cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/106713
Sarah, a 44-year-old single mother in Maryland, was down to the last $20 on her EBT card as of Monday, wondering how she would feed herself and her two preteen boys as the government shutdown dragged on. She’d been out of work since May, after the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to federal contracts and eliminated her job in public health.
She had been rationing her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for over a month, unsure of when, if ever, the deposit would hit her account again. “It’s been awful,” said Sarah, who asked to be identified by her first name only because she fears speaking out could hurt her job search. But the Maryland mom said she was willing to sacrifice if it meant millions of Americans could afford their health insurance.
“The pitch they made, it made sense,” Sarah told The Intercept. “Everyone knew it was going to be painful, but it was important … and they just wasted it all.”
On Sunday, a group of eight Democratic senators, including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cut a deal with Republican leadership to end the government shutdown. They did it without forcing Republicans to agree to any of the major concessions Democrats said they were fighting to secure, which included a reversal of Medicaid cuts and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. The deal is slated for a vote in the House on Wednesday evening, and it looks likely to pass.
[
Related
Key Senate Dem Says Party Caved on Shutdown to Make a Symbolic Point About the GOP](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/10/democrats-republicans-government-shutdown-aca-deal/)
While Senate Republican leadership agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies, the legislation is more than likely dead in the water, especially since Democrats forfeited their main piece of leverage. As a result, tens of millions of Americans are projected to see their premiums skyrocket, and an estimated 7.8 million low-income Americans will outright lose their insurance through Medicaid.
The Intercept spoke with four SNAP recipients who said they’re furious that Democrats squandered the sacrifice they made for the last month to ensure access to health care for millions of Americans — just as voters rewarded the party for finally fighting back against Republicans with major electoral victories last week.
“We sacrificed and we would continue to sacrifice because we understood what the stakes were. People’s health care was at stake,” said Delight Worthyn, 67, a SNAP recipient with lupus living in New Haven, Connecticut. “And that they would cave for nothing after we have all gone through. … I only feel betrayed.”
Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.
“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care.”
Sasha Slansky, 33, a full-time master’s student at Queens College at the City University of New York who works a series of odd jobs to pay her bills, said it’s “insulting” for Democrats to use SNAP recipients as a justification for caving to Republicans and President Donald Trump**.** In his floor speech, Durbin invoked SNAP recipients as one of the reasons he was agreeing to Republicans’ shutdown deal.
“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care,” said Slansky, noting that Democrats seem not to have taken into account the overlap between SNAP recipients and people who receive Medicaid and their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. “It’s insane, and it’s insulting, and it’s also just so wildly out of touch.”
Nearly 30 million of the 38.3 million people who received SNAP in 2022 were enrolled in Medicaid. The number of SNAP recipients has since risen to 42 million people, as of this year.
“I’m also on Medicaid,” Slansky said. “And as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani and many, many Democrats have made clear, this has the potential to kick [millions] of Americans off of Medicaid, which likely includes me.”
Natalie, a delivery driver living in Lynnwood, Washington, said she managed to spend only half of her SNAP benefits for the month, stretching meals that would normally last her two days to three or four. She received her benefits for the first time since October on Tuesday, but she said it doesn’t erase the hardship of the last month.
Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.
“It felt like we were making a small sacrifice, skipping [meals], because we felt like we were doing something to help save people, and that we were doing something good for the country, and to have our only leverage just handed over,” said Natalie, who asked to be identified by her first name because she’s transgender and wanted to avoid transphobic harassment. “It feels like it wasn’t for anything.”
[
Related
The President Is Perfectly Fine If You Starve](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/07/government-shutdown-snap-trump-hunger/)
Natalie said she wishes that Democrats had built off of their electoral victories in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and California earlier this month to pressure Republicans, instead of immediately disarming when they had the upper hand.
“The MAGA Republicans were on the ropes. They were getting the blame. Why didn’t they keep using that and pushing the narrative, the truth, on social media and traditional news that Republicans are doing this to people?” said Natalie. “That was a really strong message, and it was one that people were willing to sacrifice for.”
The post SNAP Recipients Crushed by Democrats Caving on Shutdown: “They Just Wasted It All” appeared first on The Intercept.
