Trump’s Cuts to Food Pantries are Already Hurting the Poor

I want to talk about food pantries again: what they are, how the current political regime is hurting them, and what you can do.

A while ago, I wrote an article trying to explain what food pantries are, what it’s like to go to one, and the kind of people who use it. Let’s go over the basics. Essentially, a food pantry tries to fill the gaps that are left by the social safety net,  because the income limit for the pantry is higher than the one for EBT benefits (food stamps), and because you can still use one if you don’t have a way to prove your income.  This is essential, because in America, EBT is  hard to get with all kinds of paperwork hoops you may need to jump through, and many poor people find themselves without it now and then. Also, the federal poverty line is so artificially low that people making above the limit, usually about 130% of the line, often still can’t afford to eat every day of the month. And the amount of money a family gets on their EBT benefits card usually still doesn’t keep them eating every single day.

A food pantry is a place you can go at the end of the month to get a box of groceries to stretch out what’s left in your cupboard. And, it’s a place you can go once a week, to get some pantry staples and some more random food items, and then take your food stamps or the small amount of cash you have to the grocery store to get other items to make the food pantry box into a meal. And it’s a place a homeless person can go because they don’t have a house anymore, they have no place to store their birth certificate or pay stubs and can’t prove income to the Department of Job and Family Services, so they can’t have an EBT card. And it’s a place where a grandmother who recently got custody of her grandchildren but doesn’t yet have the paperwork to prove a change in household size can go to get some help. And it’s a place you can visit once or twice in an emergency, because you just lost your job and it will take some time to find a new one or get signed up for EBT (or both). Food pantries can help with all of that and more.

A food pantry gets their food from a variety of places: donations from church food drives, food close to its expiration date that a chain like Walmart or Kroger donates for a tax write off, and also from the U. S. department of Agriculture.

The USDA programs supplying food to the food banks benefit not only the poor, but farmers, by giving them another place to sell their produce and meat.

A food pantry might be a place that just hands you a box of food items and you don’t get any choices, or it could be a room where you push your shopping cart around and get to choose items like a grocery store. Personally, when I’ve gone to the food pantry, it’s been the like-a-grocery-store kind. I would present my driver’s license so they could keep track that I wasn’t getting more than one box a week. I’d usually mutter something about how embarrassed I was to ask for help again, and the volunteer would smile and tell me not to feel bad. Then I’d take one loaf of bread from the shelf of day old bread with a “TAKE ONE” sign. Three dented cans of soup or vegetables from the TAKE THREE vegetable can section. A box of off-brand cereal and a bag or two of rice from the dry goods. I’d dip in the freezer that said TAKE TWO for two packages of meat. Then to the fresh vegetables with a sign that said “FIVE ZUCCHINI, TWO BAGS OF APPLES, CARROTS AS MANY AS YOU WANT.” In the fridge at the very end, there’d be eggs and deli items or maybe a carton of juice or a frozen pizza. That would be a typical trip. The cans, deli items and and old bread were donated by Kroger. The rice and cereal, fresh fruit and vegetables and the eggs, were donated by the USDA. The meat in the freezer was a little of both: sometimes frozen meat with a clearance sticker from Kroger, and sometimes giant generic-looking bags of chicken legs or tilapia from the USDA.

Now, look at this article about how Trump and DOGE’s cuts to the USDA aid programs are already affecting food pantries.

Let me tell you, that’s hit Steubenville as well.

Over the winter, when my family was especially pinched but making too much for EBT benefits, I had to go to the food pantry weekly. After the regime change, when Trump and his DOGE department started smashing everything, things got interesting. There haven’t been eggs since February– that could be because of the bird flu and not Trump. But February was about the time the vegetable choices started getting smaller and smaller, and worse and worse quality. In March, I opened that meat freezer and found it was full of bags of chocolate covered strawberries that Kroger had put on clearance, but no chicken legs or tilapia. The last time I went, a few weeks ago, there was nothing at all in the freezer and a sign apologizing for the lack of meat. And the vegetable shelf was nearly as bad– what little they had was moldy.

My family is fortunate that my husband got a new job just then.  Though we are still very pinched and will be for awhile yet, we haven’t desperately needed the pantry after the first part of April. I’m hoping things continue to get better. But my neighbors here in Steubenville still need the pantry, and they’re having terrible luck.

My readers love it when I tell stories about all the boisterous children who live in the neighborhood. You should know that the grandmother of the children I call the Baker Street Irregulars went to the food pantry last week, and said there was almost nothing there except pudding cups. And this was awfully tricky for them, because their EBT cards stopped working for part of the weekend. They have seven mouths to feed. A small disturbance in their food supply makes life extremely tricky.

And it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

Remember, this is just the beginning. The Republicans in Congress want billions in cuts to EBT benefits. Meanwhile, the people lucky enough to still be on benefits are likely enough to experience more and more surprise outages as the president’s mass firings of federal workers make government programs run less efficiently. We might see people who depend on their Social Security to buy groceries left in the lurch as well. Those people will try to get help to food pantries, who are doing the best they can, but the food won’t be there.

Two things are very clear to me right now. First of all, you and I have to do everything we can to feed the poor in our community. I’m expanding my victory garden  to share the produce, and I’m looking into getting a blessing box for the yard. Maybe your church can fundraise to donate to food pantries, or start your own pantry stocked by parishioners, or hold a lunch for the homeless once a week. Those things will help. But it’s also clear to me, that none of our individual efforts are going to be enough. All of us working as hard as we can can’t provide the help the USDA was providing. We don’t have billions of dollars and a giant bureaucracy working together with farmers.

We’re going to have to get very angry and very loud. Poor people need to get loud and angry on their own behalf. People who have more money need to get loud and angry on behalf of the poor. The more respectable and well-to-do you look, the more loud and angry you need to get. Call and write to your representatives in Congress, whether they’re Republican or Democrat. Look into protests in your area and if you can’t go yourself, see if you can watch a neighbor’s children so they’re free to go, or help in a different way. This has nothing to do with what your political leanings are. I was Republican for years, and I still didn’t want to see people starve. No one should want poor people, especially poor children, to go hungry. Be angry. Be loud. Make politicians terrified to further cut food benefits.

Eating is not partisan. It’s something every human needs.

The food pantry is a vital resource for so many hungry people.

What’s happening now is already causing terrible suffering, and we need to do our best to stop it.