To Mike Schultz, Kansas ranchers are stuck in velvet handcuffs.

Walmart, the nation’s largest grocery retailer and private employer, recently expanded into the U.S. beef industry with its own processing plant in Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. The opening of the Walmart-owned plant in July marked a turning point for the company and the nation’s cattle industry.

Schultz, a cattle rancher in Brewster, Kansas, — a state that accounts for roughly 4% of the nation’s cattle supply — said for now, local ranchers are likely to have better prices with Walmart bidding against other beef giants.

But Walmart is known for cheap prices and Schultz believes the Arkansas-based retailer will soon look to drive down the price it pays for cattle.

“If you want a race to the bottom to produce cheaper than anybody else, Walmart’s your guy,” he said.

This year, the nation’s beef industry is at a crossroads. Ranchers and agricultural experts warn the nation’s already stunted beef industry could be falling under more corporate control. 

The domestic herd is at a record low as the U.S. imports more beef than ever before. Brazilian meat giant JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, recently became a publicly traded company with access to U.S. capital, and consumers are spending record prices on beef at the grocery store.

Walmart is now poised to become a significant player in the beef industry, owning cattle from slaughter to sale. This comes at a time when ranchers have fewer buyers for their cattle and declining inventory. 

Nine out of 10 states that make up the majority of the nation’s beef supply have seen a decline in the past decade, according to a review of USDA data.

Kansas has seen the largest loss, from 1.4 million in 2016 to 1.2 million in 2025, a 21% decline. 

Mike Callicrate, owner of Ranch Direct Foods in Colorado Springs and an advocate for family farms, believes Walmart’s entry into the beef industry at the same time JBS went public on the New York Stock Exchange is the “last domino” to fall for independent ranchers.

Beef is a heavily consolidated industry, with four companies controlling nearly all of the nation’s supply. The federal government attempted to rein in the power of the consolidated meat industry in recent years, but under the Trump administration, guidelines for preventing and investigating antitrust violations in agriculture were scrapped. 

“I think our industry is in real trouble until we start enforcing antitrust laws and breaking up concentrated power,” Callicrate said. “You cannot let Walmart control the supply chain.”

The power of Walmart

Walmart’s Kansas beef plant is not the first time the company has dipped its toe into owning parts of the nation’s beef supply chain. It is, however, the first time they’ve had full control. 

In 2020, it opened a Thomasville, Georgia, beef processing facility. Owned by a separate food company, the facility’s employees process beef to be case-ready — taking large cuts and slicing them into smaller portions before packaging them for the meat case at their grocery stores.

An independent ranching company supplies the Georgia plant with meat from multiple herds across the region.

Walmart fully owns and operates its new Kansas plant and also holds a minority stake in Sustainable Beef, the Nebraska-based cattle company that sources cattle within a 250-mile radius, including Kansas.

The Kansas plant will provide beef for Walmart stores in Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the company. 

Walmart’s foray into the beef industry is not adding new cattle to the market, but rather competing for cattle in an overwhelmingly consolidated market.

JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Marfrig control roughly 85% of the U.S. beef industry, according to industry estimates. 

Walmart’s buying and processing of its own beef will initially compete directly with these companies. It could also reduce the amount of meat it buys from Tyson and Cargill, according to the company’s statements.

Walmart accounts for such a large portion of Tyson’s sales – almost 20% – that Tyson has said in SEC filings that if this were to be disrupted, it would “have a material impact” on their operations. Tyson did not respond to a request for comment on Walmart’s expansion into the beef industry.

Walmart first announced its plan to enter the beef industry in 2019, stating it wanted to create an end-to-end supply chain for Angus beef, which led to its Georgia and Kansas plants. 

“It’s important to build more resiliency and capacity in the industry,” a Walmart spokesperson said in an email statement to Investigate Midwest. “Opening a case-ready facility fully owned and operated by Walmart allows us greater control over the products entering our stores so we can continue to bring the highest quality offerings possible.”

Walmart said it has no plans to open another beef processing plant in the future, according to the statement. The company did not answer specific questions about its role in the concentrated meat industry and who it sees as competitors in this space.

Schultz, the Kansas rancher, said it’s an appealing prospect for ranchers to sign on with Walmart, as it’s likely offering better prices than competitors.

