The Trump administration has proposed a rule that would end automatic food-stamp eligibility for millions of low-income households, a change the U.S. Department of Agriculture's own analysis says would remove about 6.3 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) once it takes full effect. The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, November 10, and Reuters reported the same day that it targets the policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility, or BBCE.

Source: Reuters

SNAP is the nation's largest food assistance program — the benefits most Americans still call food stamps — and it currently reaches about 36 million people, according to USDA data cited by Reuters. The department says the change would make eligibility more standardized across the country and, in the words of the rule itself, “preserve benefits for the truly needy.” Critics in Congress and in the food industry say it would instead take groceries off the tables of working families, elderly Americans and children who qualify today.

Source: Reuters

How automatic eligibility works today

Under the Food and Nutrition Act, a household in which all members receive benefits under a state program funded by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is categorically eligible for SNAP, a design that was meant to cut paperwork for applicants and caseworkers alike, Feedstuffs reported in its November 11 account of the rule. In practice, states can qualify households through TANF-funded help that is not cash — services such as child care or work, education and training support — and state TANF income limits generally run from 130% to 200% of the federal poverty level, while SNAP's own gross income limit is generally 130%.

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)

That gap is the heart of the dispute. USDA argues that states steadily widened the non-cash door until it bore little resemblance to the original idea. As of December 2025, the department says, 46 states were using BBCE to extend eligibility to households receiving non-cash TANF benefits of nominal value; 37 of those states set gross income limits higher than SNAP's own limit, and 41 states applied no resource or asset limit at all. The result, USDA says, is a “patchwork” of eligibility criteria that threatens the program's integrity and public trust.

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)

What the proposed rule would change

The rule would limit categorical eligibility to households that receive TANF “assistance” as defined in federal regulation 45 CFR 260.31(a) — cash, payments, vouchers and other benefits designed to meet a family's ongoing basic needs, a definition that can still include some supports such as child care and transportation assistance. Everyone else would have to meet SNAP's stricter federal income limits directly and, in most states, face an asset test they do not face today. Households that no longer qualify automatically would lose benefits unless they separately satisfy the standard rules.

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)

The department's impact analysis puts the five-year federal benefit reduction at approximately $44.649 billion over fiscal years 2027–2031, alongside a net reduction in state SNAP spending of roughly $5.243 billion and an increase in state administrative costs of about $928.5 million over the same period, according to Feedstuffs' reading of the analysis. The human count is larger than the fiscal one: about 17.6% of current participants — 3.2 million households containing 6.3 million people — would no longer receive SNAP in fiscal 2029, the first year the rule is expected to reach its full effects.

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)

Reaction: ‘heartless and cruel’ versus ‘truly needy’

Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, called the move “heartless and cruel” in a statement. “This move by the Trump administration to take food assistance away from millions more elderly Americans and children is heartless and cruel,” Craig said. “The proposed rule would make it harder to meet basic needs and roll back efforts to streamline federal programs. SNAP is a highly effective and efficient program when it is allowed to work as designed.” She also noted that the number of states choosing BBCE has grown each year, which she attributed to its positive effects on participants and on program administration.

Source: Reuters

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, whose members work in grocery stores, meatpacking and food processing, warned of a wider economic hit. “The benefits of food assistance programs extend beyond helping working families and children. SNAP acts as an economic driver, supporting the entire food supply chain,” UFCW president Milton Jones said in a statement carried by Feedstuffs. USDA, for its part, says the revisions “would ensure that SNAP benefits are targeted to needy households that have qualified for TANF assistance while still aligning categorical eligibility's statutory purpose of simplifying program administration.”

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)

Background: 5.5 million have already left the rolls

The proposal lands on top of cuts already in motion. More than 5.5 million people have lost SNAP benefits since President Donald Trump enacted cuts to the program in his July 2025 tax law, bringing enrollment down to about 36 million, according to USDA data reported by Reuters. Reuters reported that the decline reflects both the law's eligibility changes and states' struggles to implement new administrative requirements and absorb significant new program costs the law shifted onto them. A similar categorical-eligibility rollback was proposed during the first Trump administration in 2019 and later withdrawn under the Biden administration in 2021, according to reporting on the rule's history — meaning many state agencies are now facing a version of a fight they have prepared for before.

Source: Reuters

What happens next — and why it matters to diaspora families

This is a proposed rule, not a final one. USDA is accepting public comments through December 10, 2026, at regulations.gov, and the department must review those comments before it can finalize anything; the benefit losses in its analysis are pegged to fiscal 2029, the first full-effect year. For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the United States — including elderly parents on fixed incomes, warehouse and trucking households whose earnings swing month to month, and families whose children rely on free school meals — the practical point is the income line: a household that qualifies today through a state's TANF-funded service, at up to 200% of the poverty level in some states, could in future have to clear SNAP's own 130% gross-income test and an asset test instead. State agencies, which would carry an estimated $928.5 million in added administrative costs over five years, will be the ones sending the notices if the rule is finalized.

Source: Feedstuffs (Farm Progress)