Florida SNAP recipients express fears about Trump tax bill's cuts to food assistance
Here are some of the consequences that will follow if Congress cuts a key federal nutrition program, as proposed in the U.S. House's version of Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.'
'I won't be able to get healthy foods like I am right now, as I have health issues,' said Peggy Shannon, 70, who lives in a senior rental apartment complex, whose only other income comes from her monthly Social Security check.
'The SNAP program helps provide all of that for me,' said Shannon, who described becoming 'very depressed' upon learning of the potential cuts to the program, which still must go through the U.S. Senate before becoming law.
'Receiving SNAP benefits does help, especially if you're trying to get your education or if you're income is not where it needs to be,' said Jennifer Nicholson, a partially disabled single mother of four who is allowed to work a certain number of hours per month.
'Kids eat, especially with the summer months coming. They're going to be home and they're going to eat more and more. So cutting SNAP at this time would be very hard for some people,' she added.
SNAP means Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, cuts to which could cause nearly 3 million Floridians to lose access to federal food assistance, Tampa Bay area Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor and social service advocates warned during a press conference featuring the two women in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
The program provides low-income people and families with financial assistance to pay for groceries. It's funded through a combination of federal and state resources. The federal government now pays 100% of SNAP benefits, while the states and the feds share the administrative costs.
Included in the major tax bill advocated for by the Trump administration, and passed last week in the U.S. House, is a mandate that states pay between 5% and 25% of monthly SNAP benefit costs based on each state's payment error rates (which reflect the amount of underpayments and overpayments.)
Florida's error rate in 2023 was 12.6%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That puts the state on the hook for 25% of the costs, or $1.6 billion in 2028 alone, if the bill were to take effect, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
And all states would also have to increase their portion of administrative costs from 50% to 75%.
Whether Florida's Republican-led Legislature would be willing to fill that gap is questionable, and Castor isn't optimistic.
'Part of the proposal is to say that, 'Well, we're not really cutting everyone, we're just asking states to provide more money,'' she said.
'We know here in the state of Florida we have an unfortunate track record that often comes when the feds say we're backing off,' she added.
'Part of the responsibility here in the state of Florida, a state without an income tax, and one where we don't want an income tax, means that you have to be good stewards of the tax dollars that are there, and right now I would question if they are fundamental good stewards of our tax money as they send more money off to private, for-profit charters,' she said.
In addition, Florida economists project budget deficits starting as early as the summer of 2026 — another potential obstacle for the Legislature to get involved in increasing its share to SNAP.
More than 59% of SNAP participants in Florida are in families with children, and more than 41% are in families with older adult or disabled members, according to the CBPP.
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture data, the Florida Policy Institute estimates that 99,000 veterans in Florida participate in the SNAP program. FPI bills itself as an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing state policies and budgets that improve the economic mobility and quality of life for all Floridians.
U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson praised the restrictions on SNAP after the proposal passed his committee earlier this month. A spokesperson for Thompson told Newsweek that SNAP spends more than $13 billion per year in erroneous payments.
Among the new requirements in the bill are expanding work requirements for 'able-bodied adults without dependents' to people up to age 64, from the existing gap of 59. Also, administrative requirements would increase, including more stringent identity and income documentation.
'What we know about SNAP in particular is that most people are working. Or they're on a pathway, as you heard from [the people who spoke today] to get there,' said Castor.
The Tampa Bay area representative labels the legislation 'the billionaire giveaway bill.' She says it increases bureaucratic hoops that will make it more difficult for people to collect benefits, adding that because individuals have busy lives they might miss one of those reporting periods.
'Which would mean that they would lose their food assistance, and that's what Republicans in Congress are banking on, because the independent Congressional Budget Office [CBO] did an analysis … that says that all those bureaucratic barriers do nothing to reform the system, they simply work to kick people off, and that's where they achieve savings to give the billionaire tax breaks,' she said.
The Florida Legislature, which is in the midst of budget impasse, fueled by disagreement over the amount of tax relief to pass and how much money the state should spend, has not discussed what the loss of SNAP funding would mean to the state.
