In a 2026 poll released by the National Women’s Law Center, 68% of adults said they are worried about being able to afford groceries and food. This amounts to millions of women and families across the country who are struggling to put food on the table; many are only one lost shift or unexpected expense away from going hungry. That’s why federally funded programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are so important.

As of 2024, SNAP helped nearly 42 million people in over 22 million households afford groceries each month. Recipients access their monthly benefits via an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, like a debit card, which can be used at authorized stores to purchase food. Benefits average just $6 per person, per day.

Because women—especially women of color—are particularly likely to face caregiving responsibilities, low wages, and economic barriers caused by gender and racial inequality, they also face a higher risk of poverty and food insecurity. As a result, SNAP is especially important for women and the families who depend on them: In 2024, nearly 15.1 million adult women used SNAP to help pay for groceries, including over 8.6 million women of color.¹

But today, the Trump-Vance administration and congressional Republicans are attacking SNAP and the people who need it. Last July, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law. OBBBA is actually a Big, Ugly Bill: It makes the largest cut to SNAP in the program’s history, all to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations. Since OBBBA was enacted, more than 3.5 million people have already lost SNAP benefits. Unless policymakers act to reverse course, the billionaire class will keep robbing us—enjoying trillions in new tax cuts while more women and families lose the SNAP benefits they need to afford food and stay afloat.

SNAP is a critical anti-poverty program that helps women feed their families.

SNAP serves a diverse group of adults, children, and families. Women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are especially likely to participate in SNAP.

• Women are the majority (58%) of adult SNAP recipients, and about one in three (33%) adult SNAP recipients is a woman of color.²
• More than one in five adult SNAP recipients (21%) are older adults (age 65 and over).³
• More than six in ten SNAP participants live in families with children. In 2024, two-thirds (67%) of SNAP households with children were headed by a single adult; of those adults, 86% were single moms.⁴
• About one in four SNAP recipients report having a disability, compared with about one in nine non-recipients.
• Roughly 15% of LGBT adults—nearly 2.1 million people, including 250,000 transgender individuals and 1.3 million lesbian and bisexual women—rely on SNAP.
• SNAP moved nearly 3.6 million people out of poverty in 2024, including nearly 1.4 million adult women and over 1.4 million children.⁵

Nutrition assistance has far-reaching benefits for the people who receive it: For example, studies have shown that SNAP participants are more likely to report excellent or very good health than nonparticipants with low incomes. Early access to SNAP among pregnant mothers and in early childhood improves birth outcomes and long-term health.

The Trump-Vance administration is slashing SNAP—and millions of people will go hungry as a result.

Trump recently boasted that he “lifted 2.4 million Americans, a record, off of food stamps,” but the truth is that these Americans were not “lifted” off food assistance—they were kicked off the program so Trump could deliver huge tax breaks to his billionaire friends.

OBBBA slashes federal SNAP spending by an estimated $186 billion over the next 10 years (about 20% of the program’s total funding). Every family that depends on SNAP will feel some impact from these cuts by the time they are fully implemented, because OBBBA made changes to the benefits calculation that will prevent SNAP from keeping pace with the rising cost of food. And about four million people will see major cuts to their SNAP benefits—or lose them altogether.

Here’s how this big, ugly law shifts costs and restricts eligibility in ways that make it harder for families to afford groceries each month:

• OBBBA makes states pay more for SNAP (so billionaires can pay less in taxes). Historically, the federal government has always covered the cost of SNAP food benefits and split the administrative costs of running the program 50-50 with the states. But OBBBA cut billions in federal funding for SNAP and requires states to fill the gap: Beginning this year, states will have to pay a higher share of administrative costs—and starting in 2027, states will have to pay for a share of the food benefits, too.
  • The specific share of SNAP benefits that each state will have to cover will depend on its “error rate”—a technical measure of how accurately eligibility and benefit amounts are calculated. Though this might sound like a technicality, it will have a huge impact: Most states will end up paying for 5% to 15% of benefits, which will double or triple the amount that states typically spend on SNAP today.
  • To offset these massive new costs, many states will likely make cuts that harm the women and families who depend on SNAP the most—by cutting other essential programs, restricting access to SNAP, or ending their SNAP programs altogether. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that between 2028 and 2034, states will reduce or eliminate SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people in a typical month in response to this cost shift.
• OBBBA increases ineffective work reporting requirements that often force people off SNAP due to red tape, not ineligibility. Most non-elderly adult SNAP recipients who can work, do work. Nonetheless, even before OBBBA, SNAP rules required most non-disabled adults ages 18 to 54 to prove that they were working, volunteering, or in training at least 20 hours per week to remain eligible for the program; caregivers for children under 18 and certain other groups were exempt. Research consistently shows that these work reporting rules do not increase employment or wages—they simply cause people to lose food assistance, often because they have trouble meeting the burdensome paperwork requirements or work in service-sector jobs with unpredictable hours.
  • SNAP work reporting requirements historically have been used to humiliate and demonize women and people of color, especially Black women, for accessing public benefits. They are rooted in the dangerous lie that people experiencing poverty not only don’t work, but don’t want to work.
  • OBBBA expanded SNAP’s harsh and ineffective work reporting requirements by applying them to adults up to age 64 and caregivers for children 14 years old and older. It also removed prior exemptions for veterans, youth who have aged out of foster care, and people experiencing homelessness.
  •  that about 2.4 million people newly subject to the requirements will be cut off SNAP in a typical month.
• OBBBA eliminates SNAP eligibility for many lawfully present immigrants, including refugees, people granted asylum, and certain survivors of domestic violence or sex trafficking. These changes cut off food assistance for individuals who are legally in the United States and often rebuilding their lives after trauma.