The SNAP Crisis and Beyond: Trump Punishes America’s Most Vulnerable
Even before Donald Trump’s re-election last year, the class-conscious of the world already regarded him as one of history’s great scoundrels. Like his spiritual forebearers Marie Antoinette and Emperor Nero, Trump’s malfeasance and criminal indifference reach stunning depths and impacted the lives of many.
With the passage of Trump’s “megabill”, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), earlier this year, benefits for America’s lowest socioeconomic strata were already on the chopping block. More recent developments have accelerated and broadened the Trumpite forward assault on poor and working-class Americans.
America’s current “government shutdown,” is the longest partial government closure in the nation’s history. It is a testament to the complete inability of Democrats and Republicans alike to govern in the best interests of their constituency. But the Republicans and the Trumpite, MAGA standard bearers, take particular advantage of the unprecedented gridlock in Washington. They have seized upon the opportunity to squeeze and punish the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized citizens by restricting access to food assistance and healthcare. This is the current SNAP crisis.
The SNAP crisis
On November 1, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits – commonly known as “food stamps”- expired due to a lapse in federal funding caused by the government shutdown. Despite the United States’ storied reputation as “the richest country on Earth,” a huge number of American households depend on this assistance for survival.
“In fiscal year 2024, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) served an average of 41.7 million people per month, or 12.3 percent of U.S. residents. The share of residents receiving SNAP benefits ranged from as high as 21.2 percent in New Mexico to as low as 4.8 percent in Utah. In 36 States, the share was between 8 and 16 percent.”
Jones, Jordan. “Percent of Population Receiving SNAP Benefits in Fiscal Year 2023 | Economic Research Service.” Usda.gov, 2023.
Source: Usda.gov, ibid.
SNAP recipients include subgroups of especially vulnerable households, such as families with children and those living in extreme poverty.
“The Trump administration is using the lives of 42 million people who rely on SNAP as political blackmail. Two-thirds of recipients are in households with children… Already, 5 percent of US households are classified as suffering from “very low food security,” a government euphemism for households forced to reduce food intake or skip meals altogether.”
“Trump’s Threats Against Food Stamps: A Weapon of Class War.” World Socialist Web Site, 28 Oct. 2025.
Nevertheless, on October 31, the very eve of the expiration of SNAP funding, Trump threw a huge gala event at his Mar-a-Lago estate, optics be damned.
“Hours before millions of Americans were set to lose federal food benefits amid the ongoing government shutdown, President Donald Trump hosted a glittering party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The official theme of the Halloween night bash was “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody,” according to a pool report. The line is a title of a song featured on the soundtrack for the 2013 movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby.”
Hanson, Hilary. “Trump Throws Lavish Halloween “Great Gatsby” Party on Eve of SNAP Running Dry.” HuffPost, Nov. 2025. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
The irony of the central themes of Fitzgerald’s work was, of course, lost on Trump’s already tone-deaf cabal of bourgeois sycophants.
“The Great Gatsby,” published in 1925, takes place during the Roaring ’20s and famously explores the emptiness of material wealth and moral decay of the rich, among other themes.
Hanson, ibid.
As expected, Trump remained indifferent to the plight of the poor, amidst subsequent calls for emergency relief. He even pledged that his administration would defy a judge’s order to continue funding SNAP despite the shutdown:
“A federal judge in Rhode Island directed the Trump administration to use emergency money to fund November food aid benefits for millions of Americans.
[…]
[U.S. District Judge John] McConnell, an Obama appointee, affirmed the complaint of several cities and nonprofits that sued USDA over its decision not to use emergency money to support food aid during the government shutdown. The move, plaintiffs argued, “needlessly plunged SNAP into crisis.”
Brown, M. (2025, October 31). “Judge orders Trump administration to fund food aid for millions of Americans.” POLITICO; Politico.
Source: Truth Social, re-posted by Rep. Norma Torres via X, 4 Nov. 2025.
Trump’s Press Secretary and others in his orbit quickly scrambled to explain away the President’s open defiance of the court order, stating that aid would flow accordingly:
“The administration is fully complying with the court order. I just spoke to the president about it. The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to understand it’s going to take time to receive this money because the Democrats have forced the administration into a very untenable position,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified in remarks to reporters Tuesday.”
Svirnovskiy, G., & Brown, M. (2025, November 4). “Americans will still get partial SNAP benefits despite Trump post, White House says.” POLITICO; Politico.
Yet behind the scenes, Trump and company continued actively resisting any efforts to restore the flow of aid to America’s most vulnerable. The Trump Administration ultimately petitioned the United States Supreme Court to halt orders by lower courts to distribute SNAP assistance, and the initial petition was granted by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown on November 7, again temporarily pausing benefits around the country.
