'Heartless': Trump’s $660 million school food cut is latest GOP attack on nutrition aid

The Trump administration is cutting over $600 million from a program designed to help schools and child care facilities buy healthy food from local farmers, the GOP’s latest attack on poor families. The administration is also cutting a similar program that helps local food banks and other organizations feed people. In total, Politico reported, the cuts come to over $1 billion.

“Roughly $660 million that schools and child care facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 has been canceled, according to the School Nutrition Association,” Politico reported. “State officials were notified Friday of USDA’s decision to end the LFS program for this year.”

Coincidentally, last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) celebrated National School Breakfast Week:

The decision by the USDA to eliminate funding for healthy food from local farmers also comes as congressional Republicans target programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for cuts.

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“Late last month,” Axios reported on Saturday, “House Republicans voted to pass a budget resolution that sets the stage for $230 billion or more in cuts to agriculture programs, with a large chunk expected to come from SNAP.”

The move to ax funding for programs that help children eat healthy foods appears to conflict with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim to want to “Make America Healthy Again.”

That slogan has led RFK Jr. to announce he wants to curtail the types of foods families can buy through SNAP, which could especially affect Americans living in rural areas or “food deserts,” as Axios also reported last month.

According to The Guardian, “more than one in eight households say they have difficulty getting enough food.” SNAP, “formerly known as food stamps, helps more than 42 million people fill those gaps, and is considered the country’s most effective tool to fight hunger. But now, the USDA-run program is facing attacks from House Republicans who see deep cuts as a way to pay for an extension of the 2017 tax bill that benefits the very wealthy.”

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Critics are blasting the cuts.

“Taking $230 billion out of the food economy hurts the farmers who grow our food, the truckers who move it, the processors who package it and the grocery stores that sell it,” House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN) said in a statement in February. “Cutting farm bill nutrition programs does not make life affordable for everyday people. Instead of cutting SNAP to pay for handouts to wealthy donors, Republicans should prioritize helping working people and rural economies.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health remarked, “Trump is cutting $660M meant for local farmers to provide healthy food for kids in schools. Big win for the giant processed food corporations who poured millions into Donald Trump’s campaign. How does hurting farmers and kids make America great again?”

Zach Rodvold, director of public affairs at Second Harvest Heartland, a hunger-relief organization, wrote: “With hunger rates soaring and the farm economy under threat, now is not the time to cut funding for local farm-to-school and food bank programs. (In fact, we should be doing just the opposite.)”

“This is absolutely unacceptable. They’re literally taking kids’ lunch money and farmers’ incomes so they can give tax cuts to billionaires,” observed U.S. Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY).

“Cutting food aid hurts kids, farmers and struggling folks,” noted U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA). “Why is Trump doing it? To help pay for his tax cut for the rich. Heartless.”