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All with shit eating grins on their faces. Useless party.
My entire life I’ve watched the democrats pretend to fight while assisting in the destruction of the working class and assisting the republicans in moving the country right by using political theater to not actually fight back. We’re at the point where everything left of Hitler is the “radical left” so…
Friendly reminder to all Americans that while a year and some weeks ago was a really bad time to challenge the Democratic party establishment (because in the case of Harris vs Trump, Harris would’ve been preferable, but that went to shit anyway), now is an excellent time to challenge the Democratic party. Vote 3rd party in local elections and even midterms, primary every god damn old guard Dem you can find, and make sure that the entire party knows how disappointed their constituents are and why.
Maybe it’ll work, or maybe democracy is too far gone in the US. But in the years between presidential elections is the only really good time to challenge the party.
Either way the world is watching because for a bunch of shitty reasons the entire world is dependent on the US in a lot of ways.
We did it!
I’m going back to throwing my vote away. Maybe you’ll join? Maybe you’ll perpetuate.
cool cool. more maga. check.
cool cool. supporting third-party candidates is maga, now. check.
republicans since the 90’s. particularly maga. don’t win majority vote. We could have had gore in 2000, clinton in 2016. Not just everyone who voted for bush jr and trump elected bush jr and trump. This does not even include voter turnout which when low favor republicans. It is what it is but we all live through the results.
Literally is…
Spoiler effect? Supporting third party is supporting maga…
When both parties want the same outcome, voting third party is the only sane option.
Republicans are just ejecting social programs out the airlock into the void of space… Hey lets get really fucking angry at the democrats about it. Good one.
The anger comes because people expected the Democrats to try to stop them. Literally the past 9 years has been nothing but the Democrats saying that everyone has to vote for them because they will stop the Republicans. Like, that’s the whole platform, “we are less bad than the Republicans”.
Democrats just gave up without anything in return for the pain people have endured with our government shut down for 40 days. These fucks need to not be there pretending to representing us anymore.
I find this hard to believe. Being down to last 20 is when you would want it back on. The reserve snap should have handled the first half of november but I can see why they caved mid december between snap and federal worker and the holiday weekend.
Hey, we’ll have none of that talk here. People need go starve over the holidays so that nothing will happen. If you’re going to just, what, feed everyone, get fed jobs, and pay back from the fascists and make sure this specific cruelty won’t happen for another year to also let the premiums skyrocket?
No! Everyone must starve, not have jobs or back pay and premiums skyrocket! That’s why you’re getting downvotes - people want maximum pain for nothing not for something!
Oh also now everyone has no shutdown-travel-cancelled reason to not spend holidays with stupid MAGA family members. Boooooooo! Dems bad!
lol are you fucking touched in the head? Or just play one on TV?
I’m diabetic. I just lost my healthcare next year. Me and 40 million Americans, of which an additional 50k die next year. Fucking idiot.
Thanks for bragging about killing me dipshit!
Surely you’re haranguing your senators when the bill is introduced before the second week of December then.
“Bragging about killing” you. Come the fuck on, Diana.
Every fed I know affected by the shutdown is fucking angry. Snap bullshit aside, we’re all getting fucked on health care. (Even those of us who’re not on the marketplace.)
The reason democrats caved is because the billionaires told them to. With holiday travel coming up, the ATCs threatening to go on massive strike hurts their profits.
They put donations and bribes before voters.
The only thing I can figure is that they weren’t making any headway on Obamacare, and people were going to starve soon, and the Epstein thing was stalled during the shutdown.
So they calculated that while they’ll lose health care, people will eat, and they will go after both health care and Epstein for the Midterms.
So some Dems voted to end the shutdown, and some MAGAs voted to release the Epstein Files. It was a bipartisan solution for a change.
But it sucks. They should have held out, and beaten the MAGAs with ALL of it.
It sucks, but it was probably the only real move, and everyone knew it was going to happen. Maybe enough people saw their EBT card do something to ask a question.
Realistically, the Epstein files are less important. They may identify some prominent people as sexual predators but it probably won’t surprise anyone, change any minds, or affect people’s quality of life. While we dhould keep up the pressure, this is not worth shutting down the government for.
