Rivera, Smith-Wade-El host Haywood’s Food Dignity Tour in Lancaster
Central PA Delegation September 23, 2025 | 2:38 PM
LANCASTER, Sept. 23 – State Reps. Nikki Rivera and Ismail Smith-Wade-El, both D-Lancaster, and state Sen. Art Haywood, D-Montgomery, co-chair of the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, last week came together to speak about the impact of SNAP changes and cuts in Pennsylvania.
Representatives from over 20 organizations were in attendance.
“SNAP has for decades enabled low-income Pennsylvanians to put food on their families’ tables,” Rivera said. “Not only will 550 residents in my district lose their SNAP benefits, leaving them not knowing where their next meal is coming from, but the federal budget will also have a devastating impact on our farms, our groceries and our food retailers.”
According to Rivera, in December 2024, SNAP provided $366,850,460 in federally funded food assistance benefits that supported grocers, food retailers and farms in PA.
“Now that money is gone, our grocery, food retailing and agricultural industries—and all the people they employ—are going to be scrambling to survive,” Rivera said.
“The draconian federal budget is going to push our most vulnerable neighbors into desperate circumstances,” Smith-Wade-El said. “Over the next year, more than 144,000 individual Pennsylvanians will lose 100% of their SNAP benefits, with 1,080 of them living in my district. Everyone in our communities is going to be affected, from our schools caring for starving kids to our hospitals treating nutritionally deprived patients to our grocers and farmers feeding the food accessibility pipeline.
“With more people in our communities living on the edge, life will become unstable for us all. No one will be untouched by this devastation—except for the billionaires made even richer by this budget.”
“Our communities are rallying to support our neighbors to keep food on the table despite the Republican efforts to deny our dignity,” Haywood said.
The representatives from Lancaster also referred to a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported on the Trump Administration’s cancelation of an annual report on food insecurity beginning in 2025.
“The Trump Administration has canceled the food insecurity survey because they don’t want to know how many people are struggling to feed themselves and their families,” Rivera and Smith-Wade-El said. “They especially don’t want to know while food insecurity is increasing due to rising inflation and poor labor market conditions.
“As state representatives, we are devastated by this decision as this report gave legislators and policy makers the data needed to determine whether a food program was working or not. The Trump administration is trying to duck responsibility for the millions of Americans who are going to suffer from food insecurity from cutting SNAP.”
Rivera, Smith-Wade-El, Haywood and PA Department of Human Services Deputy Secretary of Income Maintenance Hoa Pham met with community leaders to provide details, share a toolkit of resources and answer questions about the SNAP cuts and what the Commonwealth was doing to alleviate the impact of the SNAP cuts on Pennsylvania.