goal of simplifying program administration,” the agency said in the proposal, which will be open for public comment for 30 days.
More than 36 million people are currently enrolled in SNAP, the largest federal food assistance program for low-income families. An individual in the program receives an average of about $190 per month, while a household receives an average monthly benefit of $356 in groceries.
The SNAP program itself requires households to earn less than 130 percent of the federal government’s poverty level to qualify. Currently, households eligible for the TANF program — whose requirements vary by state and can accommodate households earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level — are also automatically eligible for SNAP.
According to the USDA, the proposed changes would remove about 17 percent of SNAP recipients, or some 6.3 million people, from the program. The cuts would also have other one-time effects, including removing 1.8 million children from a federal program providing them free school meals because they would no longer be eligible for SNAP.
Democratic lawmakers criticized the Republican administration’s attempt to scale back the federal food assistance program.
“The proposed rule would make it more difficult to meet basic needs and reduce efforts to streamline federal programs,” Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig said in a statement Monday.
“SNAP is a very effective and efficient program when it can operate as intended,” Craig’s statement continued. “Unfortunately, the Trump administration and the outgoing Republican majority in Congress have undermined the integrity of the program at every turn, harming millions of vulnerable Americans.”
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called the proposal “despicable” in a social media post Monday.
“Trump is about to exclude millions more people from SNAP, while Americans are already struggling with food prices. It’s despicable. We need to help people buy their groceries, not deepen cuts to the safety net that keeps families from going hungry,” Booker said.
Builds on previous Trump measures targeting food aid
The new cuts build on changes to the SNAP program by the Trump administration, which has said many of those who receive help from the federal government don’t need it.
Under Trump, some 5.5 million people have already lost access to SNAP benefits, due to changes imposed by the Big Beautiful Bill of July 2025. The legislation expanded work requirements for recipients and made certain categories of immigrants ineligible for aid. States struggled to cope with the new administrative changes and cover the additional costs the federal government passed on to them under the bill.
Then, in November 2025, Trump briefly suspended funding for the SNAP program entirely, using it as leverage to force Democrats to agree to passage of a federal budget. The Democrats refused, and the federal government was shut down for more than a month. Towards the end of this standoff, Trump refused to use emergency funds to cover the SNAP program.
At the time, Trump said former President Joe Biden’s administration was responsible for saddling the government with additional spending of “trillions” of dollars because of the program. The benefits, Trump claimed in a Truth Social article without evidence, had been randomly “handed out” to anyone upon request, as opposed to those who needed them, which is the purpose of SNAP!
The Supreme Court ultimately overturned the lower courts’ rulings, saying Trump could not legally deny SNAP funding, just as lawmakers in Congress reached an agreement to pass a new federal budget and reopen the government.
The Trump administration has continued to push for changes to SNAP.
In December 2025, the administration threatened to deny program funding to 21 states that refused to turn over recipient data to the federal government, which the administration said it needed to review in order to reduce fraud.
The new proposal is now open for public comment for the next 30 days.
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