🎉 Happy Birthday, Will! 🎉

Please join us in sending a big shoutout to our brilliant writer Will, who's celebrating his birthday the day this publishes! Whether he's breaking down the latest in D.C. policy or the newest reality TV drama, Will brings sharp wit, endless ideas, and a pulse on everything worth knowing. For his birthday, he is probably indulging in a chicken finger somewhere. Thanks for keeping us informed and entertained—The Food Policy Debrief community is lucky to have you!

TL;DR

Bird flu, citations gone wrong, and law-breaking meatpackers
A new Texas bill that would affect Doritos and Mountain Dew
A look at the [lack there-of] Pride campaigns from food companies
What the Big Beautiful Bill (barf) might mean for our food and health

This Month’s Standout Food Stories

👀 Policy Movement We’re Tracking

⚠️ A new Texas bill would require Doritos and Mountain Dew products to have a “not recommended for human consumption” warning.

🗃️ Senator Luján (D-NM) re-introduced the SNAP Administrator Retention Act, legislation that would provide states with resources to ensure their agencies can retain their experienced staff and help fill open SNAP administrator positions—in other words, funding that would pay the people who help keep the program running!

🌪️ But TBH, most other legislative priorities are definitely on the back burner as all eyes are on the “Big Beautiful Bill…”

**How You Can Progress Food Policy This Month**

Ask your senators and representatives to protect, restore, and secure robust funding for global nutrition programs, and to fully fund and strengthen WIC using Bread for the World’s easy-to-use action tool.
Use FRAC's updated tool, which allows you to send a message directly to your Senators urging them to oppose the SNAP cuts in the House budget reconciliation bill (more on this below).

P.S. The FPD team is headed to D.C. next week for the third-annual Gen Z Food & Hunger Summit, where we’ll be training and helping young leaders advocate for food security legislation at the federal level. Stay tuned!

Social Impact Spotlight

Shedding light on companies leading by example and engaging in the food system in a meaningful way

In honor of Pride month, we set out to identify the brands and companies sticking by their DEI commitments, specifically those made to the LGBTQ+ community, in light of the current funding cuts and waves against these efforts. Silly us, we figured there would be a whole host of brands standing firm in their previously stated missions! We won’t lie: It was bleak. The reality is that much of the content around this topic looks a whole lot like this. But two food companies stood out in our search: Shake Shack and Skittles.

For the sixth year in a row, Skittles partnered with—and donated $200,000 to—GLAAD, a non-profit organization that advocates for fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of LGBTQ people in media.

Shake Shack also announced its “Sprinkled with Pride” campaign, which similarly includes a partnership with GLAAD, as a part of its mission to Stand For Something Good®. Starting June 1 and extending into July, guests can add sprinkles for 50¢ and all sprinkle proceeds will go directly to GLAAD.

The Big Beautiful Bill or Big Bad Boondoggle: What Food Policy Advocates Need to Know

If you’ve seen any political news the last few weeks, you know that right before Memorial Day, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which now heads to the Senate for consideration under a process called Reconciliation. This bill seeks to extend the tax policies initially passed under the first Trump Administration, but also includes some of the deepest cuts to social benefit programs ever proposed. This month, we’ll give you a brief primer on the Reconciliation process, and then explain what this bill (which we don’t believe is as beautiful as claimed, though it certainly is big) even has to do with food policy at all. Let’s get into it.

Reconciliation: When Congress Stops Being Polite and Starts Getting Real

When you think of Congress, the last word you probably think of is speedy. But when Congress wants to spend money, adjust tax policy, and set or adjust the debt limit, they can use a process called Reconciliation to change our tax and spending policy, and do it relatively quickly (key word relatively).

Something important to note: spending and tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. The Founding Fathers felt this was so important, they codified it in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. In the simplest of terms, the Reconciliation process begins when the House passes a spending bill, then sends it to the Senate to amend and pass (requiring a majority threshold instead of the normal 60 vote threshold), and then it goes back to the House to decide whether they accept the Senate’s revisions.