“The Trump administration’s emergency request to the justices came hours after the USDA told states that it was working to comply with the ruling to fully fund the program that was issued a day earlier by US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island.
This latest legal move has injected more uncertainty into whether food stamp recipients would see their full allotments anytime soon.”
Cole, Devan, and John Fritze. “Trump Asks Supreme Court to Step into Fight over Food Stamp Benefits.” CNN, 8 Nov. 2025.
Crisis and contradiction
Chaos, fear and increasing hunger now reign across America for those who rely on SNAP benefits to put food on their tables. States that have attempted to fund relief programs partially are stymied by never-ending games of finger-pointing and brinkmanship between the legislative and executive branches. In addition the federal judiciary is effectively powerless and a Supreme Court that is subservient to Trump’s every whim.
Trump himself has been largely consistent in admitting that this manufactured crisis is a political venture largely designed to score a political victory over Democrats. However, his spokespersons and public handlers have claimed that the current shortfall is a matter of simple economics. They claim that there are simply no other financial resources available to draw from to feed needy Americans. But simultaneous developments belie those arguments.
In mid-October, as the government shutdown was in full swing and the deadline for SNAP expiration loomed, the Trump Administration approved a $20 billion lifeline for the floundering government of Argentina, led by far-right economist Javier Milei. Milei, a political ally of Trump, was the inspiration for Trump’s DOGE initiative, which aspired to drastically cut staff, programs, and aid from the federal budget. News of the initial $20 billion in aid was still fresh off the presses when the Trump administration expressed an intent to eventually double the package:
“The Trump administration is looking to provide an additional $20 billion in financing for Argentina through a mix of financing from sovereign funds and the private sector.
That would come on top of the $20 billion credit swap line that the U.S. Treasury pledged to Argentine President Javier Milei and his government this month to bolster the South American nation’s collapsing currency.
Hussein, Fatima, and Andrea Vulcano. “US Is Working on Doubling Aid to Argentina to $40 Billion.” AP News, 15 Oct. 2025.
The SNAP crisis is yet another example of the pending failure of the much-vaunted “American Experiment.” Hyper-partisanship has rendered Congress – long hailed as “the world’s greatest deliberative body” completely powerless, as the MAGA wing overtly seeks to hand as much power over to Trump and Trump alone. The federal judiciary has largely become completely ineffective to serving as a “check” on the Trumpite agenda, and the U.S. Supreme Court, purportedly the final arbiter of law in the United States, is now relegated to little more than a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s autocratic aspirations.
We have argued repeatedly that neither the Republican party or the Democratic Party represent the interests of the working class of the USA. Only a Marxist-Leninist party will do that.
The current struggle between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party over the government shutdown is posturing. It is true that the Democratic Party is trying to insist on extensions of funding for health care. It is of course remarkable then, that they did not take care to extend funding for this during their tenure under Biden. Since the takeover of the government by Trump, the Democratic Party has refused to take an anti-capitalist struggle to the masses. This exposes their shallow posturing now. Neither current major party is at bottom interested in the best interests of the working class.
What lies ahead
The American media largely misses the point in covering stories like the SNAP crisis. The government shutdown, the expiration of domestic food assistance, subservience of the judiciary to the whims of a billionaire, exploitation of class divisions and race, mass incarcerations and deportations of marginalized people, and lavish celebrations and construction of gilded ballrooms are all the same story: the rule of capital in America.
Trump’s strategy of withholding food assistance elevates the discord among the poor and working classes to a new and dangerous level, with resounding historic precedent. As Karl Marx noted:
“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses…”
Marx, Karl. Economic Manuscripts: Capital, Vol. 3, Chapter 30.
Food insecurity was a driving force in the Russian Revolution of 1917, as V.I. Lenin well knew. Through his analyses from works including The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1891) and “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,” Lenin noted that disruptions in the food supply, most of which could be correctly attributed to the malfeasance and corruption of the government, became an important catalyst for decisive social change. He held the Czar and Russia’s ruling class solely responsible for the mismanagement of resources that led to famine, mass unemployment, and the decline in standards of living for everyday Russians. In the end, it was the Russian people, led by Russia’s Marxist-Leninist party, the Bolsheviks, that held the ruling class accountable for these calamities.
As we have consistently asserted, an organized Marxist-Leninist party remains the most important engine for social change. As the fascist grip on everyday life – and even on the food supply itself – grows tighter, the opportunity to plan and organize grows fleeting, and the situation becomes more urgent with each passing day.
