Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
Democrats have been sounding the alarm over the last week after the Trump administration made clear that it would not act to provide emergency funding to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is set to lose funding in November.
A volunteer loads a vehicle during a food distribution for federal employees and SNAP recipients on Oct. 27.
A coalition of Democratic leaders from 25 states and Washington, D.C., sued the administration Tuesday, arguing that it’s illegal to cut off an estimated 42 million people from food aid.
On the surface, the decision to hurt some of the most economically vulnerable Americans seems tone deaf, even for the right. Historically, the GOP has at least tried to disguise the cruelty of its policies, arguing that suffering is for the greater good or in service of a long-term payoff.
But the right has spent so much time in its feedback loop—where it makes sense to hurt the poor—that ending SNAP benefits seems perfectly rational to many conservatives.
Conservatives vs. helping Americans
Ronald Reagan rallied support for his presidential campaigns with a completely fabricated story about “welfare queens,” a direct attack on government help for struggling families.
He used his platform to popularize the notion that people on government assistance—particularly Black women—were undeserving scam artists living high on the hog. The fake stories popularized the belief that it’s better to cut off these programs than to keep a vital safety net created after the Great Depression left many Americans to suffer and die.
Former President Ronald Reagan
Reagan’s action to further this mythology echoes his work as an actor and political activist in the years before his presidency, where he was part of a scare campaign falsely equating Medicare with communism.
Right-wing media—especially Fox News—has also played a role in pushing conservatives to oppose basic government assistance, framing people who scam the system not as outliers but as poster children for a system gone bad.
In 2013, Fox ran a special titled “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” which portrayed a “jobless California surfer” taking SNAP benefits while enjoying a life of leisure as the norm. Of course, most people who need and use food assistance aren’t young layabouts, but conservative media is interested in demonization, not reality.
Continuing the hurt
The rhetoric from the Fox special lives on in language from congressional Republicans who currently argue that beneficiaries of government assistance are otherwise healthy young men who spend their days playing video games.
Republicans have further tied themselves in rhetorical knots to justify opposition to government aid programs. For example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said last year that she would not take in federal aid to help families pay for groceries because “an EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
Legislation like the GOP’s “On Big, Beautiful Bill,”which passed on a party line, has made the situation considerably worse.
In exchange for retaining tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans cut programs that provide health care, food benefits, and financial assistance to millions of vulnerable children. The GOP argued that tax cuts—which most families on assistance did not receive—would lead to growth, and the families wouldn’t be harmed.
Ironically, many of the states and regions who have backed Trump and Republicans the strongest are the ones who are suffering the most.
The right-wing bubble heads for a pop
Programs like SNAP help millions of Americans in the most pro-Republican states and in rural regions of swing and Democratic states. Voters who buy the GOP’s propaganda end up hurting themselves, their families, and their friends—without benefitting from right-wing policies.
A cartoon by Jack Ohman.
But outside of the base, cutting these programs isn’t a political winner. While the right repeats the argument that getting rid of the social safety net is popular, data proves otherwise.
A May FMI-The Food Industry Association poll found that, of the 1,000 registered voters surveyed, 64% have a favorable opinion of SNAP. Similarly, 59% said they oppose cutting SNAP benefits, and only 33% shared the GOP position of cutting or reducing SNAP.
Republicans exist in an alternate reality on this issue—as they do on so many others. They’ve convinced themselves that cutting off basic human needs is a winner, setting themselves up to live and die in a moral black hole.