Florida Republican members of Congress are hailing the passage of the bill, noting other provisions of the measure.
'No tax on tips; No tax on overtime; Permanently Secures the Border; Largest Deficit Reduction in 30 years; Ends Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare for illegals,' U.S. Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds noted in a social media message last week.
'Huge win! The House just passed the Big Beautiful Bill — lower taxes and bigger paychecks,' South Florida U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said in a video posted on X. 'Your wallet just got a raise!'
Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is reported to be concerned about the fiscal implications of the Trump tax bill, which economists have said could raise the federal deficit by at least $3 trillion.
'I want to get a deal done; I support the president's agenda. I support the border, I support the military, I support extending the Trump tax cuts — but we have to live in reality. But we got to live in reality here: We got a fiscal crisis,' Scott said, according to The Hill.
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NBC News
22 minutes ago
- NBC News
A global HIV/AIDS program that saved millions of lives faces cuts under the Trump administration
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering a dramatic cutback and eventual phasing out of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. program to combat HIV/AIDS in developing countries that has been widely credited with saving 26 million lives since its inception in 2003, according to multiple congressional and administration officials. Created during the George W. Bush administration, PEPFAR was launched with star-power support from U2 frontman and advocate for developing countries, Bono, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. In the two decades since, it enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress. But as the Trump administration has sought to cut costs across the U.S. government, particularly for global aid programs, PEPFAR has come up on the chopping block. The administration initially proposed a cut of $400 million from next year's budget, but that funding was restored at the last minute by the Republican-led Senate last week, keeping it going in the short term. Four congressional aides told NBC News that the program was virtually frozen, along with most funding for USAID, in early February. Contracts with providers were put on hold and funding was reduced to what they called a 'trickle.' They said that most promised State Department waivers for critical care did not materialize, and that 51% of current PEPFAR appropriations were either terminated or were not functional. 'They're sitting on the money,' congressional officials said. 'We're not seeing it in the field.' According to the aides, in April, the State Department's then-director of the Office of Foreign Assistance, Peter Marocco, working with Elon Musk's DOGE team to dismantle foreign aid, briefed Congress that PEPFAR would refocus on maternal and child HIV transmission, excluding LGBT individuals and most preventative care that the program has done for decades. Earlier this month, a senior State Department official told reporters, 'The program was actually drowning in too much money, in some cases, you know, sort of going beyond its core mandate.' The official said, 'So instead, we're going to focus on that lifesaving care' and 'work with countries on self-reliance' to ensure there is not a gap in coverage. The senior official said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is drawing a distinction between people who have HIV and need lifesaving direct treatment, and preventative care for sex workers as well as bisexual and gay men. The State Department official also said, 'It doesn't mean that the United States has to pay for every single thing around the world." "A lot of these countries, they've graduated to the point where their HIV rates are low enough and their economy is healthy enough that they can continue to pay for some of these things. We can get in, make positive change and then get out rather than paying forever so that every sex worker in Africa has PrEP," the official said, referring to HIV medication. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas testified to Congress last week that, overall, in the administration's budget request for the next fiscal year there is a 54% cut in PEPFAR's administrative, nondirect care funds. That is in addition to a 15% cut in the department's budget request for direct care in the same budget request. A global health staff of 700 people plus contractors in the field prior to President Donald Trump taking office has been reduced to 80 people after recent firings. Last month, White House budget director Russell Vought told a Senate committee, without providing evidence, that PEPFAR spent $9.3 million 'to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis.' Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Africa Subcommittee, told NBC News that PEPFAR had always planned to get countries that had developed their own hospitals and health care systems, such as South Africa, to take over funding the program by 2030. According to Coons, that transition is already underway. But he and other critics of the current budget cuts said that it is not possible in low-income conflict zones, such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti, to replace the U.S program anytime soon. Still, according to a draft planning memo reported by The New York Times, the State Department would shut down U.S. support in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Vietnam within two years. Nations with high HIV infection rates, including Kenya, Zimbabwe and Angola, would get three to four years, the Times reported, while lower-income countries would get up to eight years under the proposal. NBC News has not viewed the draft plan and a State Department official told NBC News it has not been finalized. Dr. Robert Black, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who evaluated PEPFAR for Congress, told NBC News, 'I think two years for a number of countries, for many countries in Africa, would be too short,' adding, 'I just can't imagine two years would be an effective transition.' Black also said maintaining prevention is 'clearly important" and that withdrawing funding for prevention, which is contemplated under the Trump plan, would increase HIV rates and expand the burden. Rubio, who as a senator supported PEPFAR and other foreign aid, defended $20 billion in overall proposed budget cuts to the Senate Foreign Relations committee in May, citing 'duplicative, wasteful and ideologically driven programs.' Asked last week about the PEPFAR cuts, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served in the Bush administration when PEPFAR was launched, told NBC News at the Aspen Security Forum, 'I do think PEPFAR is going to not only survive, I think it's going to be just fine. ... There will be some scaling back, and it's probably worth it to take a look at focusing on what we really need to focus on. We've become pretty dispersed and diffuse in the kinds of programs that we were running.' But, she added, 'what makes America different as a great power is that we have not led just with power, but we've also led with principle.' Later at the conference, Rice said launching PEPFAR was 'the proudest moment' in all of her government service. But she added that the U.S. also wants to build other countries' capacity and health care systems to sustain themselves. Former President Bush, in rare criticism of Trump's policies, praised fired foreign aid workers in a video last month. He told the State Department employees who had been fired, 'You've shown the great strength of America through your work, and that is our good heart.' Citing PEPFAR'S lifesaving work, Bush said, 'Is it in our interest that 25 million people who would have died, now live? I think it is. On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your hard work, and God bless you.' In a video, Bono told the foreign aid staff in verse, 'They called you crooks — when you were the best of us, there for the rest of us. And don't think any less of us, when politics makes a mess of us. It's not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick. If this isn't murder. I don't know what is.'
Politico
22 minutes ago
- Politico
The red state broadcaster bracing for funding cuts
Presented by Chevron Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government, your guide to Donald Trump's unprecedented overhaul of the federal government — the key decisions, the critical characters and the power dynamics that are upending Washington and beyond. Send tips | Subscribe | Email Sophia | Email Irie | Email Ben President DONALD TRUMP on Thursday signed legislation making sharp cuts to public broadcasting. Now, small, rural radio and TV stations across the country are bracing for the worst. One of those outlets is KEDT-TV/FM, a public radio and TV station in Corpus Christi, Texas. It's the only radio station in the region that has a news department, said station president and general manager DON DUNLAP, and covers a rural service area with a primarily Republican, low-income and Spanish-speaking audience. 'There are 10 public TV stations in Texas, and we're thinking probably six of them will close down within a year,' Dunlap predicted in an interview with West Wing Playbook. The White House maintains that the cuts — included in a rescissions package clawing back about $9 billion in previously approved federal funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid — would limit the taxpayer dollars going to NPR and PBS, the independent but publicly funded news outlets Republicans have long accused of peddling a leftwing bias. 'Democratic paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don't deserve taxpayer subsidies, and NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive on their own,' said White House principal deputy press secretary HARRISON FIELDS. 'Unfortunately for them, their only lifeline was taxpayer dollars, and that ended when President Trump was sworn in.' But critics, including four Congressional Republicans, have maintained that the rescissions would imperil dozens of local newsrooms with little connection to the national organizations — many in rural, deep-red areas. 'I think [lawmakers'] decisions were not informed,' Dunlap said. 'We're there to help people.