House GOP plan to slash over $230 billion in spending, reform food stamps clears committee
Lawmakers on the Agriculture panel advanced it out of committee in a 29-25 party-line vote.
Now, the measure, which is a key component of President Trump's 'big, beautiful' agenda mega-bill, heads to the House Budget Committee for a markup starting Friday that will package the various legislative pieces together.
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Back in April, Congress passed a framework for the 'big, beautiful' bill that gave assignments to various committees and directed the Agriculture panel to come up with at least $230 billion in savings over a 10-year timeframe.
An estimate from the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the committee's plan exceeds that goal, but didn't specify by how much. Some Republicans on the Agriculture panel suggested it could slash spending by as much as $300 billion.
3 Now there are just a handful of committees left to produce the remaining pieces of the GOP's mega-bill.
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The proposal calls for the federal government to penalize states with error rates on payments for SNAP — which is commonly known as food stamps — but using data Uncle Sam collects on that.
In fiscal year 2023, the national average for state error rates was 11.68% and 46 states had error rates over 6%, according to data from the Food and Nutrition Service.
What's in the Agriculture Committee legislation?
States with error rates on SNAP payments between 6% and 8% will be required to cough up 15% of the program (historically, the federal government fully funded the program).
States with error rates of 8% to 10% would be forced to pay 20%.
States with error rates over 10% would have to cover 25%.
Able-bodied adults without children would also see work requirements for the program, which currently last until the age of 54, jump to the age of 64.
Makes room for Republicans to tack $60 billion farm bill with items like crop insurance, export trade promotion and more to the mega-bill.
3 Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson sought to make room for a farm bill.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
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SNAP, a program that provides food to the poor, had a federal budget of $112.8 billion in fiscal year 2023. Over 42 million Americans are estimated to be receiving over $212 in benefits from the program each month.
Moderate Republicans had been squeamish about the proposed SNAP changes, but two more pressing sticking points with the 'big, beautiful' bill appear to be concerns about cuts to Medicaid and complaints that the state and local tax (SALT) deduction isn't being raised enough.
On Wednesday, the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee advanced its tax plan that could add an estimated $3.7 trillion to the debt over a 10-year stretch.
Later that same day, the Energy and Commerce Committee passed its roughly $900 billion spending cut and Medicaid reform package.
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The framework for the 'big, beautiful' bill also called on the House Financial Services Committee to find $100 billion in savings and the House Education and Workforce Committee to identify $330 billion over a decade, bringing the total to over $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.
3 House GOP leadership is struggling to get everyone in line on the 'big, beautiful' bill.
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The 'big, beautiful' bill is set to include an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime pay, beefed-up border security, bolstered energy supply and more. It is intended to be Trump's signature legislative achievement of this year, and possibly his second term.
GOP leadership is hoping to get the final bill to Trump's desk by the Fourth of July but has to overcome significant hurdles with Republican infighting and slim margins in both chambers of Congress.