ACA, and now SNAP, directly affects the lives and health of our most vulnerable. This is a line in the sand worth drawing. This is worth shutting down the government. This is worth indefinitely shutting it down
Even worse if this is just more games. Making everyone suffer for a year, clearly at the hands of MAGAts, in the hope of cementing votes next year.
I was all for leaving it shut down until the Midterms, and having the entire Democratic campaign for 2026 be a giant food and health care drive for hungry and suffering Americans. Let them know that it’s MAGAs taking it away, but Dems are trying to help as much as possible, until the MAGAs give up, or lose in the election. It puts the Dems in contact with the people who need their help the most. Imagine if the campaign could tell everybody who wasn’t getting food and health care that it will immediately start back up if the Dems win, with repayments? All you have to do is make sure everyone who comes to the food bank, or the free health screenings, gets registered to vote, and knows where to go. Then call those people before election day, and offer to drive them to the polls.
A LOT of those people are going to be MAGAs, and with MAGA starving their family, and Dems willing to feed and care for them, they may start to realize that the Dems aren’t the slobbering hyenas that the Conservative Propaganda Machine makes them out to be.
GOP: “Let’s see how much money we can save by starving the most vulnerable amongst us”
Thanks, Daddy Trump!
~ people who think it isn’t them (it’s them)
“Have we tried ‘Kill all the poor’?”
Much like the orange bell-end handling COVID - all they had to do was nothing and they couldn’t even do that.
I am yet to see any sign that mainstream Democrats aren’t in on it. The US needs a chain of FDRs one after another for like 50 years to undo all this damage.
More motive to bust out the guillotines? When the hungry can no longer go to buy food, the rich become the food.
Trump steaks.
You could not pay me to even consider that. Feed his corpse to the pigs and set those pigs free.
Damn for a moment I thought you were about to say “Feed his corpse to the pigs and set those pigs on fire!”
Which almost seemed reasonable given the circumstances and necessity of a thorough disposal.
I know fascist flesh is vegan but still, that’s nasty don’t eat that you don’t know whats in it
Brain worms
Marinated in spray tan.
You fucking pinheads - SNAP is getting funded - for the whole fucking year!
The fascists are going to show their asses on health care which - yeah no shit will fuck a bunch of people up, most of them in red states - and then in January they’ll shut it down again and no one will lose food benefits again.
Plus the GQP will have burned the red states hard because of course they will, and presuming we all live til midterms everyone’s going to be really ready to be done with these incompetent fuckwits.
What the fuck is this bullshit?
Goddamn, just post to c/conservative or head in over to redstate.com for this take and lick it up directly ffs. Fucking Intercept here with all your hot takes and zero useful context. “Look! People being fucked over by politicians! Democrats evil! You can’t trust anybody! Surely the revolution will begin soon, yes comrade?” Garbage.
Maybe I and 49,999 other people won’t die from lack of healthcare next year then… good thing you said so because I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do!
Jackass
This fight wasn’t about SNAP, it was about the fucking healthcare. These SNAP recipients are talking about how they endured these SNAP cuts and felt it was worth it because in the end they would get their healthcare back.
There was literally a court battle in progress that would have forced Trump to pay the SNAP benefits regardless of the shutdown, and they couldn’t even wait for the outcome.
Now, there are no extensions for ACA credits, and the Democrats have lost their single biggest point of leverage to force any other legislation.
To repeat that, in essence, the Democrats just traded slightly sooner SNAP payments that would have already been required to happen in exchange for nothing. That is why people are so angry about this. Hope this helps.
This fight wasn’t about SNAP, it was about the fucking healthcare.
Yes
The fascists are going to show their asses on health care which - yeah no shit will fuck a bunch of people up, most of them in red states - and then in January they’ll shut it down again and no one will lose food benefits again.
There was literally a court battle in progress that would have forced Trump to pay the SNAP benefits regardless of the shutdown, and they couldn’t even wait for the outcome.
The outcome is that it would go to SCROTUS who would let him do what he wants again. What, you doubt?
Now, there are no extensions for ACA credits, and the Democrats have lost their single biggest point of leverage to force any other legislation.
