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Fox guests have spent months advocating cuts to SNAP, which are now reportedly included in the Big Beautiful Bill

Written by Isabella Corrao, Helena Hind, Jane Lee & Alicia Sadowski

Published

Senate Republicans are planning to include big cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka food stamps) to pay for tax cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” per new reporting in The New York Times and Politico. 

Fox News has consistently argued against and criticized the nation’s food stamps program, which helps over 42 million people purchase groceries. Similarly, Project 2025 called for sweeping cuts to the program. 

Politico reports that the current plan “would cut around $186 billion from federal spending on agriculture, with the majority from coming from SNAP.” In response to a previous House plan to cut SNAP food assistance, one expert said that “a lot of people are going to lose their benefits as a consequence” of the plan, which would effectively push some costs of SNAP onto states.

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  • Fox guests advocated for cuts to SNAP to reduce the deficit

    • Conservative podcast host Matt Whitlock on cuts to Medicaid and SNAP: “The fraud, waste, and abuse in those programs is making it more difficult for those programs to serve the people that need it.”  [Fox News, Fox News @ Night, 5/30/25]
    • Fox News Sunday guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) argued that those who opposed cuts to SNAP and other welfare programs were “just not frankly serious.” Paul said: “There is no free lunch. You can offer people free stuff, but if you're borrowing money to do it, you end up punishing them with inflation. The same people that are getting the free stuff are also being punished by inflation and never seem to creep out of poverty or climb up out of poverty. So, it's a bait and switch.” [Fox News, Fox News Sunday, 5/25/25]

  • Fox guests advocated for work requirements to be added to SNAP in the spending bill

  • By expanding work requirements for households with school-aged children and raising the maximum age for required employment, researchers estimate that the bill’s expanded SNAP work requirements alone would cause 1.8 million people to “lose benefits entirely.”

    • Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) declared: “There are five million people in this country, working-age men who ought to be working, but they're not, and they're getting food stamps, they’re getting Medicaid. We need to have strict work requirements. That's why we have to get this bill passed soon, so the hardworking taxpayers in this country get the benefits almost immediately.” Host Maria Bartiromo agreed: “These are such important points that you have just made, senator.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, 6/15/24]
    • Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore: “If you're going to get food stamps, or if you're going to get Medicaid, if you're going to get free public housing, any of these programs, you should have to work for these. … You either should be in a job training program or you should be in work if you're an employable adult.” [Fox News, Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, 6/9/25]
    • Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) touted “some really good things” in Trump’s big, beautiful bill, noting that the House “made Medicaid work requirements move up to 2026 to make sure they would actually apply” and “applied work requirements to food stamps.” Roy continued: “If we were to actually make sure that the able-bodied were no longer scamming, along with the blue states, the vulnerable population on Medicaid — and it is actually waste, fraud, and abuse what’s going on, I support the president on that — we could save another $4, 500 billion.” [Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 6/5/25]
    • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz: “There is a work requirement for SNAP, right, the food stamps program. There's a lot we can do to — I think there's a moral hazard if we don't, because you’ve got people who are not working who could work, who should work. And it's better for them and better for the country if they do. And it's worth about $400 billion to the reconciliation bill.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 5/25/25]

  • Fox guests praised efforts by Republican governors to limit sugary items from SNAP

  • On May 19, Nebraska became the first state to receive a USDA waiver banning the purchase of soda and energy drinks with SNAP. Data does not show that banning soda from SNAP reduces their consumption or improves public health, and advocates maintain that such exemptions further marginalize low-income people.

    • Former TV personality Jillian Michaels praised the effort by states to ban soda and junk food, claiming, “This is a supplemental nutrition program. There is no nutrition in a soda.”  [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/12/25] 
    • Senior advisor to the White House on “Make America Healthy Again” Calley Means claimed that through SNAP,  “we subsidize and recommend sugar for children.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 6/4/25]
    • Fox News senior medical analyst Mark Siegel said that he supported the changes to SNAP because sugar consumption was “almost like opioid addiction in that the receptors in the brain are used to seeing a ton of sugar or seeing fats or high-fructose corn syrup.” [Fox News, Fox News Live, 4/19/25]
    • On Fox & Friends, Maricopa County Superintendent Shelli Boggs said if Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs does not sign a bill banning SNAP recipients from using benefits to buy soda that it “would just say that she supports, you know, poisoning these kids.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/9/25]

  • Fox guests claimed “illegal aliens” are benefitting from access to SNAP

  • Under federal law, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive SNAP benefits.

    • Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich remarked that the Boulder attacker, an asylum seeker, “may well be on Medicaid and may well be on food stamps.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 6/4/25; NBC News, 6/5/25]

    • On Fox News Sunday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared: “We're ensuring that programs like Medicaid and SNAP are strengthened for the U.S. citizens who need and deserve them and not being squandered away by illegal aliens and persons who are ineligible to receive them and are cheating the system.” [Fox News, Fox News Sunday, 5/18/25]

  • Fox News has a long history of arguing against SNAP benefits and criticizing the program

    • In 2013, Fox News aired a special profiling Jason Greenslate, “a blissfully jobless California surfer,” in an attempt to make him the face of SNAP recipients. [Media Matters, 8/9/13]
    • In 2014, when a report showed that the SNAP benefits program hit a historic low for waste in 2012, Fox’s Brian Kilmeade accused the program of being wasteful. He stated, “The government is overpaying on food stamps by about $2 billion.” [Media Matters, 7/24/14]
    • In 2018, Mollie Hemingway blamed SNAP for helping perpetuate obesity in America. Hemingway: “People on these programs tend to eat a lot of cookies, candies, sugary snacks.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 2/13/18]
    • In 2018, Fox's Jesse Watters praised the Trump administration's food stamp cuts and claimed that SNAP fraud was a major issue, even though it had fallen over the past several decades. Watters also said, “Food stamps skyrocketed under President Obama and under President Trump they’re coming down. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to be dependent on government, but you want to do it with heart.” [Media Matters, 2/13/18; Time, 3/30/17]
    • In 2019, Fox & Friends guest Star Parker celebrated Trump’s move kicking hundreds of thousands of people off SNAP: “This is fantastic news.” She added, “They are now acknowledging those that are sitting on their couch, they've gotten very comfortable on the couch, to say our national food stamp program is for those that are in need, desperate need.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/5/19]