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Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. Read more: Trump threatens Russia with tariffs and boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Chicago Tribune
13 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area children get deportation letters: Leave or ‘the federal government will find you'
Thirteen-year-old Xally Morales stared blankly at a letter she received from the Department of Homeland Security last month. She could not read the dozens of lines in English addressed to her. She arrived in the country from Mexico a little over seven months ago, crossing the southern border in search of safety. Xally knows very little English. 'They say I have to leave the country immediately,' the young teen whispered in Spanish, barely meeting anyone's eyes at a Chicago law firm on a recent Friday afternoon. No explanation. No hearing. And no time. The night she received the letter, she said, the family went into hiding after her older sister translated the letter for her. 'Trump wants me to go back to Mexico. But how can I do that alone?' Xally told the Tribune. 'I'm scared ICE will come for me.' Xally is one of at least 12 children in the Waukegan area — all unaccompanied minors from Mexico — who received sudden deportation letters from DHS last month, according to advocates. All of the girls legally entered the country within the past year under humanitarian parole as unaccompanied minors and were later reunited with undocumented parents or other family already living in the U.S. But despite that reunification, the girls are unable to be legally represented by their parents in immigration court due to the way they entered the country. Immigration advocates warn that these cases are becoming more common, with a growing number of children now receiving letters from DHS ending their humanitarian parole. They say this could signal a troubling shift under the Trump administration: a move to strip asylum protections from children, even those with pending claims, and accelerate the deportation of minors without due process. 'Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the Federal Government will find you,' the June 20 letter reads. Unless their families can find and afford scarce legal representation, the children could be at risk of getting detained or could be forced to face a judge alone, advocates and attorneys said. But an assistant secretary of DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to the Tribune said that 'accusations that ICE is 'targeting' children are FALSE and an attempt to demonize law enforcement.' McLaughlin added that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'does not 'target' children nor does it deport children.' The agency also does not separate families, she said in the statement. Instead, 'ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone safe whom the parent designates.' But questions regarding why letters are being sent to unaccompanied minors, like Xally, and what the protocol is to deport them, as stated in the letter, were left unanswered. Sitting next to her mother in the law office that afternoon, she held her hand tight. Since receiving the letter, the two had been staying at a Waukegan church because they were afraid that ICE agents would suddenly show up to their home and take Xally. Her mother, Francisca Petra Guzman, 48, arrived in the country in January, also as an asylum-seeker. The two, she said, ran away from domestic abuse and death threats. But churches are no longer a safe refuge. Instead, the pastor of the church, longtime activist Julie Contreras, escorted the mother and daughter to meet with a group of attorneys who could help them understand their options: return to the country they fled, possibly together to avoid detention, or remain in the U.S. for safety. 'As much as I tried, I couldn't provide for Xally in Mexico. I couldn't keep her safe,' Guzman said. 'Then my health started to decline. We had no other option than to come here.' Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, DHS began widely sending these letters. While the agency has always had the discretion to revoke any type of parole, the practice has expanded significantly under his administration, according to the legal and immigration experts. Minors, however, had not been targeted until now. Still, the letter may not mean that ICE will in fact show up to the family's home or their school to deport the children, said immigration attorney John Antia. Many of these children may qualify for other forms of legal protection, Antia said. The first step is meeting with an experienced immigration lawyer. That's something, however, that's often out of reach for families due to financial hardship or lack of understanding about their rights. 'Whether ICE can lawfully detain these children largely depends on each child's immigration status and individual circumstances,' Antia said. When he learned that Xally and other children were taking sanctuary at a Waukegan church after getting the letters, he offered to meet with them, attempting to ease their anxiety and fear. 'The reality is that under this administration, no one is safe anywhere. They (immigration authorities) are unpredictable and desperate to meet a quota even if it means detaining a child,' Antia said. 'This administration doesn't care whether you are in the hospital, whether you are in the courthouse, whether you are in your home, definitely not at church.' While Xally and her mother didn't leave the law office with clear answers about their future, they said they felt a small sense of hope. The attorneys said they would explore legal options to help Xally stay in the country, or at the very least, protect her from detention. They returned to the church, packed their bags and went home. The fear, however, lingers more than ever. Every morning, Xally wakes up wondering if agents will show up at her door the way they have been showing up to other homes in Waukegan and other cities near Chicago. The girl and her mother avoid going out altogether, spending most days watching TV, doing her nails, writing or reading. 'When I begin to feel anxious, I pray,' Xally said as she scrolled though a photo of her late father on her cellphone background. Her nails are painted in bright pink polish and glitter. She painted them while she was staying at the church with other children who received similar letters from DHS. She said she is used to living in fear since she lived in Mexico. Only briefly after arriving did she think her life would take a turn for the best. Xally still remembers the day she first saw Lake Michigan after arriving in the Chicago area. It was Sept. 19 of last year. Before that, she had spent nearly a month in a Texas federal facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, surrounded by other children who, like her, had crossed the southern border seeking asylum. 