Federal cutbacks under President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ budget law have stripped food assistance from tens of thousands of Connecticut residents over the past year, including thousands of children
The same law delivers trillions of dollars in tax cuts concentrated among the wealthiest Americans while cutting more than $1 trillion combined from SNAP, Medicaid and other assistance programs
Connecticut Democrats and Gov. Ned Lamont have tapped state surplus funds for emergency grocery assistance, though lawmakers say Connecticut needs more data and a longer-term response
Donald Trump and his Republican Party’s plan to “Make America Great Again” has resulted in tax cuts for the rich while cutting off food benefits for 35,000 Connecticut residents, including almost 20,000 children.
“Nearly 18,900 Connecticut children have lost access to federal nutrition benefits since July 2025, when Congress and President Donald Trump ordered a wide array of human services cutbacks,” the CT Mirror reported last week. “Enrolling households in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits long has been recognized to improve birth and other health outcomes. Losing SNAP benefits also can cost a family access to free school meals.”
In a related story, The Mirror notes that a total of 35,000 Connecticut residents – including some refugees – have lost SNAP benefits due to Trump and Republicans’ Republican Federal budget, which will provide $2.7 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans over the next decade while imposing new work and other requirements on national social service programs and cutting $1.16 trillion out of Medicaid and SNAP over the same time period.
SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – gives people in Connecticut help to buy food. It used to be called “food stamps.” SNAP benefits include monthly money on a debit-like EBT card to buy food, free education and job training, and budget-friendly and healthy recipes and nutrition tips. The program is income-limited; for example, a family of three making less than $53,300 a year could qualify for $785 a month in food assistance. SNAP cannot be used to buy beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes, tobacco, vitamins, medicines, pet food, household cleaning supplies, feminine hygiene products, or cosmetics.
There are SNAP recipients in every single Connecticut town, from Greenwich, Darien and Wilton to Hartford, Waterbury, New Britain and New Haven. About one out of every 10 Connecticut residents receives SNAP benefits - 369,000 people out of a state population of 3.6 million.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff recently wrote about his 1,000 mile trip across America to examine the impact of Trump and Republicans’ SNAP cuts; his profile begins with Trinity Goodman of Oklahoma City, who “survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. She had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and six pennies in her piggy bank.”
“This pain across America is now magnified by President Trump’s cuts in food stamps, Medicaid, mental health funding for children, pregnancy prevention initiatives and other social programs, as well as by rising gas and food prices,” Kristoff writes. “Republicans are also imposing tougher work requirements for benefits; this is reasonable in theory, but in practice such requirements have proved costly to administer and end up mostly just driving people deeper into poverty.”
Fortunately for some Connecticut residents, Democrats and Governor Ned Lamont have stepped in with a plan to use $8.5 million from Connecticut’s Federal Cuts Response Fund to provide $300 grocery assistance cards to those losing their benefits. Those benefit cards are expected to be distributed later this month .
Almost every Republican in Connecticut voted against that spending, deriding it as “the governor’s re-election fund.”
By Lawrence Cook
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