But let’s break it down a bit further: Before the spending bill, the House and Senate first have to pass a Budget Resolution, which they did in April. Whether they actually stick to that is… up to them, as Budget Resolutions don’t become law (and aren’t binding). Then, the House gets to work writing up a budget bill, which then gets sent to the Senate. In the Senate, where we will remind you this bill can pass by only a basic majority instead of two-thirds majority, there is a rule applied called the Byrd Rule. Put simply, the Byrd Rule constrains what the Senate can consider in Reconciliation bills to only matters of spending and taxation in a specific time window, and it prevents the Senate from using the lower vote threshold to make changes to Social Security.

In the past, Reconciliation has been used to pass landmark legislation like the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the initial round of Trump tax policy in 2017. But, even though it makes things easier in the Senate, it’s never a sure thing, like when Senator John McCain notably killed an ACA repeal effort in 2017.

So what does this mean for food?

The short answer: nothing good. While we aren’t tax policy experts (we leave that to our friends at CBPP), it’s worth noting that the primary goal of this bill is to make the 2017 Trump tax policies permanent and to expand the tax cuts for people at the highest income brackets. No one especially loves paying taxes (if you do, we have questions), but we pay them to support our collective well-being. This bill largely provides tax cuts to the rich (as in, really rich) and cuts programs on which our poorest and most disadvantaged neighbors rely.

Here are the toplines you need to know:

The bill as written in the House would cut SNAP by at least $300 billion over the next ten years and cut at least 7 million Americans out of the SNAP program (including 2 million kids). It gets worse. The bill would also:

Make changes to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is the basis for SNAP allotments and would mean families receive lower benefit amounts (AKA less $ for food)
Alter to whom SNAP’s work requirements apply.

Currently, as an able-bodied adult without dependents between the ages of 18-55, you can only get SNAP for 3 months out of any given three years (which, have these people ever had to look for a job?)
This bill not only expands the age limit to 64, but it also changes the definition of dependent to be a child aged 6 or below. Better monetize that TikTok presence early, kids.

Change SNAP eligibility, potentially kicking 420,000 children out of the school lunch program and Summer EBT

The big, beautiful bill is also a boon to industrial agriculture. Don’t get us wrong, we need investment in America’s farmers and rural communities, but:

This bill proposes large investments in commodity and traditional agriculture, some of which are expansions of spending under the Inflation Reduction Act, but it also cuts some of the good pieces of that bill, resulting in an estimated $1.8 billion cut in conservation spending over the next decade.
While there are slightly increased investments in Specialty Crop programs (remember, put very, very simply, specialty crops are code for fruits, vegetables, and nuts we actually need for our diet) and reauthorizations for spending on organics, the bill avoids any changes or improvements to these programs that might have been worked on in a more traditional Farm Bill process, which this bill largely preempts.

Arguably worst of all, the House bill guts Medicaid, makes health insurance harder to get on Affordable Care Act exchanges, and potentially makes health insurance more expensive for all of us. It’s estimated at least 15 million Americans would lose their healthcare coverage under the House bill.

Similarly to the changes to SNAP, this bill would alter the way work requirements are enforced and how States finance Medicaid, meaning more red tape and costs where the States have to foot the bill. Remember how we discussed back in March that Medicaid is a great vehicle for Food Is Medicine work? This makes that even harder.
This bill cuts Medicaid and Medicare benefits (the latter of which are earned by paying in at least 40 calendar quarters) to many immigrants, including those who are lawfully present in the U.S. (even if they’ve been paying in).

These policy changes, in addition to being devastating to many low-income families, would largely leave us all sicker, angrier, and with less food on the table.

What can we do about it?

First off, if you have a Senator (sorry to those of us in D.C., Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories), call them and let your voice be heard. This process is entirely in the Senate’s hands at this point, with an eye on a July 4th deadline. See a provision that deserves a Byrd Rule challenge? Have a provision that will directly impact you and your family? Give them a call and tell them.

We know we sound like a broken record here, but advocacy similar to this is why we still have the ACA today. It’s worth trying now, again, to keep food on our neighbors tables, make sure kids have healthcare, and help protect our planet.