On Saturday, Supplemental Vitamin Help Program (SNAP) advantages — also referred to as meals stamps — will run out for greater than 40 million Individuals. These thousands and thousands of Individuals are collateral injury from what’s so far the second-longest government shutdown in US historical past.

However even because the looming deadline has underscored the very actual influence of the impasse in Washington, DC, it has additionally led to the newest flare-up of America’s decades-long conflict over welfare advantages. On social media, creators are gaining views by posting rage bait posing as folks receiving meals help residing a lifetime of luxurious on the federal government’s dime. These movies have racked up thousands and thousands of views and tons of indignant responses.

Krissy Clark is a journalist who has coated the social security web on The Uncertain Hour podcast. Clark says that these movies are part of an extended historical past of Individuals stereotyping SNAP recipients as lazy and entitled.

Clark spoke with Today, Explained host Noel King to speak about how the “welfare queen” stereotype has lengthy been a presence in American politics and continues to be shaping coverage right now. Beneath is an excerpt of their dialog, edited for size and readability. There’s rather more within the full podcast, so take heed to As we speak, Defined wherever you get podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Inform me the place your ideas go once you see videos like this.

We don’t know who these individuals are or if they really do obtain meals stamps or not. I used to be taking a look at one among these movies, and it’s particularly a parody account that claims that it’s any person who likes to do satire and skits. So I feel one factor is: Are they really authentically meals stamp recipients themselves?

After which the reactions that you simply see within the feedback, folks [are] calling these folks entitled, parasites, looters, folks residing off meals stamps, intergenerational dependency. The very first thing that involves thoughts is: That is simply not an correct illustration of most people who find themselves receiving meals help. It’s a very outdated set of tropes and stereotypes, however in the event you really have a look at the numbers, that isn’t an correct depiction of most meals stamp recipients.

For one factor, two-thirds of contributors are kids or adults over age 60 or folks with disabilities. Then once you take these of us out and also you have a look at most SNAP contributors who theoretically can work, a majority of these individuals are working in any given month, and a overwhelming majority of them have labored both within the final 12 months or the subsequent 12 months, or might be working within the subsequent 12 months.

The common profit for the typical meals stamp recipient is about $6 a day. So this complete concept that the standard SNAP recipient is simply sucking off the federal government teat and doesn’t wanna work and is lazy, that isn’t mirrored within the knowledge.

What about the response — “entitled,” “parasites,” “looters,” “intergenerational dependency”? Does that shock you?

Sadly, it doesn’t, as a result of it’s a story as outdated as our nation and even older. There may be this deep nervousness that folk within the US have collectively, and that has been amplified in some ways by politicians — this deep nervousness about once we assist folks collectively, are we serving to the proper folks? There’s this elementary divide I feel plenty of Individuals have, that runs by means of American historical past, of who’re the deserving poor, the those who deserve our assist, and who’re the not-deserving poor.

How do our assumptions and even our suspicions get changed into coverage?

All of us have in all probability heard of Reagan’s tropes round “welfare queens.” That was tied into efforts that he made to place deep cuts into meals stamp eligibility and meals stamp funds within the Nineteen Eighties.

And you then soar to 1996, when Congress handed essentially the most sweeping welfare reforms in historical past. The New Republic, the journal, had a canopy picture, in August of 1996 with the massive splashy headline, “Day of Reckoning, Sign the Bill Now,” encouraging [President Bill] Clinton to signal the welfare reform acts that had been going to actually intestine welfare as we knew it. And on the quilt of the journal is an image of a Black lady with a cigarette in her hand holding a little bit child who’s ingesting from a bottle.

I keep in mind the Nineties. I used to be a child, however I do know that the “welfare queen” trope was form of within the water. It does make me take into consideration what’s occurring within the current day, the place a single tweet that claims to be a video of a lady saying, “I’ve 9 children and I’m by no means gonna get a job as a result of I get meals stamps” can instantly attain thousands and thousands of individuals.

If you see these movies on social media, is there one thing totally different now due to simply how viral they’ll go?

The sensation that I get isn’t, “Oh, we’re on this new world.” It’s, “Right here we go once more.” This is similar playbook, the identical fears. Perhaps they’re amplified, they get to folks sooner. However yeah, I used to be a child within the ’90s additionally, and it was within the water. It was simply form of what, there have been these sure stereotypes and sure suspicions that we didn’t want social media for. They had been already there. And I feel that that message and people suspicions are gonna journey a technique or one other.

There may be one large distinction in 2025 from the previous, and we’ve talked about it on the present: Security web applications are sometimes seen as Democratic terrain. Democrats vote for them; Democrats want them.

However then the scenario modified after the 2024 election, as a result of plenty of poor and dealing -lass folks voted for Donald Trump. So not too long ago you noticed Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, write an op-ed in the New York Times saying we have to fund SNAP.

Do you see Republicans altering their tune on welfare, as a result of more and more the individuals who want advantages are voting Republican?

I’d push again a little bit bit on it. I very a lot was type of studying it by means of the lens of, [Hawley is] attempting to concentrate on the “deserving poor” right here.

I additionally suppose that in the event you really have a look at his voting file, this summer time, he voted for the sweeping modifications to meals stamp eligibility and different types of public help eligibility that had been within the so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill. These in some methods are going to have rather more long-term and far-reaching results by way of limiting who has entry to meals stamps and to different kinds of presidency help.

Saturday is when the advantages run out. You’ve been reporting on this, Krissy, for a really very long time. When folks lose their advantages and after they lose them in such nice numbers, the place do they flip for assist? The place do they go to search out meals?

There’s a community of meals banks and meals pantries. The nonprofit sector is clearly attempting to fill within the breach, however I feel anyone you discuss to in that world says there isn’t any manner that we may exchange the form of help that meals stamps presents, and that we, collectively as a nation, by means of our authorities, supply.

Just a few years in the past I used to be in Dayton, Ohio, and I used to be at a Walmart proper at midnight, as a result of I knew that when the clock strikes 12:01, you’ve your month-to-month advantages. The quantity of people that, proper when the clock struck 12:01, had been going into Walmart late at evening to start out shopping for meals confirmed you the fast want. This isn’t one thing you possibly can wait till the subsequent day [for] even.

I bumped into this lady who was together with her 8-year-old son. Her meals stamps had already run out from final month. As a lot as she tried to funds issues — she additionally had a job; she labored for I feel a Greenback Normal — she simply couldn’t make ends meet with out this assist. So take into consideration that come November 1st.