The United States is in the midst of a food assistance purge. Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, has dropped by more than five million people over the latest year of available data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The sudden drop-off in SNAP participation isn’t due to reduced needs. According to the USDA’s latest report on food insecurity — defined as having limited or uncertain access to enough healthy foods — forty-eight million Americans lived in food insecure households in 2024, or 14.4 percent of the population. Food insecurity is the highest it’s been in over a decade.

The Trump administration doesn’t appear confident in its ability to bring these numbers down. Not only did it cancel this year’s food security report covering 2025, the administration canceled all future iterations, claiming that the reports “do nothing more than fear monger.” A desperate excuse, considering the cancellation couldn’t be justified on the grounds of cost, quality, or utility: the USDA food security report is the most comprehensive on the issue, costs less than $1 million to produce, and informs the implementation of about $100 billion in food assistance through SNAP, which served on average forty-two million people per month last year.