'More than scared, I was nervous and excited,' Xally said. She was eager to leave behind a life marked by pain and instability after her father died from COVID over five years ago. When her mother remarried, they found themselves trapped in an abusive household, her mother recalled. As the threats heightened, her mother desperately searched for a way to protect her youngest daughter. At first, she left Xally with her elderly grandmother in their impoverished Mexican hometown. But soon, Guzman realized her best option was to send Xally to the United States, where her older sisters — both U.S.-born — lived. Guzman herself had lived in the U.S. unauthorized as a teenager. It was where she met Xally's father. The couple decided to return to Mexico when Xally's grandfather was on his deathbed and they wanted to see one last time. Shortly after, Xally was born. With the help of Contreras, founder of United Giving Hope, an organization supporting immigrant families in suburban Illinois, Xally was granted humanitarian parole as an unaccompanied minor and successfully reunited with her older sisters in Waukegan. 'It was a new start for a young girl with big dreams,' Contreras said. 'She arrived at a place of safety every child deserves.' Over the past decade, Contreras has helped hundreds of children and mothers legally cross the southern border seeking asylum, assisting with paperwork and connecting them to attorneys to support their cases. But now, about a dozen of those children, including Xally, have received letters from DHS ordering them to leave the country. 'This is deeply concerning and alarming,' Contreras said. 'These children are not the criminals Trump claimed ICE would target. They are victims of human rights violations and are being terrorized. Even if ICE doesn't come for them immediately, the threat alone causes severe psychological trauma.' While Xally and her mother choose to endure the uncertainty, others cannot bear it and have opted to return to their native towns. Even when it means facing danger, Contreras said. Sixteen-year-old Daneli Mendez, who arrived in the Chicago area last October, decided to go back to her native Veracruz, Mexico. After staying at the church with Contreras for nearly a week, terrified that ICE would arrive and arrest her, Daneli told her family she would rather return voluntarily than risk detention. The girl has heard of others being detained in detention centers in poor conditions for undetermined amounts of time. Most recently, a 15-year-old Mexican boy was reportedly arrested by federal authorities and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, a notorious detention facility in Florida. On July 5, just a day after Independence Day, Contreras escorted Daneli to O'Hare International Airport and watched as the young girl boarded a flight back to the country she once fled. 'It's heartbreaking to see their dreams shattered. But this is about more than dreams, it's about their safety,' Contreras said. Daneli returned with nothing but a small backpack, a few English words she had learned, and a broken heart, leaving her family behind once again. 'She would much rather do that than be detained and deported,' Contreras said. Under U.S. immigration law, unaccompanied minors, children under 18 who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, are supposed to receive special protections. They are typically placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and granted humanitarian parole while their cases are processed. But in recent months, immigration advocates and attorneys say the system is being quietly dismantled. 'We're seeing more and more unaccompanied minors having their parole revoked and being thrown into immigration proceedings where they're completely unequipped to defend themselves,' said Davina Casa, pastor and leader of the Monarchy Organization. The group provides legal guidance and other services for immigrants in Illinois. Its main goal is to reunify families. Casas and Contreras have worked closely together to help Xally and other children arrive safely in the United States. What's more concerning, she said, is that in March, the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Only after 11 immigrant groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys, did a court order temporarily restore the funding, but the case is still ongoing. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. That same law requires safe repatriation of the children. But Casas is skeptical of that. Even if the funding has been restored, the demand can't keep up. In April, more than 8,300 children ages 11 and under were ordered deported by immigration courts. That is the highest number for that age group in any month since tracking began over 35 years ago, according to court data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as first reported by The Independent. Since Trump took office in January, judges have ordered the removal of over 53,000 immigrant children, according to the data collected. Most of those children are elementary school age or younger. Approximately 15,000 were under the age of 4, and another 20,000 were between 4 and 11 years old. Teenagers have also been affected, with 17,000 ordered deported, though that number is still below the peak seen in 2020, during Trump's first term. Some of the children are unaccompanied minors, like Xally and Daneli, but it's unclear how many, since immigration authorities stopped tracking that data years ago. In the Chicago area, it's hard to know how many children are currently being detained or deported, due to gaps in the available data. But according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Tribune, at least 16 minors were deported or left the U.S. after being booked in Chicago-area ICE detention centers during Trump's first 150 days back in office. Another seven cases are still pending. If all seven of those cases result in deportation, that would bring the total to 23 minors — about the same number as were deported in the final 150 days of the Biden administration. But the latest available ICE data doesn't capture any efforts since late June. When Xally learned that Daneli had returned home, she panicked. The two girls had spent a few nights at the church, confiding in each other the fear that few other young girls would understand. 'Would I have to do that too?' she asked herself. 'I don't want to. I like school here, I want to go back after summer break.' Xally is enrolled at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, where she would enter eighth grade if she stays in the country. Meanwhile, her summer has been shadowed by fear and uncertainty. Just days after receiving the letter, her family quietly marked her 13th birthday — no guests, no music, no gifts. She can't even go anymore to the beach, a place that once felt like the freedom and safety she and her mother had desperately sought after being released from federal custody.