“Ranchers are going to make some money for a little bit, but once they’ve got their hooks in you, you’re done,” he said. 

This isn’t the first time Walmart has captured a section of its food supply. Walmart opened a Fort Wayne, Indiana, milk-processing plant in 2018 to cut out major milk processors. Grocery stores Kroger and Albertsons also opened milk-bottling plants in 2017.

Greg Foran, former Walmart CEO of American stores, said the company decided to enter meat and dairy spaces because of the consolidated nature of those industries, speaking to CNN in 2019.

“What drives a decision like that is if we start to see a consolidation in supply,” Foran said. 

Foran noted that Walmart’s prices for milk had risen and the company aimed for “leverage” with its distributors when finalizing contracts. 

Austin Frerick, an agricultural antitrust expert and author of the book “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” said Walmart is known for its power in the food supply chain because of the volume of products it purchases, often dictating the prices of many food items.

“The most powerful person in the food system is Walmart and entering the beef industry only adds to their power,” Frederick said.

‘The writing is on the wall’

While Walmart expands into the U.S. beef industry, foreign companies are filling in gaps left by the nation’s declining cattle herd.

The U.S. increased its beef and veal imports by 38% from 2015 to 2024.

Spurred by rising costs and prolonged droughts in recent years, the U.S. cattle herd sits at just under 28 million, the lowest since 1962. 

Brazil’s impact on the nation’s agriculture sector has caught the attention of the United States Trade Representative, USTR, the nation’s negotiating office for global trade. 

The USTR held an investigative hearing on Sept. 3 into Brazil’s trade practices and any related harms to the U.S. economy. Representatives of the U.S. beef industry spoke at the hearing, saying Brazil has not been transparent in its sourcing and animal health practices in the beef industry.

“The United States holds all trading partners to the highest science-based standards, and Brazil should not be the exception,” said Kent Bacus, executive director of government affairs for the nation’s beef industry trade group, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, at the hearing. 

Since the beginning of this year, Brazil, a major cattle-producing country, has imported a record number of beef into the U.S., despite ongoing tariffs and trade disputes.

JBS, the world’s largest meat company, headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, benefits from these imports and a declining cattle herd in the U.S., and will now have access to the country’s domestic capital markets after becoming a publicly traded company on the U.S. Stock Exchange in July.

According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, JBS’s North American beef segment is the largest revenue producer for the company, coming in at over $13 billion at the end of June.

The company’s SEC registration documents note the beef industry is volatile, and JBS avoids volatility by not owning cattle, unlike its poultry and pork segments. 

The nation’s beef industry has skirted the problems its protein counterparts, chicken and pork, have faced in recent decades, leaving American ranchers one of the few remaining independent animal farmers.

The majority of the nation’s chicken is produced under contract, meaning the farmers are essentially independent workers who raise animals for a corporation, while 74% of hogs raised in the country as of 2020 were raised under contract. Contract farming has been linked to a decline in competition and an increase in economic exploitation.

Currently, the nation’s beef herd is not under contract, but beef industry experts worry Walmart’s expansion is a step in the wrong direction. 

“What Walmart is doing will lessen competition in the beef industry,” said Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, a cattle producer-only trade association. “It’ll mean less competition. It’ll mean fewer producers and it’ll mean a more concentrated and centralized food production system that is contrary to the national security of this country.”

Bullard said continued concentration and capture of the beef industry will make ranchers exit the industry or go the way of poultry or pork.

“The writing is on the wall,” he said. “We will continue to see more ranchers exit the industry and we will continue to see fewer cows in the U.S beef cow herd. Walmart is simply just another step in the road to fully integrated, industrialized food production.”

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AXTELL, KANSAS — When visiting his wife’s hometown of 400 in northern Kansas, Bob Lozier would joke with the owners of the grocery store that when they were ready to retire, he’d take over. 

He didn’t really expect to actually take over the store — but he did. 

In 2022, the owner of the only grocery store in Axtell decided to sell. The space had served as the town’s store since 1905. Suddenly, the residents of Axtell were facing a future without one. 

About 40 investors, including Lozier’s wife, came together to raise nearly $500,000 to demolish and rebuild the store. They found more funding through the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative, which provides financial assistance to rural grocers. And Axtell residents donated their labor and skills to finish the project in under a year.

