The media are wrong: It’s good that able-bodied adults are leaving food stamps

Published May 25, 2026 7:00am ET | Updated May 25, 2026 8:18am ET



Perhaps you heard: Those monsters in the Trump administration are kicking the vulnerable off food stamps.

That’s the narrative following Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s recent announcement that 4.3 million people have left the food stamp rolls since the start of last year. As one ostensible expert told the Associated Press, the program has gotten “harder to access.” Another academic lamented to the media that “we have a persistent poverty problem in this country” — a problem apparently made worse if food stamps aren’t available to as many people as possible.

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