Growing up in a small town, I felt like I knew everyone. My parents went to high school with my English teacher and my grandfather was the local mailman. The local pizza place knows my family’s order. I felt like everyone knew me, but did I know them? My school district covers 62 square miles and encompasses a vast range of living situations and socioeconomic classes. Did I know if they could put food on the table every night, pay their rent, or purchase medications? The simple answer is no. While I was fortunate to never have to go without, many of my peers most likely did at some point.  It turns out 9% of families in my small town rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is the largest federally funded program that provides food assistance for many U.S. households. It helps families with lower incomes provide food for their families and the amount each household receives is based on their incomes, family size, and other household factors. SNAP plays a critical role in ensuring food security, particularly for families with children who cannot rely solely on school meal programs to meet their nutritional needs year round. In July 2025, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law, cutting $186 billion of federal funding for SNAP. This Act went into effect on Nov. 1, 2025, and more than 53,000 Connecticut families began losing at least $25 per month in food assistance. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot of money to some, but when you don’t have much, $25 can be the difference between a family having a week’s worth of food or not.  While the long-term SNAP cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act pose the most serious threat to food security, recent events have highlighted how fragile the program has become. During the recent federal government shutdown, the administration attempted to delay or withhold SNAP payments, briefly placing millions of households at risk. A federal judge in Boston ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, must continue issuing benefits, calling the suspension unlawful; however this ruling applies only to shutdown related disruptions, not to the permanent SNAP cuts included in the OBBB Act. Maya Uszenski Connecticut officials, led by Governor Ned Lamont, have joined legal challenges, and have also proposed millions in state funding to support food pantries and nutrition assistance for families losing SNAP benefits, recognizing that local food banks cannot replace lost federal support. These developments reveal a troubling pattern: as permanent federal cuts take hold, families who already live on the edge are increasingly asked to absorb uncertainty and instability with little warning and limited support.   The history of SNAP reflects how the nation chooses to treat poverty. As food insecurity scholar Mariana Chilton has argued, programs like SNAP are framed not as guarantees of basic dignity, but as privileges that must be constantly justified, monitored, and threatened with removal. This logic is evident in recent federal policy changes that expand SNAP work requirements, further conditioning access to food assistance on compliance rather than need. As a result, this framing makes SNAP uniquely vulnerable to political bargaining, allowing lawmakers to use food assistance as leverage in budget negotiations and ideological battles. When benefits are delayed, restricted, or cut, the consequences are not abstract, they show up in empty refrigerators, skipped meals, and increased stress in households already stretched thin. Chilton’s work demonstrates that food insecurity is not merely about hunger, but about power: whose needs are protected, and whose are treated as expendable. During shutdowns, government officials continue to receive their paychecks, but the families who rely on SNAP are left wondering how they will feed their kids. That contrast is unacceptable. When SNAP is destabilized, it reinforces a system in which poverty itself is punished and children bear the heaviest burden of that punishment.  I hope Governor Lamont fights for food insecure families in our state. I am calling on him to follow existing state models by establishing a Connecticut-funded SNAP supplement to offset the food assistance lost under the Big Beautiful Bill Act. Similar state-funded SNAP supplements and emergency food stabilization measures have been used in other states, such as New York and California, during periods of federal retrenchment, demonstrating that Connecticut would not be breaking new ground, but building on an established policy approach.  Food is a basic human necessity. Access to food should not be restricted, especially for the youngest residents of our nation. Yet, time and time again SNAP is placed on the negotiating table, whether through funding cuts, administrative delays, or policy rollbacks like those embedded in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Each time this happens, it is the children who suffer the first and the most severely. Connecticut is trying to protect its residents, but more must be done. Federal and state leaders need to guarantee that SNAP benefits are never disrupted and that no children go hungry because of political decisions made far above them. If children don’t eat, they don’t thrive. Children need to learn and grow, and cutting SNAP benefits will harm the future of America.  Maya Uszenski is a second year at Sacred Heart University, studying Health Science and planning to become a Physician Assistant.    ...read more read less