For Lozier, the timing worked out. His father-in-law was getting older. And leaving Tacoma, Washington, for a close-knit rural community in Kansas seemed like a great idea. 

His relationship with the community has made the store a success. From the record-setting Axtell High School football team, to breakfasts for the American Legion and firefighters, Lozier makes feeding the community a priority. 

“It’s more than just a little town,” Lozier said. “Everybody is family here.” 

That’s just the type of community investment program the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative looks to foster across Kansas. The program is part of Kansas State University’s Rural Grocery Initiative, which aims to increase access to healthy food statewide. 

Axtell Community Grocery serves as a crucial — and increasingly rare — link in the rural food chain, and community buy-in is key to its sustainability. 

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“That’s one piece of what we do, just to ensure that the projects we are supporting are embedded in the community and not a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Rial Carver, the rural grocery initiative’s program director. 

“We’ve seen that every community varies,” Carver said. “And for a rural grocery store to be successful, it has to harness those local characteristics and local strengths.” 

Kansas lost 105 rural grocery stores from 2008 to 2018, when the healthy food initiative launched. Since then, the program has awarded $5.3 million in land and grants for 75 projects in 45 counties aimed at keeping local stores open and addressing food insecurity in Kansas. 

In 2023, Kansas had a food insecurity rate of 11.4%, lower than the national rate of about 14%, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Feeding America data. In Axtell’s Marshall County, an estimated 12.5% of county residents reported food insecurity in their household, the Associated Press analysis found. 

Recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will stop collecting and releasing statistics on food insecurity after October 2025, saying the numbers had become “overly politicized.” The decision comes in the wake of federal funding cuts for food and nutrition safety net programs nationwide.

If not for Axtell Community Grocery, the town’s residents would have a nearly 30-minute drive to get to the next closest store, which would be a major challenge for keeping and attracting young people. 

“They want the young families to keep coming. They want to get bigger,” Lozier said. “This town was booming years and years ago: three grocery stores, an ice cream parlor and a movie theatre. It was big.”

Grocery stores as community anchors 

U.S. Department of Agriculture research found that the median number of grocery stores per capita decreased by 40% for rural and small urban counties from 1990 to 2015, the most recent data available, while dollar stores and supercenters became more popular. 

It’s a story that Blue Rapids, Kansas, knows all too well.

After a Dollar General opened down the street from the supermarket in the town of less than 1,000, the store’s owner had a warning for the community. 

“Three years after Dollar General opened, the supermarket closed, which he predicted,” said Jan Bergkamp, who owns Riverside Market, a Kansas Healthy Food Initiative project in Blue Rapids. 

“He warned everyone that would happen,” Bergkamp said. “And little by little, it did. Of course, we were without anything.” 

At the time, Bergkamp was running a floral business with her daughter. She was approached about opening a grocery store, but had never been in the business before.  

The program helped her hire a grocery consultant to run a survey of the community and help her to design the store. She also has a small deli where she serves coffee, sandwiches and baked goods, and a freezer full of premade meals. 

“We try to keep our profit margin as low as possible, just to compete.” 

Jan Bergkamp, co-owner of Riverside Market

Competition from large retailers isn’t the only thing that makes being a small grocer difficult in 2025. Other factors like affordability and proximity to customers play a large role in their success — and their impact on food insecurity in the communities they serve. 

“Grocery stores have razor-thin profit margins,” said Carmen Byker Shanks, the principal research scientist at the Center for Nutrition and Health Impact. “There’s not a lot of room to sell food and make money and stay in business.” 

Bergkamp’s revenue is balanced among florals, grocery and the deli counter. The store sources a few aisles of shelf-stable goods and some local products like dairy, meat and produce. 

Some local products are more expensive, Bergkamp said. But her customers are willing to pay more if they know where the food is coming from. 

“The items aren’t cheap, but people like them, and like where they are made,” she said. 

The same is true in McCune in the southeast corner of Kansas.

Kaynee Everman stopped by McCune Farm to Market around lunchtime with her baby. She lives in town and said Walmart — about 30 minutes away — is her only other grocery option. 

McCune Farm to Market includes a small grocery section on one side of the building and a restaurant on the other. Head back behind the kitchen and you’ll find a bakery.

Other grocery stores just started delivering to McCune, and Everman does use that option. But she prefers shopping locally. She’s a working mother who doesn’t have time to spend an hour driving to and from the grocery store.

