![](\"https:\/\/themossytypewriter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/17705701537241496503197517036162.png\")
\nBy Hope Sardella<\/p>\n
\nBy Hope Sardella<\/p>\n
President Trump,<\/p>\n
I am writing this as someone who voted for you. I am writing as someone who believed you would fight for working people, struggling people, forgotten people. I am writing as someone who has known real hunger in this country \u2014 the kind of hunger many Americans insist doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
When I was a young girl, my mother left. She broke up with my stepdad and left me behind with him. We didn\u2019t have much \u2014 not money, not stability, and definitely not food. I remember opening the refrigerator and seeing almost nothing. I remember making mustard sandwiches because that was all we had. Two slices of bread and a smear of mustard. That was dinner. That was survival.<\/p>\n
Hunger at that age teaches you to be quiet. It teaches you to make yourself small. It teaches you to pretend you\u2019re full so the adults don\u2019t worry, or so they don\u2019t get angry, or so you don\u2019t feel the shame of needing something they can\u2019t give.<\/p>\n
Years later, it happened again. I was pregnant with my son \u2014 though I didn\u2019t know it yet \u2014 and I was starving. I walked into a store and picked up a carton of eggs. I thought about slipping them into my bag. I thought about how badly I needed food. But I was too scared to steal. So I put the eggs back and walked out hungry.<\/p>\n
That kind of hunger stays with you. Even when life gets better \u2014 and it has gotten better for me \u2014 the memory never leaves. I\u2019m in college now. I have income. I\u2019m building a future. But I haven\u2019t forgotten what it felt like to be hungry in a country that claims hunger is impossible.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why I\u2019m writing to you now.<\/p>\n
Hunger Is Not a Myth. It\u2019s a Policy Outcome.<\/p>\n
SNAP used to be a lifeline. Imperfect, yes \u2014 but reachable. Now, the rules have tightened so much that the poorest people are being squeezed out of the very program designed to keep them alive.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the new reality many Americans don\u2019t see:<\/p>\n
– Work requirements have expanded to older adults, pushing people in their 50s and early 60s into mandatory employment just to qualify for food.
\n– If you don\u2019t work enough hours, you lose SNAP.
\n– If you do work enough hours, you often earn \u201ctoo much\u201d to qualify.
\n– And the wages you earn still aren\u2019t enough to buy groceries.<\/p>\n
It is a perfect Catch\u201122.<\/p>\n
You have to work to get SNAP.
\nBut if you work, you lose SNAP.
\nAnd the money you make isn\u2019t enough to feed you.<\/p>\n
People who have never been hungry don\u2019t understand how cruel that is. But I do. I lived it. And millions of Americans are living it right now.<\/p>\n
Why I\u2019m Speaking Up<\/p>\n
I voted for you because I believed you would help people like me \u2014 people who have struggled, people who have worked hard, people who have gone hungry and kept going anyway. But these SNAP policies are not helping us. They are hurting us.<\/p>\n
I am asking you, respectfully and directly, to reconsider these changes. To look at the real lives behind the numbers. To understand that hunger is not a political talking point \u2014 it is a reality for people who are doing everything they can to survive.<\/p>\n
I am not starving anymore. But there are people who are. And they deserve a government that sees them, hears them, and protects them.<\/p>\n
Respectfully,
\nHope Sardella
\nTulsa, Oklahoma<\/p>\n\n