About 80,000 Kentuckians have lost their food assistance because of the changes to SNAP in Trump's budget bill, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Wednesday, October 14, in a letter to the U.S. Agriculture Secretary and to Kentucky's congressional delegation, the Kentucky Lantern reported.
Among them, according to Beshear:
- 24,655 children
- 6,572 seniors
The state's own numbers show the drop. In October 2025, 627,164 Kentuckians got help buying groceries through SNAP. Today it's just under 547,000, across 286,921 households. A household on SNAP in Kentucky gets an average of $346 a month.
Who lost it
The budget bill Republicans passed in 2025 made it harder to stay on SNAP. Starting last November, groups that used to be exempt from SNAP's work-and-paperwork rules stopped being exempt:
- Veterans
- People who are homeless
- Young adults who recently aged out of foster care
- Adults ages 54 to 64
"We should be fighting hunger, not causing it," Beshear said. He also warned that school meals and summer food programs, which many Kentucky kids depend on, are now at risk too.
We've seen what this looks like up close. A reporter's 1,000-mile road trip through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky found people who couldn't afford toilet paper, while the unemployment rate hadn't moved. The only thing that had changed was the law.
Who voted for it
When the final budget bill came back to the House on July 3, 2025, Kentucky's Republicans split:
| Member | District | Vote |
|---|---|---|
| Andy Barr | 6th (now running for Senate) | Yes |
| Brett Guthrie | 2nd | Yes |
| James Comer | 1st | Yes |
| Hal Rogers | 5th | Yes |
| Thomas Massie | 4th | No |
Four of Kentucky's five House Republicans voted for the law that Beshear says has now taken food aid from about 80,000 Kentuckians. The fifth showed it was possible to vote no.
What they said instead
Two of the Kentucky Republicans who voted yes have told their constituents the bill wouldn't hurt them.
Hal Rogers said the bill "strengthens Medicaid," even though Kentucky takes one of the biggest hits in the country. Andy Barr, now running for the U.S. Senate, went further: when Beshear warned that 35 rural Kentucky hospitals were at risk from the same bill, Barr sent the governor a letter demanding his evidence — and offered as proof that the hospitals were still open, a year after a bill whose cuts had barely begun.
The SNAP numbers aren't a projection. They come from the state's own monthly count of who is still getting help.
The bottom line
About 80,000 Kentuckians — including 24,655 children and 6,572 seniors — have lost SNAP food assistance under the changes in Trump's 2025 budget bill, according to Gov. Andy Beshear, with the state's rolls falling from 627,164 people to just under 547,000 in a year. Kentucky Republicans Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie, James Comer and Hal Rogers all voted for that bill. Thomas Massie, the only Kentucky House Republican to vote no, shows the vote could have gone the other way.
Source
About 80,000 Kentuckians have lost access to food aid under federal rule changes — Kentucky Lantern
