AUGUSTA — Hazel Willow hasn’t bought a hot meal in eight months.

As a domestic abuse survivor with post-traumatic stress disorder that has left her unable to work, she relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, for every meal. The monthly benefits can be redeemed at grocery stores and other shops, though some foods — like hot, ready-made meals — are excluded.

Before she left her ex-husband, Willow was living in Androscoggin County and making up to $96,000 a year at her sales job. She paid her taxes and shopped for groceries without a second thought, buying organic brands and the best milk for her baby. But after spending 117 days in a domestic violence shelter and being diagnosed with PTSD, SNAP has become her lifeline.

“All of my life is based in these supports,” she said. “I need these social safety nets to survive. I endured one of the most excruciating experiences any American can, and I need this help. My child needs this help.”

Now, a Republican bill signed into law Friday by President Donald Trump poses the largest potential cuts and changes to SNAP in its history.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashes some or all benefits for an estimated 32,000 Mainers, including families with children, older people and veterans. Advocates and Democratic leaders say new work requirements and a massive shift in costs to states would be devastating for the program, recipients and states.

All told, the changes will increase Maine’s annual SNAP obligation by $60 million annually — “a cost the state simply cannot absorb,” Gov. Janet Mills wrote in a letter to Maine’s congressional delegation last month.

“This burdensome shift would threaten the viability of Maine’s SNAP program and risk 175,000 Maine people going hungry,” Mills said, referring to the number of people in the state who receive food stamps.

States will be required to pay for some costs that have been covered by the federal government for nearly five decades. Maine would be required to cover 15%, or $54.6 million a year, beginning in fiscal year 2028.

Most states will have to either increase revenues or reduce other spending to continue SNAP, while some might cut it entirely, said Kyle Ross, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute.

The legislation also increases the states’ share of administrative costs from 50% to 75%, which would push Maine’s annual responsibility for running the program from $13.3 million to $20 million.

In addition, the law puts in place a new 80-hour-a-month work requirement for many adults, including older people up to age 65 and parents of children 14 and older. The Senate-amended version peeled back exemptions for veterans and homeless people.

Roughly 40 million people in the U.S. currently use SNAP, most of whom are employed. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, under an earlier version of the bill passed by the House, 3 million people across the country would no longer qualify for food stamps.

‘PEOPLE ARE REALLY SCARED’

Nearly 192,000 Mainers, or 13.8% of the state’s population, are experiencing food insecurity, including 20% of children, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks that tracks hunger across the country.

Talk of cuts and cost-shifting has been met with confusion and fear by people who use food stamps, said Alex Carter, a policy advocate at Maine Equal Justice, a nonprofit civil legal aid and economic justice organization.

“People are really scared — scared that they are not going to be able to survive, that they’re going to lose their housing because they can’t pay for their health care, or they’re going to have to accept whatever the food pantry has that day and not be able to buy their kids the meals that they need,” Carter said. “And that’s terrifying.”

Kasey McBlais, a single mother living in rural Buckfield, says that without SNAP, she wouldn’t be able to put food on the table for her two children.

“I’m a one-parent household now, and so there are months that we don’t receive any child support,” McBlais said. “And SNAP makes that difference between whether my kids are eating or not.”

Major changes to SNAP could mean more people turn to local food pantries for help, but the emergency network isn’t equipped to deal with a surge in need, said Heather Paquette, president of Good Shepherd Food Bank, which distributes food to 600 pantries across the state.

Paquette said Feeding America distributes 6 billion meals a year, but the proposed changes to SNAP and Medicaid could create the need for an additional 9 billion, which would have an “insurmountable” impact on food banks.

She worries about the impact on people who already skip meals.

“You can’t trade off your rent. You can’t trade off transportation or child care,” Paquette said. “But you can absolutely sacrifice meals for you family, which people do everyday.”