Chicago Tribune
13 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
In the wake of SNAP cuts, feeding hungry Illinoisans falls more than ever on food pantries
Natasha McClendon had $20 in her bank account and a bag of chicken in her fridge. It wasn't going to be enough to feed her three daughters, her husband and herself, which meant it was time to take her monthly visit to the St. Sabina parish food pantry. She took the bus to St. Sabina from her home on the South Side, a two-story duplex the McClendons share with a transition house. Her husband, Eric, suffers from Morquio syndrome — a birth defect that manifests like severe scoliosis — and is unable to work. Most of his disability check goes towards their $750 rent. Natasha McClendon is a substitute teacher at Chicago Public Schools. She makes around $211 a week during the school year. She hasn't had a paycheck since June. 'We barely get any help from anyone,' she said. In the last several months, the McClendons have watched their government food assistance shrink. In December, Natasha McClendon took to shopping once a month at her church's food pantry to keep her family fed, supplementing what she could afford from Food4Less and Jewel-Osco. But there are still days she worries her kids are hungry. Now, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, faces its largest cut in its history under President Donald Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' signed into law on Independence Day. By cutting $200 billion out of SNAP, the bill, officially called HR-1, pushes the burden to feed hungry Americans even further onto nonprofit food pantries, which could mean less food for people like the McClendons. As nonprofits reliant on donations, food banks and pantries were already stretched thin before the bill passed. Volunteers said they see more American families fall into food insecurity every day. As long as shoppers fit a certain criteria, pantries typically don't turn them away — but as demand grows, each family gets less to eat. Thousands of Illinoisans will be directly affected by Trump's SNAP cuts, which means thousands more people relying on food pantries, which means less food for everyone. Unless thousands more donations appear. 'We certainly need the support of the larger Chicago community to provide what we believe is going to be an exponential increase in need,' said Mitzi Baum, interim CEO at Chicago food nonprofit Nourishing Hope. A small, red-brick building, the St. Sabina parish pantry stands on West 79th Street, wedged in next to its partner church. The only clue of its existence is the small cluster of people holding shopping bags outside the door. Until recently, Natasha McClendon had never shopped at St. Sabina's — she visited the parish only as a churchgoer. Her $1,100 SNAP benefits had been enough to feed the family for the most part. She first visited St. Sabina parish food pantry on Dec. 10, the day she opened a letter from the Illinois Department of Human Services informing her that after IDHS did its routine reevaluation of her family's needs, it would limit their SNAP benefits to $660 a month. 'They're picking on us working people,' Natasha McClendon said. When the door swung open right at 9 a.m. on June 23, the line of South Side residents signed their names on a clipboard in the lobby area, a small space with white walls that resembles a doctor's office waiting room. Many of the shoppers seemed to know what they were doing, but others asked questions uncertainly as they navigated their first visit. Natasha McClendon shopped in a room set up like a U, where smiling volunteers handed Natasha her choices from each station. She could choose four vegetables, two fruits, two bread products, one meat and three miscellaneous items, but that was the daily limit. She took her time going through the options on each shelf, looking for the food items her kids would eat. Some sections were more empty than others; Nice! Fruit Circles crowded the cereal shelf, but the canned vegetable section only offered pumpkin and green beans. Her cart looked full when she had finished her lap, but she stared woefully down at her food. It would only feed her family for a couple of days, and she would have to wait until July to come back. Most Chicago food pantries can only afford to allow visits once a month. She has two grown children as well as her three young daughters who live at home. Natasha McClendon graduated from Kennedy-King College in 1999 with a baby and an associate's degree in preschool education. Although she's been applying to jobs, she is limited by various medical issues, including a tic disorder, Achilles tendonitis and other complications that make it difficult for her to work on her feet. 