Trump’s War on Hunger Relief: How the Right to Food Is Being Dismantled in His Second Term.

Trump’s War on Hunger Relief: How the Right to Food Is Being Dismantled in His Second Term.

(ThyBlackMan.com) When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the change in administration provided our nation with a four-year reprieve from much of the misery we are currently experiencing during the early months of Trump’s second term in office.

Multiple times during Trump’s first administration (2017–2021), the United States objected to U.N. resolutions that asserted the right to food as a legal and enforceable human right. Israel frequently joined the U.S. in casting opposing votes. The two allies were sometimes the only nations voting against the resolutions.

Officials under the Trump administration made it clear: while recognizing the importance of fighting hunger, they were unwilling to endorse the concept of a “right to food” as an obligation under international law. The votes reflect a consistent strategy of opposing the recognition of food as a binding human right. This pattern of inhumanity has continued into the second Trump term while producing needless suffering that has a direct impact on our nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

With 319 million people on the brink of starvation in places such as Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Haiti, the State Department was recently forced to destroy 500 metric tons of warehoused food, which eventually expired and was no longer considered safe to send to potential recipients. The high-energy biscuits that were destroyed are typically used to meet the immediate nutritional needs of children in crisis situations.

Was this a situation that could have been avoided? If the Trump administration had not been reckless in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) while suspending most foreign assistance, what are the chances that the destroyed emergency food could have been properly distributed?

Can humanitarian needs of any scale be handled with a sense of urgency and compassion when there is a political mindset that does not view the “right to food” as a binding human right? Is the “right to food” also ignored when the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is suffering deep cuts from the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

For many, this program is truly a legitimate lifeline, saving individuals from hunger. It is not just impacting the urban poor. The repercussions will be felt hard in rural communities and food deserts—areas where people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. SNAP benefits are not just a humanitarian effort; they play a critical part in small-town grocery stores and rural economies that rely on the steady and reliable income that SNAP benefits provide. It’s the ripple effect. When a local store loses a critical number of SNAP shoppers to government cuts, many stores will have no choice but to shut their doors for good. These rural stores immediately lose a major source of stable income, far greater than supermarkets in more affluent areas. When the only grocer in a town shuts down, it can automatically create a food desert.

St. Johns, Ariz. is a community that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election. It sits halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque with its one grocery store and one local food bank serving over 3,500 people. If the one grocery store closes due to the food aid cuts, the next closest option for groceries is approximately 30 miles away.

“I lean pretty heavily right most of the time, but one of the things that I do lean to the left on is we’re a pretty wealthy country, we can help people out,” said St. Johns Mayor Spence Udall. According to a study from the Commonwealth Fund, the Republicans’ cuts to the nation’s anti-hunger program will lead to thousands of job losses and a drop in revenue across the agriculture, retail grocery, and food processing industries.

Hunger relief organizations are also bracing for the ripple effect. Food banks are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts because they are often the last resort in the fight against hunger. Cuts to food assistance programs and other benefits could force millions of people to seek help from charitable organizations that currently lack the infrastructure to handle the potential surge of vulnerable individuals seeking assistance.

Finish story here; Trump’s War on Hunger Relief: How the Right to Food Is Being Dismantled in His Second Term.