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WARRENTON, Mo. — Distributing food stamps soon could get even harder for Missouri’s food aid system, which a federal judge has already called “broken and inaccessible.”

States depend heavily on federal funds to operate their food stamp programs, which help feed about 42 million people nationwide. But a new federal law has restructured the nation’s food assistance, requiring more people to work to qualify for aid and shifting more of the program’s cost onto states over the next decade. Meanwhile, many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, and state governments are straining to help them.

More than a year ago, for example, a federal judge ruled that Missouri’s food aid system was “overwhelmed,” had wrongly denied assistance to applicants, and had caused many to go hungry as a “direct result of the system’s inadequacy.” The judge, Douglas Harpool, ordered the state to fix the problems.

Despite the court order, not much has changed, according to a �鶹Ů�� Health News analysis of state performance metrics.

Missouri’s ongoing problems foreshadow the trouble that lies ahead for state food aid programs nationwide. Food assistance advocates have said Missouri is just one example of a nationwide problem in which strained state systems struggle to deliver timely aid. For example, low-income people in Alaska have while the state has spent years trying to fix the problem.

Last year, then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent letters to 44 governors urging swifter application processing and greater accuracy in determining benefits.

The administrative snarls come on top of concerns about funding during the recent federal government shutdown. The Trump administration refused to use emergency funds to keep the food aid program running, and food benefits lapsed for millions of people, including in Missouri, on Nov. 1 as the shutdown dragged into its fifth week. Two federal judges ordered the Trump administration to tap emergency funds for the program.

The shutdown ended Nov. 12, and Missouri said its SNAP recipients began receiving their full benefits three days later. Meanwhile, as Thanksgiving approached, were still being reported in some states.

Even after the shutdown, states will have to do more with fewer resources. Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashes billions in federal funding to the food aid program and pushes more of the administrative and financial burden to states.

The bill President Donald Trump signed in July axes $187 billion over the next decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, or SNAP. That represents a 20% cut, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

One of the most significant and immediate changes requires more people to work to qualify for aid. The change will cause at least 2.4 million Americans to lose aid, according to from the bipartisan Congressional Research Service. The analysis predicts many people will lose their benefits because the work requirements will make applying more difficult.

Expanding work requirements will harm some of the nation’s most vulnerable people, said , who leads food aid strategies at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

But the conservative , a group that has worked to advance similar policies in states, says the requirement is necessary to preserve assistance for the “truly needy.”

'Undisputed' Strains in Missouri

Some Missourians were already struggling before Trump signed the bill.

Kelly Thweatt, 64, said she received a notice in the mail that her food benefits had been cut back. She didn’t understand why, because her income hadn’t changed, she said recently outside a SNAP office 60 miles west of St. Louis.

After she pays for her spot at a mobile home park in Warrenton, she said, she’s left with about $300 each month from Social Security. The roughly $300 in SNAP benefits she had received every month kept her afloat.

Thweatt will be subject to the new federal work requirement because she’s not yet 65.

More than are at risk of losing some amount of food aid because of the new work requirement, which went into effect Nov. 1.

For Thweatt, finding a job may prove difficult. She’s been out of the workforce for nearly 20 years.

Food aid provides a lifeline to more than 650,000 Missourians — that’s more than eight sold-out crowds at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where the NFL’s Chiefs play. The program helps feed 20% of Missouri’s children every month, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. (The foundation provides financial support to �鶹Ů�� Health News.)

The recent federal changes will require more seniors, parents, veterans, homeless people, and former foster care youths to clear additional administrative hurdles to get food aid, .

For years, thousands of Missourians have struggled to tap into food assistance, largely because applicants must complete an interview, over the phone or in person. But many Missourians can’t get through to a state staffer.

Applicants have spent hours waiting on hold or in line outside state offices, according to a lawsuit filed in 2022 in federal court. At times, so many people have been waiting on hold that the phone system started hanging up on people, the lawsuit says.

Some Missouri SNAP offices are staffed by only a single employee, according to Harpool’s May 2024 order, adding to the strain.

In a statement provided to �鶹Ů�� Health News, the Missouri Department of Social Services said that because demand varies by location, it may be appropriate to have a single staffer in some places.

In Warrenton, makeshift phone booths line the walls of the food aid office. People sit at a cubicle with a desk and use a phone to complete interviews with officials elsewhere. A sign sitting on the floor asks applicants to “please be patient with our progress” as the state works on technology improvements.

According to Harpool’s order, the “evidence is undisputed” that Missouri’s food aid system has “unacceptable wait times” and that thousands of calls “cannot be completed.” These problems put Missourians at risk of losing aid “each and every time” they apply for food benefits, the judge wrote. To stay in the program, most households need to periodically submit documents and complete interviews.

A �鶹Ů�� Health News analysis of Missouri SNAP reports showed the same problems persist more than a year later. In the 16 months after the judge’s order, nearly half of all the applications that were denied were rejected at least partly because no interview was completed, according to data the state submitted to the court as part of the order. That indicates the state’s system is failing the most vulnerable, the judge has said.

In an order released in May of this year, Harpool found that Missouri failed to show significant improvement and that its performance deteriorated by some measures. The state hadn’t documented adding a single staffer or investing any additional resources to process applications faster, Harpool wrote.

Missouri’s Department of Social Services said the state legislature has provided money to hire temporary workers in other areas, freeing up staff to process SNAP applications.

To complete the required interviews for food aid, the agency said, it makes multiple attempts to reach applicants once an application is received.

, an attorney with National Center for Law and Economic Justice who represented Missourians in the case, said, “These are your neighbors, these are your kids’ classmates who are going hungry when the system doesn’t work.”

Trouble Ahead

Roughly 68% of the state’s food aid recipients are children, adults over 60, or people with a disability, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health. Many who can work already do.

, the food security policy manager with Empower Missouri, an organization working to eradicate poverty in the state, said Missouri lacks the money and the will to fix its food aid system.

Woody and other advocates fear the federal changes will erode the nation’s most powerful defense against hunger.

“For a state like Missouri that is already struggling to operate the program, these new rules couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Bolen, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Missouri foreshadows the trouble that lies ahead for other states, he said. Like Missouri, many states are reluctant to fund their food aid programs. And now they’ll be forced to use state dollars to fill the gaps left by the federal cuts, which “sets states up to fail,” Bolen said.

Supporters of the changes see it differently. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson previously described the cost shift to states as “modest” and said it’s necessary to reduce fraud. States “don’t have enough skin in the game,” ahead of the budget bill’s passage.

Still, if states do not come up with the money to fill the gap, Bolen said, they’ll be left with two options: Make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP, or end the program entirely.

For Thweatt, the change comes at a particularly hard moment. A few months ago, she lost her life partner of three decades, leaving her reeling and struggling to afford the basics. She does not turn 65 until April, which means she’s subject to the expanded work requirement until then and may have to show she has a job to maintain the $220 in monthly food benefits she has left. The state will apply the work rules to her case when she’s up for renewal, state officials said. Thweatt’s car needs repairs and its license plates are set to expire, she said. She doesn’t have the money to address either problem.

She’s selling everything that she can, including an antique bedroom set, to afford necessities, she said.

“I can satisfy myself with a bag of chips per day,” Thweatt said. “So if that’s what I need to do, that’s what I need to do.”

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