When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the change in administration provided the nation with a four-year reprieve from much of the misery now emerging during the early months of Trump’s second term.

Multiple times during Trump’s first administration (2017- 2021), the United States objected to U.N. resolutions that asserted the right to food as a legal and enforceable human right.

Officials under the Trump administration made it clear: While recognizing the importance of fighting hunger, they were unwilling to endorse the concept of a “right to food” as an obligation under international law. The votes reflect a consistent strategy of opposing the recognition of food as a binding human right. This pattern of inhumanity has continued into the second Trump term, producing needless suffering that affects U.S. foreign and domestic policies. 

With 319 million people on the brink of starvation in places such as Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali and Haiti, the State Department was recently forced to destroy 500 metric tons of warehoused food, which eventually expired and was no longer considered safe to send to potential recipients. The high-energy biscuits that were destroyed are typically used to meet the immediate nutritional needs of children in crisis situations.

Was this a situation that could have been avoided? If the Trump administration had not been reckless in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and suspending most foreign assistance, what are the chances that the destroyed emergency food could have been properly distributed?

Can humanitarian needs of any scale be handled with a sense of urgency and compassion when there is a political mindset that does not view the “right to food” as a binding human right? Is the “right to food” also ignored when the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is suffering deep cuts from the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”?

For many, this program is truly a legitimate lifeline, saving individuals from hunger. It is not just impacting the urban poor. The repercussions will be felt in rural communities and food deserts — areas where people overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

SNAP benefits are not just a humanitarian effort; they play a critical part in small-town grocery stores and rural economies that rely on the income those benefits provide. When a local store loses a critical number of SNAP shoppers to government cuts, many stores will have no choice but to shut their doors for good. When the only grocer in a town shuts down, it can automatically create a food desert.

St. Johns, Arizona, is a community that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election. Sitting halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque, New Mexico, it has one grocery store and one local food bank that serve more than 3,500 people. If the one grocery store closes due to the food aid cuts, the next closest option for groceries is approximately 30 miles away.

“I lean pretty heavily right most of the time, but one of the things that I do lean to the left on is we’re a pretty wealthy country, we can help people out,” said St. Johns Mayor Spence Udall.

According to a study from the Commonwealth Fund, Republicans’ cuts to the nation’s anti-hunger program will lead to thousands of job losses and a drop in revenue across the agriculture, retail grocery and food processing industries.

Hunger relief organizations are also bracing for the ripple effect.

Food banks are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts because they are often the last resort in the fight against hunger. Cuts to food assistance programs and other benefits could force millions of people to seek help from charitable organizations that currently lack the infrastructure to handle a surge of vulnerable individuals seeking assistance. 

All the pending human misery comes from shortsighted lawmakers who are afraid and intimidated by President Donald Trump. They gave the dictator his megabill, even though it means people are going to encounter more stress from not knowing where their next meal is coming from — forcing them to rely on overwhelmed charities that will be faced with more people seeking help and less food to meet the need — and the continued destruction of the social safety net.

The writer is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and the author of “God Bless Our Divided America.”