'I've had some battles, but I fought them,' she said. In March, IDHS budgeted each member of the McClendon family for less than $6 of food per day. St. Sabina is one of the 800 organizations served by the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which distributes food to pantries in communities all over the city. The Greater Chicago Food Depository and its sister organization, the Northern Illinois Food Bank, have felt the effects of rising grocery prices for months. The United States is still dealing with supply chain issues from COVID-19, unhelped by Trump's tariffs, climate change and even the war in Ukraine. 'This is a perfect storm,' said Lindsay Allen, a health economist and policy researcher at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. 'It's the worst storm ever.' Eggs, dairy, meat and fresh produce: These words are motifs in conversations between pantry operators, experts and shoppers. Everybody is struggling to afford them; in fact, the Greater Chicago Food Depository stopped buying eggs for its partners. Food insecurity stretches into the suburbs and small towns across the state. John and Loretta Arient bear daily witness to rising food insecurity in their small Illinois community. The Arients named Stone Soup, their NIFB-affiliated pantry and soup kitchen in Marengo, after the children's tale about neighbors sharing food. When the Arients first moved to Marengo, there were a couple of grocery stores and a decent pharmacy. Now, they call Marengo a 'food desert' because it has only two places to buy groceries. Options in the town include a Sullivan's Foods, a Family Dollar and two pantries. When people can't afford food from the first two options, they turn to the latter. 'Small towns are taking a hit and small businesses are taking a hit and things are shutting down,' Loretta Arient said. The Arients helped found the Stone Soup kitchen in 2014. Every Tuesday between Memorial Day and early September, John Arient and three other volunteers cook four kinds of soup in the kitchen at Marengo United Methodist Church. In 2017, Stone Soup expanded to give out boxes of food on Mondays, which include produce, meat, bread, cereal and pasta. The boxes are supposed to provide three days' worth of food. Stone Soup does not have qualifying requirements; it feeds between 150 and 180 families every Monday. 'We take care of the needy and the greedy, and we let God sort them out,' John said. In the weeks leading up to Trump signing HR-1, Natasha McClendon was afraid that her SNAP benefits would be further diminished. She thought she would be subject to harsher work requirements. And like so many other SNAP recipients — and pantry owners, as well as the politicians writing the bill — Natasha McClendon was confused. She didn't know what was going to happen. Food banks and pantries were sure of one thing: Food insecurity was about to turn from bad to worse. On July 4, Congress voted to extend work requirements to adults aged 55-64 and parents of children older than 13. Natasha McClendon's two younger daughters are 9 and 12, so her status with work requirements will not change. Yet the McClendons will suffer from the strain on their neighborhood food pantry as it becomes the only institution left to feed people losing SNAP benefits. 'I don't want to have to put a 'No Food' sign on the door,' said Tim Allison, executive director of social services at St. Sabina. Allen, of Northwestern University, explained the inefficacy of work requirements for food assistance programs. To work, people need to eat. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' threw hungry Americans into a catch-22: You can't afford to eat unless you work — but it's hard to work hungry. 