The New SNAP Rules Have Cut 4 Million People From Food Benefits
Angelina Guatemala is 64 years old and lives in a small town in Kansas. She spent her working life arranging flowers, decorating cakes, and preparing meals. Painful dermatitis now makes it hard to hold things or stand for long. When Congress changed the rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program last year, extending work requirements to age 64, she lost her food benefits.
"I'm the type of person who has rice and beans, and I'm OK for today," she said. "If I can get a piece of chicken, I can stretch it out for two or three days. But for now, nothing."
She is one of roughly 4 million people who have left the SNAP rolls since President Trump signed legislation on July 4, 2025 expanding work and documentation requirements for the program. SNAP enrollment has dropped about 10% — from more than 42 million participants to around 38 million.
Whether that's a success story or a crisis depends entirely on who you ask.
What the New Rules Actually Changed
The legislation made several significant changes to who qualifies and what they have to prove to keep benefits.
Work requirements — 20 hours per week of paid work, unpaid work, job training, or volunteer service — previously applied to able-bodied adults without dependents up to age 55. The new law extended that to age 64. Parents with children were previously exempt if those children were under 18 — now the exemption only applies if children are 13 or younger. States can no longer waive work requirements for homeless recipients or people in areas with high unemployment.
The law also added more documentation requirements. In Kansas, recipients now fill out a 30-page application with 200 questions to receive an average benefit of about $150 per month. Advocates say state workers were already stretched thin before the new rules clogged the system further.
The financial pressure on states is also increasing. Starting October 1 states must cover 75% of administrative costs, up from 50%. By October 2027 most states will also be required to cover up to 15% of food benefit costs tied to payment errors — which for New York alone could mean $1.2 billion in new expenses.
The Arguments on Both Sides
The White House announced June 10 that food stamp dependency was "plummeting" by 4.3 million participants since the bill was signed. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called the changes "a celebration of work and the dignity of work," crediting the crackdown on fraud, the removal of participants who are not legally authorized to be in the country, and the work requirements themselves.
At a House Agriculture Committee hearing in June, Republican members pointed to legitimate fraud concerns — authorities found 450,000 cases of false Social Security numbers and nearly 200,000 cases where benefits were paid in the name of dead recipients. The law also ended eligibility for refugees and asylum seekers. Rollins said federal authorities made 900 arrests for SNAP fraud in the past year and recovered $132 million in restitution.
But Democratic lawmakers and hunger advocates see the same numbers very differently. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts pointed out that the average SNAP benefit works out to about $2 per meal — not enough to buy coffee at a donut chain. "They haven't been moved off of SNAP," he said. "They've been kicked off of SNAP. We all should be ashamed of that."
The New York Federal Reserve Bank recently reported a "remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower- and middle-income households and households with young children" — a trend advocates say lines up directly with the enrollment drop.
Where the Steepest Drops Are Happening
The numbers aren't falling evenly. Arizona saw the most dramatic decline — nearly half of its SNAP participants left the program, dropping from roughly 893,000 in July to 449,000 by February. North Carolina saw an 18.6% drop. Florida, Georgia, and Nevada each fell about 15%. In Kansas, more than 23,000 people — over 12% of recipients — have left the rolls, a figure that's keeping hunger advocates in the state up at night.
What It Means in Practice
For people like Marcus Moore, a 54-year-old advocate in New York who experienced homelessness during the pandemic, the new documentation requirements nearly cost him the $90 a month he relies on. He demanded a hearing when threatened with losing his benefits over paperwork related to his volunteer work and managed to keep them. He says others aren't so lucky.
"It's turning out to be a big mess," Moore said. "I would have definitely fallen through the cracks." He described what losing food assistance would mean for him — "survival mode like back when I was in the pandemic. There weren't enough soup kitchens open around town."
The system was already under pressure before these changes. SNAP grew from 28 million participants during the 2008 recession to a peak of 47 million in 2014, dropped to 35 million by 2019, and then surged again during the pandemic. The question now is whether the 4 million people who've left the rolls did so because they no longer need help — or because the paperwork became too much to navigate while already struggling to eat.
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