LANDOVER, Md. — On a recent frigid Friday, Ted Wiles was keeping his humor as he stood, tall and bundled against a stiff breeze, in a growing line outside the No Limits food pantry.
"I'm losing feeling out of my toes," Wiles said, laughing. He'd been here five hours, and the pantry wouldn't open for a couple hours more.
One pantry volunteer said it's always like this — when she arrives to meet the food truck at 7:30 in the morning, people are already lined up waiting even though the doors won't open until late afternoon or evening.
The line reflects a trend seen around the country, as food banks say they're busier than ever. Now this pantry and others are bracing for even more demand. That's because the first Trump administration tried to scale back federal food aid, and allies aim to try again as they look to slash government spending.
Wiles isn't worried about that. He does get food stamps, but said it's only $40 a month, which he calls a "slap in the face" that doesn't buy much these days. He lives alone in subsidized housing and gets by on Social Security, plus a small pension from the decade he worked a union job at a nearby baked-goods distribution plant.
He said he started coming to this pantry just outside Washington, D.C. a few years ago, when food prices skyrocketed. "If it wasn't for this particular place, you know, I'd probably have to dig a little deeper," he said. "This has saved me immensely."
Farther back in line, Donya Godbolt said it's only her second time here. "Short on food stamps, so I need to put the food in my house," she said.
Several hundred dollars a month in federal food aid only lasts two and a half weeks for her and her husband. He had his leg amputated from diabetes and can no longer work, and she quit working to care for him. Without the help, "we wouldn't have any food other than, you know, family members assisting or making meals," she said.
Like many pantries, No Limits saw the number of people it serves shoot up during the pandemic. Those who came used to be mostly African American, but there's been a growing share of recent migrants from Latin America, Afghanistan and other places.
Food insecurity has been rising since the pandemic, even among the middle class
More than 1 in 10 people in the U.S. get federal food aid, and food insecurity ticked up again in 2023, according to the latest report from the Department of Agriculture. Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, said the reasons can include job loss, the end of pandemic aid, and continued high prices for food, rent and other necessities.
Her group surveyed people in the Washington, D.C., region, and 29% of them said they'd had to choose between buying food or paying their rent or mortgage. Some 31% reported not eating for an entire day because of a lack of money. Most who struggled were working, often more than one job.
But Muthiah was surprised to see the biggest jump in need was among middle class households making over $100,000. "Those who are increasingly educated, and those who are increasingly earning higher levels of income," she said, "just not enough to meet the cost of living in our area."
For all the good her food bank does, Muthiah said the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP, also known as food stamps — is crucial. "For every one meal that a food bank provides, the SNAP program provides nine," she said.
But SNAP's large size and budget makes it a prime target for cuts.
Proposed cuts in the first Trump administration could have ended food aid for three million people
The first Trump administration tried to tighten work requirements and to limit who qualifies for SNAP. It estimated the measures would save more than $7 billion over time, and end benefits for more than three million people.
The proposals were blocked by Congress and the courts. But now Trump allies, including those who wrote the conservative policy agenda Project 2025, want to try again. During the campaign Trump denied any connection to that agenda. But those who wrote it include his allies, loyalists and former Trump officials, and the chapter on the Agriculture Department, which oversees SNAP, includes measures his first administration proposed.
Trump has tapped Brooke Rollins, CEO of the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute, to head USDA, and her Senate hearing is scheduled for next week. NPR reached out to the Trump transition team for comment about plans for SNAP, but it did not respond.
The idea of shrinking SNAP has other supporters, too.
"It's kind of become too large, a little bit unruly, and Congress may need to step in and kind of rein it in," said Angela Rachidi, with the center-right American Enterprise Institute.
Nationally, she noted that severe food insecurity did not increase last year. And she believes the better way to tackle the problem is to reduce the cost of food by lowering inflation.
"If the solution is always just to expand assistance programs," she said, "to me it's not a satisfying solution," because spending more will feed inflation and create a "vicious cycle."
Right now, the law caps gross income for SNAP recipients at 130% of the poverty line. But for a couple decades, states have been able to raise that to 200% — about $62,000 for a family of four — if a household has other large expenses that cut into their income, like childcare.
States can also waive work requirements for certain people. Rachidi said they are too quick to do both those things and that SNAP has lost its primary focus on those most in need.
"It's not just about cutting these programs," she said. "It's about helping people get on a path so they can work and provide for their own families, so they don't need these programs."
SNAP advocates counter that work requirements can themselves hold people back.
"Food is a basic human need. Access to food should not have a time limit," said Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger advocacy group.
Unless they're working, adults without dependents can only get food aid for three months in three years. But Bhatti said more time could help them to find a better paying job or to pursue college or training that could lead to one. He also noted that wages have not kept pace with food prices that have jumped about 24% since 2020.
"This is a great opportunity for lawmakers to recognize that people came out to vote because they couldn't afford to put food on the table," he said.
"People think it's cheap to run a food bank"
Inside the No Limits pantry in Maryland, volunteers took up their posts behind tables laden with food and bowed their heads. One woman stood in the middle and led a prayer.
"Amen," the group said. And then the door finally opened.
Men and women filed by the long tables, filling their bags and pull carts with apples, frozen fish, pasta and chicken breasts. Volunteers greeted them, answered questions in English and Spanish, and explained how many items they're allowed from each table.
Some days, there are so many people the pantry has to cut off the line before it runs out of food. Oliver Carter, senior pastor of No Limits Outreach Ministries, which runs the pantry, worries what will happen if a lot of people do lose SNAP benefits.
"How will they compensate for that? They're gonna try to get free food," he said. But his budget is already stretched so thin, he said he almost had to shut down last year.
"People think it's cheap to run a food bank. But when you look at the freezers, the refrigerators, the electric bill, the rent for the building ... It's a hard work that we're doing," he said.
Carter's partner, the Capital Area Food Bank, has already done the math on what might happen if the Trump administration tightens income eligibility for SNAP. In one scenario, CEO Muthiah said it would mean providing about four million more meals a year, at an extra cost of $2 million plus additional staff.
Regardless of however many people may eventually show up in need, Carter said he'll be here to help.
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