By Janelle Stecklein | Editor
“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed. Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…” - Kevin Stitt of making it too easy for SNAP recipients to purchase groceries
A sign noting the acceptance of electronic benefit transfer cards for food aid is displayed at a grocery store in California. Upcoming shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, raising fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Kevin Hardy
Upcoming funding shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, heightening fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program.
Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made major changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, including new eligibility and work requirements. Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.
But beginning in fall 2027, states for the first time must begin to fund some SNAP benefits themselves. Analyses of newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show states could be on the hook for more than $9 billion. Some states, county officials and advocates fear this will remove more Americans from the safety net program and even push some states to consider dropping out of SNAP altogether.
Pasture-raised chickens are pictured at a poultry farm near Stilwell, Oklahoma, on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (Photo by Janelle Stecklein/ Oklahoma Voice)
By Emma Murphy
Oklahoma’s attorney general on Monday unveiled a new attempt to settle a decades-old case with six poultry companies who have been court-ordered to clean up eastern Oklahoma waterways.
A voter marks his ballot at the polling place at the Millwood High School Field House on June 16, 2026 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (Photo by Courtney Bell/Oklahoma Voice)
By Courtney Bell
Oklahomans looking to cast their ballot in the Aug. 25 partisan primary runoff election have until the end of the month to register to vote or update their voter registration, though they cannot change their party affiliation.
A mail-in ballot dropbox on P Street Northwest in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
By David Lightman
Trump’s move guts, for now, a four-member board created in 2002 after the chaos that dogged the 2000 presidential election. That result came down to the vote count in Florida, where the question was debated of whether “hanging chads” on ballots counted or not.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, left, takes a photo with his wife, former Secretary of Labor and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao. (Photo provided by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office)
By McKenna Horsley
Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said in a Sunday statement he fell before he was hospitalized last month and he has moved from being a hospital patient to “a rehabilitation center where I’ll keep regaining my strength.”
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