RED TAPE AND PAPERWORK

The law will require states to pay between 5% and 15% in benefit costs, depending on the percentage of overpayments, underpayments and errors made by SNAP administrators and applicants. Maine’s error rate sits at 10.26%, which means the state must pay the highest percentage.

Proponents of the Republican legislation say error rates are evidence of fraud and waste in the program, and that cost-sharing forces states to put skin in the game. However, states are already subject to millions of dollars in financial penalties for having high error rates, and in 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that about half of overpayments and 80% of underpayments were states’ fault — most others were simple errors by households.

“On both sides, no one is purposefully doing this,” said Ross, the policy analyst. “No one is making these mistakes on purpose and trying to get money that they don’t actually qualify for. It’s just because the program is so big, so complex and so hard to navigate.”

To apply for SNAP, households must report information such as income, family size, shelter costs and immigration status. A state worker determines eligibility before interviewing the person to verify the accuracy of the application. Households must reapply for benefits every six months, and all changes in regular income above $125 must be reported.

After April Tardiff’s son was born three years ago, she had to quit her job because she couldn’t find suitable child care. Because of the dramatic change in their income, she and her husband, who live in Saco, applied for SNAP and were approved for $170 in monthly benefits. But when her husband got a raise of 50 cents per hour, their benefits dropped to $50.

“It was down to the last dollar every paycheck,” Tardiff, 40, said.

McBlais, the Buckfield mother, believes the law’s proposed work requirements will also cut out eligible SNAP participants who can’t keep up with the paperwork.

“It sort of makes me sick to my stomach that they’re going to tack on this other requirement when getting on public assistance is not easy, and I don’t know if the general public realizes that or not,” she said. “There’s a lot of red tape that families have to go through already. … It’s awful.”

The Senate version of the bill removed work reporting exemptions for people who are homeless, veterans and people who have left the foster care system.

“Those folks would now be expected to comply with work reporting requirements, even if their individual circumstances make it very, very difficult to hand in that paperwork or to hold a regular job,” Carter said.

Ross says the legislation insinuates that people who are not working don’t deserve food.

“There’s a lot of problematic language being used in terms of, who is the truly needy? Who needs these benefits?” he said. “This is the root of, not just SNAP, but the safety net of government assistance as a whole: Who needs help? Who deserves help? And conservative members of Congress, they see certain groups as not deserving help, not needing help, if they’re not working ‘enough.’”

LAWMAKERS CRITICIZE LEGISLATION

None of the four members of Maine’s congressional delegation voted to support the measure.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said she supports work requirements for able-bodied adults but believes they should not be applied to individuals who have young children, are in school, or are caring for a family member with disabilities or an illness. She was one of three Republicans who broke with their party Tuesday to vote against the Senate bill, requiring a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.

Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, referred to the bill as the “great Maine robbery” during a news conference last week.

“The question that has to be asked is: Is this really necessary in order to provide tax relief for Americans? … We can give tax relief to people who make less than $400,000 a year without the necessity of these kind of cuts,” King said.

Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, voted against the original version of the bill in the House and said in a statement that he “will continue to oppose efforts to cut taxes for the wealthy while making it harder for poor people to afford food and health care.”

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, said there is “nothing good” about the proposal and that it would be “devastating” for Maine and the 175,000 people who receive food stamps.

“It’s so sad. We’re the richest country in the world. We should not be having a fight over whether or not to continue offering people assistance in buying food,” she said in an interview. “We’re going to make the rich people richer, and we’re going to say to the people struggling, ‘Sorry, you don’t have enough food this week.’”

Willow, who has since relocated from Androscoggin County with her 6-year-old son, hopes most people will never have to utilize public programs like SNAP. She also recognizes that anyone could end up in her situation.

“We didn’t know these programs existed in my family until we had to use them,” she said. “I didn’t understand how these benefits worked. I was like many other Americans who had never had to access them, and I believed the misconceptions about them, but our entire life is held up by all of these different types of programs. So the ones that are being threatened (in the legislation) would dismantle our life, just topple it down like a house of cards.

“It would all come crashing down.”