The Quiet Unraveling of America’s Food Safety Net

AUGUSTA, Maine — As spring hit Maine and the lobstermen prepared for the summer season by repairing their traps and replacing their rope, state lawmakers set out to mend a widening hole in the American social-safety net.

Last year’s passage of the massive federal tax-and-spending One Big Beautiful Bill Act has set in motion one of the biggest transformations of the welfare state that the United States has seen in decades. For more than a generation, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — which provides roughly 40 million Americans with money for groceries — has served as the country’s dominant vector for direct payments to people struggling to eat. But SNAP’s era as arguably the nation’s preeminent anti-poverty program may be ending. Already 3.5 million people nationwide have been booted from the program and, as the law’s new eligibility terms take effect this year, more are likely to follow, while others will be abruptly sent back into a workforce for which they are unprepared. Parents of teenage children and adults in their 60s will now be expected to find a job and prove they are working. Roughly 45,000 people in Maine, including veterans and homeless adults — briefly granted a reprieve from work requirements during the Biden administration — will be newly required to work or volunteer. Costs to states will balloon, as they are expected to kick in more funds to administer the program and for the first time pay part of the cost of benefits themselves.