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How will the passage of the rescissions package affect your stations? We would have to make a decision whether we're going to shut down the television service or we have to shut down the radio service. Both of them provide unique services in these communities that are not going to be picked up by commercial media, because the content is not commercially viable. There are other secondary impacts that we don't have any data on right now. What is it going to do to our programming costs? We buy about $600,000 worth of programming from NPR and PBS, and obviously their programming model is going to have to change if there are fewer stations involved. All these different unknowns make this scenario planning very, very difficult. Republicans say they're defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because NPR and PBS propagate left-wing positions. You're in a red district in a red state — how do you respond to that? That's said by a lot of people who don't listen or watch what we're doing here. On the TV side, there's just no way that we could even have two sides to something. What's the political side of bald eagles or nature programs about hurricanes or volcanoes, or classical music programming to play on the radio? There's no political side to that. We have a program on the radio called 'All Things Considered.' I think the nature of that program is what these people don't like. Some people don't like things to be talked about or covered. They want their information limited. So then they have to come up with a name for it, call it 'woke' or something. Both of Texas's senators supported the rescissions, as did your congressman, Rep. MICHAEL CLOUD (R-Texas). Have you spoken to any of them? Michael has been over here to the station, actually. We do an academic quiz show for high school kids that just finished season 20 … and we had him ask some questions about government. What I have found — watching the Congressional testimony and during our visits to the Hill — is that these members and senators have so much information coming to them. The only ones that really know anything in depth about it are their staff, and they're just boiled down to a couple of talking points. A spokesperson for Cloud did not respond to a request for comment. It's likely that many of your listeners are Republicans, too. What do they think about the cuts? We've had a ton of phone calls about all this. I haven't heard from anybody who supports cuts to public broadcasting. We have a big service with the schools down here. We work with over 100 school districts in South Texas, which we provide with PBS LearningMedia — over 120,000 educational videos. It's highly used in the schools, but nobody mentions that as one of the services that we do. MESSAGE US — West Wing Playbook is obsessively covering the Trump administration's reshaping of the federal government. Are you a federal worker? A DOGE staffer? Have you picked up on any upcoming DOGE moves? We want to hear from you on how this is playing out. Email us at westwingtips@ Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe! POTUS PUZZLER Under which president was the Fine Arts Committee for the White House created? (Answer at bottom.) WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT TWO CAREER NOAA OFFICIALS OUT: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration placed two veteran officials on administrative leave today, NOAA's communications director confirmed to Ben and POLITICO's E&E News' DANIEL CUSICK. JEFF DILLEN, who was serving as NOAA deputy general counsel, and STEPHEN VOLZ, assistant administrator for NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, were both placed on leave for separate issues, according to Kim Doster, the agency's communications director. 'Mr. Dillen was placed on administrative leave by the department's senior career attorney pending a review of performance issues over the past several weeks,' NOAA communications director KIM DOSTER said in a statement, adding that Volz was placed on leave 'on an unrelated matter.' It comes less than a week before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee takes up the confirmation of NEIL JACOBS, Trump's nominee to lead NOAA. Jacobs served as NOAA's acting administrator during Trump's first term, where he found himself embroiled in the 2019 'Sharpiegate' scandal, where he and another NOAA official, JULIE ROBERTS, were accused of pressuring scientists to alter the forecast of Hurricane Dorian, which killed dozens of people. Jacobs and Roberts were attempting to align the forecast with statements made by Trump, who said in the Oval Office that the hurricane would hit Alabama. In 2020, Volz led the investigation into Jacobs and Roberts, and found that the two officials violated the agency's 'scientific integrity policy.' The Oval 'THEY WANT TO DIE': Trump today said Hamas 'didn't want to make a deal' and that 'they want to die,' claiming the U.S.-designated terrorist group wants to retain the hostages to keep its negotiating power, Irie reports. It comes a day after the U.S. pulled out of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas amid pressure on Israel from American allies to halt its military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, which has led to widespread death and starvation. French President EMMANUEL MACRON said Thursday that his country would become the first of the G7 to recognize a Palestinian state. And Australian Prime Minister ANTHONY ALBANESE said that 'The situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world's worst fears.' Agenda Setting RELEASE THE FUNDS: KATIE BRITT (R-Ala.), along with 13 of her GOP colleagues, sounded the alarm about 'the slow disbursement rate' of National Institutes of Health funding included in the March spending bill signed by Trump, our KATHERINE TULLY-McMANUS reports. Britt, who serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations homeland subcommittee, wrote a letter today to White House Budget Chief RUSS VOUGHT, urging the Office of Management and Budget to 'fully implement' the stopgap government funding package enacted earlier this year. Suspension of the appropriated funds, whether delayed or formally withheld, 'could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science,' the senators warned in the latest example of Republican pushback to the administration's pattern of withholding money from programs that lawmakers have explicitly set aside funds for. FUNDS, RELEASED: The Trump administration will release billions of dollars in education funding that have been on hold for review for weeks, our MACKENZIE WILKES reports. Approximately $1.3 billion for after-school programs was released by the administration last week, with today's move marking the release of the remaining portion of the nearly $7 billion in withheld funding. The remaining dollars include money to support teacher preparation and students learning English, among other initiatives. 'UNAVOIDABLE' LAYOFFS: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is planning for mass layoffs in October due to the Trump administration's budget cuts, POLITICO's E&E News' CHRISTA MARSHALL reports. In a video distributed to staff this month, Lab Director MICHAEL WITHERELL said 'as we look ahead to the federal budget for fiscal year 2026, it has become clear that staffing reductions at the lab are unavoidable.' It comes as the nation's 17 national labs that support research on technologies ranging from EVs to coal are facing significant changes due to the cuts. Energy Secretary CHRIS WRIGHT has been a major proponent of the labs, calling them important for implementing the administration's energy priorities. Even as the administration builds additional data centers throughout the country, the president's proposed budget for fiscal 2026 would slash funding for many lab programs, including Lawrence Berkeley. What We're Reading Inside Trump's plan to keep control of Congress in 2026 (POLITICO's Jake Traylor and Adam Wren) ChatGPT Gave Instructions for Murder, Self-Mutilation, and Devil Worship (The Atlantic's Lila Shroff) What the Timeline Reveals About Trump and the Epstein files (POLITICO's Ankush Khardori) Trump bump drives D.C. demand for house managers and private chefs (Axios' Mimi Montgomery) POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER During the JOHN F. KENNEDY administration, first lady JACQUELINE KENNEDY created the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, made up of specialists in the field, and hired LORRAINE WAXMAN PEARCE as the first curator of the White House, according to the White House Historical Association. To learn more about the presidents and first ladies and how to draw them, check out How to Draw the Presidents and First Ladies.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Maxwell's lawyer says she's undecided on appearing for congressional testimony
A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell said his client is still deciding whether she will honor a congressional subpoena demanding her testimony next month before House lawmakers. 'We have to make a decision about whether she will do that or not,' said David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and co-conspirator of the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. 'That's been scheduled for the week of August 11th and we haven't gotten back to them on whether we'll do that.' Markus delivered these remarks after Maxwell completed a two-day interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of the Trump administration's continued inquiry into the charges against Epstein's circle. The comments suggest Maxwell is weighing whether to assert privileges to resist the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee's effort to compel her testimony. Importantly, Maxwell is still appealing her conviction on the sex trafficking conspiracy that led to a 20-year jail sentence. If Maxwell asserts her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, there's little Congress can do to pierce it, except offer her a rarely used form of immunity. It's unclear if the Justice Department negotiated any sort of immunity agreement with Maxwell for her testimony this week. But Markus said Maxwell answered every question posed by Blanche, covering about 100 different people. 'She didn't hold back,' he said. Markus also said there's been no discussion with the Trump administration about a possible pardon 'just yet, ' adding, 'We hope [President Donald Trump] exercises that power in the right and just way." The Justice Department has long housed deep doubts about Maxwell's credibility — a sentiment Speaker Mike Johnson echoed this week. 'Could she be counted on to tell the truth? Is she a credible witness? I mean, this is a person who's been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable, conspiratorial acts and acts against innocent young people,' Johnson told reporters. 'I mean, can we trust what she's going to say? … I don't know, but we'll have to see.' GOP leaders so far have pointed to the Justice Department interviewing Maxwell as a positive step, with more questions lingering over the congressional push to get information from the Epstein associate. A spokesperson for Oversight Committee Republicans had no comment Friday afternoon. Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