- there were not going to be any credits either way. 2) the leverage returns in Jan when the temp funding runs out. Except the Democrats have removed trump’s option to fire people, refuse to pay back wages, and starve people.
To repeat that, in essence, the Democrats just traded slightly sooner SNAP payments that would have already been required to happen in exchange for nothing. That is why people are so angry about this. Hope this helps.
If you think it would be settled in two weeks, you’re wrong. If you think thousands of federal workers would get their jobs back or get paid before the holidays, you’re wrong. If you think some of those workers aren’t ripe targets for espionage, you’re wrong. If you think ACA isn’t going to be a huge and damaging issue for the republiQans you’re wrong.
For bonus fun, all your MAGA relatives get to fight over Epstein during Thanksgiving which wasn’t going to happen.
This article specifically and intentionally downplays or ignores all of that so that it can cast the Democratic party in the worst light possible, which is ‘red meat’ to the leftists who weren’t going to support them in the first place and THAT is why people are so angry about this. It’s easier to presume the Dems have no clue or plan than to allow that they might. HTH.
Hopefully they all get the traitor treatment. Ideally tonight. Only one way to deal with traitors.
Maybe this is actually good. If both parties keep behaving in the worst way possible for the population, maybe the US can finally rid itself from the two party system that keeps destroying the country.
Who am I kidding though, most people will keep voting for their party even when their house is literally set on fire by their representative. It will be something like 45/45 at best
I don’t expect so.
The Democrats are unlikely to enact meaningful change, sure, but if they consistently started winning it would create a political environment more conducive to change in the future. The republicans being unable to win would start shifting things in the other direction and it’s delusional to think otherwise.
On the other hand, if both parties piss everyone off then the needle doesn’t move as the parties lose support in equal measure. This seems to be where things currently sit.
On the other hand, if both parties piss everyone off then the needle doesn’t move as the parties lose support in equal measure.
Isnt this exactly what I said?
That was your starting point, yes, but I disagree with your conclusion. Both parties pissing everyone off just deepens the current mire. At best you can argue from an accelerationist standpoint that the faster we make things worse the sooner people rebel against it, but I’m not enough of a pessimist to believe that’s the best option.
The dems attracting consistent support would begin the lamentably slow process of digging out of the current situation. It should’ve started 20 or more years ago, but now is still better than never.
The dems attracting consistent support would begin the lamentably slow process of digging out of the current situation. It should’ve started 20 or more years ago, but now is still better than never.
And we have to support them no matter what they do until they think about it in a decade or two and decide not to,
Im not sure thats a better option. Dems ruled often enough and it never changed much. They are capitalists just as much, just less racist and narcissistic.
Sure, short term its the best option to prevent shitstains like Trump, but on the long run the Dems will fuck the population just as badly.
That’s more of less the starting line of my point. The Dems won’t change anything, I agree, but if the republicans never win that opens the door for another group to fill the void, or at least for things to begin shifting left at the parties chase the votes.
See, the Dems don’t want things to change just as much as the Republicans. They are all capitalists.
You’re bad at math
How so? Is the two party system engraved into your brain to the level that votes for two parties have to sum up to 100?
You don’t understand the spoiler effect.
Luckily gerrymandering has split a lot of the country into districts that are safe for one party or the other, so a lot can be done in those without just flipping from Democrats to Republicans or vice versa.
Which has nothing to do with math or my comment. Do you even have a point?
maybe the US can finally rid itself from the two party system that keeps destroying the country.
How will that happen, if people simply become increasingly resigned and disillusioned?
They dont necessarily have to become resigned, they could vote for a third party instead. Or just eat the rich.
The two party system is baked into the system, without reform, it will persist through all challenges.
The two party system is baked into the system
Two parties is a national phenomena. For most states, it’s a single dominant party and a rump opposition.
most people will keep voting for their party even when their house is literally set on fire by their representative.
They’ll vote and they’ll cheer, because they were told the house needed to be set on fire. And they’ll believe this because every single news organization in the country - from local to national - is part of a holding company owned by Arson Inc.
At some point you have to look past politics as a collection of “stupid” individuals and see a machine that exists to manufacture consent.
They are undoing New Deal. It’s all part of the plan.
