As roughly 42 million Americans face the loss of food stamps this weekend, far-right influencers, extremists, and conspiracy theorists are using the crisis to push racist disinformation about who receives these benefits.
As a result of the government shutdown, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will not be funded as of November 1, according to a message on the website of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the program. While this loss of benefits could be catastrophic for millions, that hasn’t stopped the rush of disinformation. A number of conspiracy theorists and right-wing influencers are claiming that immigrants are the main recipients of food stamps, while AI-generated videos on TikTok push racist stereotypes of Black people demanding more benefits.
These claims simply do not align with reality, given that the majority of people who receive SNAP benefits are white Americans, according to data collected by the USDA. The data also shows that deep-red states like Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana are among those with the highest percentage of food stamp recipients.
“These narratives are being circulated to suggest that undeserving groups are getting the bulk of SNAP benefits and therefore to make the suspension of SNAP benefits seem like less of a crisis,” says Tracy Roof, a political scientist at the University of Richmond. “The reality is that the overwhelming majority of recipients of SNAP are people born in the US, and many are in families with children or are elderly or disabled. Of those able to work, most do.”
A chart posted by an influential far-right X account with the screen name “The General” has boosted this conspiracy theory, suggesting that the vast majority of people in receipt of benefits are non-white immigrants, with Afghan, Somali, and Iraqi US residents making up the top three supposed recipients. This chart, which was initially published in June on a website called the Personal Finance Wizards, according to PolitiFact, is entirely fabricated. The USDA does not collect the ethnicity of SNAP recipients beyond broad categories like White, African American, and Hispanic.
USDA data shows that almost 90 percent of SNAP recipients are American-born citizens. 1.1 percent of recipients are refugees, and 3.3 percent are other noncitizens.
The General’s post has been seen 6.3 million times and has been widely shared by other people, including influential right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh, who quoted the post on X and wrote: “We import the third world and force working-class Americans to feed and house them at gunpoint. Civilizational suicide.” Other posts that also shared the chart were shared hundreds of thousands of times. X did not respond to a request for comment.
In response to a user’s question about the chart’s accuracy, X’s AI-powered chatbot Grok wrote: “Yes, the chart accurately reflects USDA data on SNAP recipients by race from recent reports,” before disagreeing with the chart and concluding “absolute numbers show Whites as the largest group.”
The chart also appeared to inform a segment on right-wing news channel Newsmax this week about the end of SNAP funding. Newsmax did not respond to requests for comment.
Other racist conspiracies have also taken hold. On TikTok, as first reported by The Root, multiple racist accounts posted what appear to be AI-generated videos of Black women ranting about their food stamp payments being cut off. These videos do not depict real people or real incidents.
One TikTok account dedicated to producing racist AI slop videos that feature a Black woman named “Lakisha” posted a video showing the woman screaming at what appears to be a government official. “What the hell you mean you can’t reload my EBT card?” the AI-generated woman shouts. This post and other similar videos depict incidents that did not occur, though some commenters appeared to think they were real. “Accurate and sad. They milk the system on our back,” one user wrote. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed that the Democratic party is purposely keeping the government shut down in order to trigger violent civil unrest following the loss of food stamps.
“It's the Democrats creating the martial law, civil war, race-war scenario,” Jones told Bannon. “They are doing it again,” he added, comparing President Trump to former president Abraham Lincoln. Multiple threads on The Donald, a fringe pro-Trump message board, also claimed without evidence that Black people would begin looting en masse this weekend as a result of SNAP’s lapse in funding.
The Trump administration has focused its ire on Democrats and immigrants. “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” states a message posted on the USDA website. “Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
While the administration blames Democrats for the lapse in SNAP funding, GOP congressional leadership has said it would block a Democratic bill that would allow the program to be funded. The bill is “a cynical attempt to buy political cover for Democrats to allow them to carry on their government shutdown even longer,” Senate majority leader John Thune said in Congress on Wednesday.
But some Republicans do want SNAP funding to continue. Senator Josh Hawley proposed his own bill to fund the program this week, which 10 other Republican senators have publicly supported. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said Hawley’s bill “would pass overwhelmingly” if it is put to a vote.
These critical benefits are set to run out on Saturday.
