USDA drops Trump plan to cut food stamps for 700,000 Americans

A Trump-era plan to cut food stamps is now off the table after the Biden administration said it is abandoning a previous plan to tighten work requirements for working-age adults without children. Those restrictions were projected to deny federal food assistance benefits to 700,000 adults, a proposal that had had drawn strong condemnation from anti-hunger advocates. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on March 24 said it is withdrawing a Trump administration appeal of a federal court ruling that had blocked the planned restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps. Trump officials had filed the appeal in May, two months after the coronavirus pandemic had shuttered the economy and caused millions of people to lose their jobs.  Hunger and food insecurity around the U.S. have surged during the pandemic, with 41.4 million people enrolled in the food stamp program as of November, up 13% from February 2020 before the public health crisis, according to the latest data available from the USDA. Despite that increase, the Trump administration had told CBS MoneyWatch last year that it believed pursuing the restrictions was "the right approach."