'By taking away nutrition and by taking away health care from people, we are pretty much making it impossible for them to work,' Allen said. SNAP's purpose, she said, is to provide stability during times of economic instability. And the economy, right now, feels unstable to many, as grocery prices rise and the job market goes on a diet. As demand for food assistance rises — and it will — supplies diminish. Stone Soup has had to lower its quality standards in the wake of rising grocery prices. Its Monday food boxes, these days, have less fresh produce and more canned ingredients, according to Loretta Arient. Stone Soup could also use more storage and extra hands; as of now, the Arients, who are both retired, do most of the pantry's food pickups in their silver 2016 Honda Odyssey. 'I can see this almost taking us to a screeching halt,' John Arient said of HR-1. On top of needing more helping hands, food donations and money, food pantries will need more storage space and larger fridges and freezers to keep up with the thousands of people who will turn to them for nourishment. Julie Yukro, president and CEO of the Northern Illinois Food Bank, said she expects between 60,000 to 80,000 more Illinoisans in the region to start relying on her organization. One of those Illinoisans, Terry Roman, has a little gray card with purple and blue stripes tucked into his very old wallet. The small rectangle, more like a gift card than a credit card, carries the repercussions of Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill.' At 59, Roman falls into the risky age group between 55 and 64 who are now subject to work requirements nationwide. He doesn't have a disability exemption so unless that changes or he miraculously finds 80 hours of work per month, his gray plastic card will stop feeding him. For the last year and a half, Roman has received $292 in SNAP benefits each month. He retired two years ago from driving a truck after working for more than 40 years, in part because of a bad knee. Roman doesn't get disability for the knee because the issue has yet to be diagnosed. He works odd jobs to make ends meet while living in interim housing in Downers Grove that doesn't charge him rent. Roman buys most of his groceries with his SNAP money — for now. When Trump signed HR-1, he put a timer on Roman's benefits. So far, experts don't know when the timer will hit zero. 'They got eggs today!' The tall woman in the red dress turned excitedly to share the news. Nourishing Hope's Sheridan Market location, a GCFD partner, hadn't had eggs the last several times Bridget Woods went shopping. That Thursday evening at Sheridan Market was loud. Families chattered in the waiting area, volunteers asked shoppers their preferences and Judy Freebus, speaking Russian, was engaged in a bilingual conversation with an elderly Ukrainian woman at the check-in station. The shelves at this location were full-to-bursting at 5 p.m., prepared to feed 318 neighbors with 15 days' worth of groceries for each household. Nourishing Hope is one of Chicago's most efficient food pantries. It provides groceries for more than 4.5 million meals a year, with two pantry sites as well as an online market that allows shoppers to pre-order groceries and pick them up in a car. GCFD provides 62% of groceries, but Nourishing Hope also gets substantial food donations from Sam's Club, Target and Trader Joe's. Woods has shopped at Nourishing Hope pantries for more than 10 years now. Her SNAP benefits amount to only $34 a month, which has never been enough. She wasn't sure if her access to SNAP would be affected by HR-1. 'If it (does get) affected, I won't miss nothing,' Woods said as she scrutinized a selection of cheese. 'Nope, not that,' she said as an eager volunteer proffered a ball of mozzarella. 'Put that back.' Nourishing Hope's lush shelves have been life-sustaining for many Chicagoans, and now they, too, are at risk. Angela Cimarusti-Clifford, Nourishing Hope's senior manager of pantry programs, said the pantry hasn't experienced immediate effects of HR-1 but is preparing for them to hit. When SNAP was cut in the past, the impact followed shortly after. Yet the July day Bridget Woods went shopping, for the first time in months, Sheridan Market had eggs. Just one carton per household — but eggs nonetheless. Woods didn't know where the eggs came from. Maybe a grocery donation. Maybe a generous neighbor. Perhaps the staff at Nourishing Hope bought the eggs themselves. Whoever it was — someone saw the need, and filled it. Nourishing Hope will keep feeding its neighbors, even as its burden becomes heavier than ever.
