As Trump and his Senators refused to budge on slashes to healthcare, millions of Americans starved for weeks. These Americans shouldn’t have had to undergo this hardship; the administration made the choice to put them through it on the basis that the pain of the masses was less important than the political gain of the few. They were stuck in limbo, expendable pawns in a game of politics they had no hope of winning.
The government shutdown began Oct. 1 and lasted a historical 43 days, caused by the Senate’s failure to finalize the budget for fiscal year 2026. While all 53 Republicans immediately voted to pass the budget, the Senate was seven votes short of the 60 they needed. Trump strongly influenced Republican Senators to refuse the typical negotiations that would keep things moving. Instead, he would utilize a more nefarious tactic.
Republicans have continued to utilize fear-mongering tactics and propaganda to push the narrative that the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault. However, this fails to consider the motivations of the hold-outs.
Democrats refused to pass the budget due to its deprioritization of healthcare funding. They sought to extend the Affordable Care Act provisions they had implemented during the pandemic, as well as reverse cuts to Medicare and Medicaid passed in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — cuts amounting to $793 billion. Democrats’ refusal to pass the budget wasn’t in their own self interest — it was for the benefit of the 7.8 million Americans who stand to lose healthcare.
As the shutdown continued and November approached, funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ended. This program — also known as food stamps or EBT — provides nearly 42 million low-income Americans, including 12.4 million children, with financial assistance to purchase food. Without this program, individuals and families are left unable to feed themselves.
There is a contingency fund of over five billion dollars designed to fund SNAP in situations of shutdown. However, the Trump administration maliciously claimed they were legally unable to use this fund to support the benefits, in spite of a plan passed Sept. 30 called the “Lapse in Funding Plan,” specifically designed to allow the contingency fund to be used for SNAP benefits in the case of a government shutdown. Not only is their refusal to deploy the fund hypocritical, but downright undemocratic.
Further, there was a document on the United State’s Department of Agriculture’s website stating Congressional intent to use the fund to keep SNAP afloat during a shutdown, which has since been removed from the site and is now only accessible through the Wayback Internet Archive.
Despite these documents and additional court orders demanding that the federal government use the contingency money to fund SNAP, the administration unjustly refused.
It wasn’t because they had to. They weren’t legally prevented from using the fund — but they had a political goal, and were willing to reach it at the expense of millions of low-income Americans.
Republicans used the hunger of millions of Americans to strongarm Senate Democrats into forking over their votes. It worked; six Democrats and one independent voted to pass the budget, bringing the Trump administration one step closer to defunding public healthcare. The political precedent has been set that it is an effective means to deploy the suffering of millions as a gambit to get what you want.
The Trump administration doesn’t see politics as a means of helping people; it is a means of getting what they want. The millions that starved meant nothing to them, just as the millions who stand to lose healthcare mean nothing to them. People have become numbers; so who cares if the tally falls by a few?
Pieces in chess can easily be sacrificed for a check that helps the player. The pawns are void of meaning, utterly dispensable, incapable of winning. When people become pawns, we can’t win either — only survive to risk being sacrificed.
