Juan Ciscomani Food Assistance Arizona

Juan Ciscomani Voted for the Law That Has Knocked 400,000 Arizonans Off Food Assistance. When a Tucson Mom Told Him It Was Hurting People Like Her, He Said 'No, What It Did Is–' as the Elevator Doors Closed.

Angelica Garcia, a single mother in Tucson, was kept off SNAP for two months while Arizona rewrote the program to comply with Trump's budget bill. Ciscomani signed a letter urging House leaders to keep SNAP protected, listed it as a first-100-days accomplishment, then voted for the bill — and never mentioned food assistance in either statement he put out about it. More than 400,000 Arizonans have lost benefits since.

MAGA Report Cards · Sep 16, 2026

Juan Ciscomani Voted for the Law That Has Knocked 400,000 Arizonans Off Food Assistance. When a Tucson Mom Told Him It Was Hurting People Like Her, He Said 'No, What It Did Is–' as the Elevator Doors Closed.

Angelica Garcia is a single mother in Tucson. In March, she lost her job as a Lyft driver after the air conditioning in her car broke. She applied for SNAP, the food assistance program, to keep her two daughters fed.

It took her two months to get it.

Her congressman, Juan Ciscomani, voted for the law that rewrote who qualifies — months after telling voters he was fighting to protect it. When Garcia got a chance to tell him so to his face, he didn't stop to listen. The Copper Courier told her story this week.

Two months of an empty fridge

When Garcia called Arizona's Department of Economic Security in March, she told the Copper Courier, nobody answered, or they hung up quickly. It took an hour-long wait at the Tucson office, and three visits, before she was approved in May.

In the meantime, she fed her family on potatoes, beans and rice. She borrowed from relatives and went to a food bank.

"It's pretty dismal when you look in the fridge and there's hardly anything. Look in your cupboards and there's hardly anything."

Her 14-year-old daughter started watching every dollar and sometimes relied on snacks at the school library to avoid going hungry.

"I don't think kids should normally have that problem. They shouldn't have to worry about the price or what their meal is going to cost."

Why Arizona's system choked

Garcia's wait didn't happen in a vacuum. Trump's budget bill, which passed in July 2025, rewrote SNAP's rules. Arizona has been hit harder than any other state.

According to ProPublica, more than 400,000 Arizonans have lost SNAP benefits since the law passed, "the largest decline in the nation by a wide margin," as an underfunded state agency carried out the changes. That's nearly 47% of everyone in the program, including about 180,000 children, according to the state's own figures.

The state agency has said it's dealing with a backlog that it blames on setting up a new program to comply with the law's new error-rate requirements. According to the Copper Courier, 77,000 SNAP recipients in Pima County, where Tucson is, have been cut from the program, and food banks are struggling to keep up.

He promised he wouldn't

Before the bill passed, Ciscomani wanted voters to know he was standing up for them.

In February 2025, he signed a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson and put out a press release about it. The letter noted that the House Agriculture Committee had been directed to cut $230 billion, and said this:

"we must ensure that assistance programs—such as SNAP—remain protected as nearly 22% of Hispanic families rely on this critical program as a temporary safety net during difficult times. Not to mention the support that SNAP provides to families of all backgrounds across our nation."

Two months later, his office listed that letter among his accomplishments for his first 100 days of the new Congress. He had urged the Speaker, it said, to protect "SNAP benefits."

Then, on July 3, 2025, he voted yes on the final bill. The Congressional Budget Office projects it will cut SNAP by $186 billion, as an Economic Policy Institute analysis notes.

Then he stopped saying the word

Ciscomani put out a statement when the House first passed the bill in May, and another when it passed for the last time on July 3. "H.R. 1 is not perfect - no bill ever is," the second one said, ahead of a long section laying out what was in it.

Neither statement mentions SNAP. Neither mentions food assistance, or nutrition, or the $230 billion in cuts he had written to the Speaker about in February.

He did name SNAP recipients in a press release four months later — about the government shutdown. Reopening the government, he said, "ends the shutdown for thousands of federal employees, SNAP recipients, and others who rely on a functioning federal government."

"There's a lot of fraud out there"

At a debate in September 2026, Ciscomani defended the law's food-assistance changes — its new work and reporting requirements — as a way to stop fraud and keep the program going for the families who really need it.

"We want to make sure that we protect that safety net for the people that that was meant to do. There's a lot of fraud out there."

Garcia's answer:

"They're out of touch because people who are struggling financially, or who don't have good-paying jobs, or who are homeless, need these services. They're not fraud."

"No, what it did is–"

On July 21, Garcia traveled to Washington to see Ciscomani in person. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, had reached out to her and posted video of the moment.

"It's harming people like me," she told him.

"No, what it did is–" Ciscomani said, and the elevator doors closed.

Garcia told the Copper Courier he was "dismissive," didn't stop to talk, and spoke over her.

"That just goes to show that he's not for the people. He's out of touch. He doesn't realize, or maybe he does realize, how it's affecting thousands and thousands of people."

Ciscomani didn't respond to the Copper Courier's request for comment.

Ducking constituents on SNAP is becoming a habit for Republicans who voted for these cuts. Gabe Evans of Colorado won't say how many people in his district lose out. And this isn't the first time Ciscomani has put a happy face on the law's fallout at home: six weeks after about 700 workers lost their jobs at Lucid's Casa Grande plant, he brought the Speaker of the House to town to celebrate the tax law.

What we know

Juan Ciscomani signed a letter urging House leaders to make sure SNAP "remain protected," and his office listed that letter among his first-100-days accomplishments. He then voted for Trump's budget bill, which the Congressional Budget Office projects will cut SNAP by $186 billion, and mentioned food assistance in neither statement he put out about the bill. Since it passed, more than 400,000 Arizonans have lost benefits — nearly half the state's caseload, including about 180,000 children, and the largest decline in the nation. Ciscomani now says the changes stop fraud. One of his constituents, a Tucson single mother, went two months without food assistance while the state struggled to carry out the new rules. When she told him his vote was harming people like her, he answered "No, what it did is–" as the elevator doors closed, and he did not respond to a reporter's request for comment.