FRAC Chat

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission recently released its Make Our Children Healthy Again strategy. While the document includes 128 recommendations across 20 pages, it misses a critical opportunity to improve child health. It does not focus on expanding access to the federal nutrition programs as a key strategy to improve child health and address hunger and food insecurity — a problem that affects nearly 14 million children in the U.S.

The bottom line: SNAP recipients should receive their October 2025 payments, even if a government shutdown occurs. 

Food insecurity is one of the strongest drivers of poor health outcomes in the U.S., which is why the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is vital. Research shows that hunger, not individual food choices, is the most damaging health consequence of poverty, contributing to chronic disease, poor child development, and billions in avoidable health care costs each year.

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law the Republican-led budget reconciliation bill (H.R. 1), representing one of the most far-reaching overhauls of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in its history. While proponents framed H.R. 1 as a measure to curb spending and tighten program rules, the law makes deep cuts to SNAP and fundamentally shifts additional financial responsibilities to states while extending tax breaks to billionaires. The law slashes benefits, expands harsh time limits, eliminates eligibility for many humanitarian immigrants, caps future benefit increases, and shifts massive new costs to states. It also ends federal funding for SNAP-Ed.

September is National Kinship Care Month, making this an ideal time to reflect on the importance of kinship caregivers who are raising children, and actions to help kinship families and grandfamilies put food on the table.