The Birthplace of Food Stamps went nearly 80% to Trump. Now Their Safety Nets Are Gone

The federal cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act threaten to kill the nonprofits in McDowell County, West Virginia,

Most of McDowell’s 17,000 residents rely on federal programs and the nonprofits they fund to get by. Now, more than half the children in the county receive federal Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits, and about one-third of seniors are on Medicaid. Decades after the Kennedy administration made the county a first test of food stamps, nearly half the county’s residents receive supplemental nutrition assistance, or SNAP. RFK Jr. must be so proud. Certainly, these cuts will make America healthy again.

The new eligibility restrictions on SNAP as a result of the passage of Donald Trump’s OBBB will be especially dire in places like McDowell County, where more than one-third of the population lives below the federal poverty line. “These federal cuts are starving people,” said Rosemary Ketchum, executive director of the West Virginia Nonprofit Association.

Since the interruption in federal support tied to President Trump’s January executive orders barring grants related to “gender ideology”; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and environmental justice, Ketchum said many of the 9,000 or so nonprofits in her state have laid off staff. Others, she said, are dipping into whatever reserves they have to pay their employees.

Traditionally, nonprofits and public funding have been tied together, where the federal government basically pays charities to help individuals in their communities. However, President Donald Trump’s policies are threatening to separate the two with a series of cuts to grants and funding in order to "allow" individual Americans to tap into their “innate altruism” and make their own donations.

In a poor state like West Virginia, which is already facing a budget deficit, nonprofits don’t have a plan B.