“For us to be able to drive down the road is a really big deal for locals,” Everman said. “It’s fresh and it’s better quality.”

Cherie Schenker, the store’s owner, was able to at least triple produce sales because of the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative grant. 

Schenker buys produce locally. There’s one pecan farmer who doesn’t have space to store all the pecans he grows, but now they sit at McCune Farm to Market. She said the massive increase in cold storage is only possible because of the KHFI grant. 

“I have a friendly banker, but he’s not quite that friendly,” Schenker said.  

What other resources are needed to tackle food insecurity in rural Kansas? 

A grocery store is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to addressing America’s struggle to put food on the table. 

“Rural food insecurity is really driven by a lot of things,” said Byker Shanks, the nutrition researcher. “It’s a web of overlapping factors like low wages, limited job opportunities, long travel distances, aging and lack of access to social services.” 

And even when small towns have a grocery store, that doesn’t always mean that families have the ability to buy fresh food.

The Kansas Healthy Food Initiative surveyed its grocers in 2021. At the time, only 4% of grocers reported that produce sales made up 15% or more of their sales. For 46% of the grocers, produce sales were anywhere between 6% to 10%, on par with industrywide averages in the Southeast and Midwest. 

“I’ve visited a lot of rural grocery stores, and can say that sometimes when fresh produce is available, it’s either not affordable or it’s not something that someone would want to purchase because it’s been sitting on the shelf for so long,” Byker Shanks said. 

Families and grocers push up against affordability frequently. Assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to help low-income Americans afford nutritious foods, but there’s not always a lot of uptake in rural communities because of social stigma. 

“People say all of the time that it’s hard to be on SNAP in rural communities, because everyone knows our business,” Byker Shanks said. 

Another common problem is many families make too much to qualify for assistance, but not enough to live comfortably. 

“You watch a family and a parent work really hard to do well at their job and succeed and move up,” said April Todd, the executive director of the Pony Express Partnership for Children. “And when they do, it’s actually harmful to their family.” 

Brian Walker, the president and CEO of the Kansas Food Bank, said the number of families it serves has not returned to pre-pandemic levels and they try to make their dollars stretch farther. 

“What we are noticing are a lot more seniors,” Walker said. “Their fixed incomes aren’t enough to keep up with the cost of goods.” 

Some community-driven solutions are underway to help families deal with food inflation. Prices for food and beverages are 25.7% higher than in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In Marshall County, a partnership between the Farm Bureau and the Pony Express Partnership for Kids resulted in four donated cows annually and anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000 pounds of ground beef that can be given away for free in the community. 

Ultimately, community relationships are keeping rural grocers afloat. The question is how to scale them. 

“It’s not just a business, it’s a way of life,” Lozier said. “I hear people say, ‘I could get this cheaper elsewhere,’ and I said, ‘You probably can, but remember, we’re five minutes away.’” 

Associated Press data reporter Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report. This reporting is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and The Associated Press. Nine nonprofit newsrooms were involved: The Beacon, Capital B, Enlace Latino NC, Investigate Midwest, The Jefferson County Beacon, KOSU, Louisville Public Media, The Maine Monitor and MinnPost. The Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.

The post Can grocery stores keep rural Kansas communities vibrant? appeared first on The Beacon.

Missouri’s 67 rural hospitals are pondering a dramatically different future under President Donald Trump’s new budget plan.

The recently approved budget bill will slash federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. By some estimates, it could lead to 8.6 million people nationwide losing health coverage. 

Various estimates conclude that between 130,000 and 170,000 Missourians could lose coverage under the state’s Medicaid program, known as MO HealthNet, over the next decade. 

And even if you have commercial insurance, the impact on hospital operations and finances could still affect your health care. As people delay treatment for their health conditions due to a lack of insurance, they’ll start relying more on the emergency room as their primary form of health care, experts say. 

That will lead to more crowded emergency departments. Moreover, the burden to pay for uninsured patients will shift onto the hospitals that provide the care, and eventually back to patients. 

With the budget plan in motion and spending cuts materializing, Missouri’s hospitals are now taking a look at their finances and preparing for an uptick in costs. 

For rural Missourians, even those who aren’t on Medicaid, it means the types of health care available to them in the form of obstetric units, primary care providers or specialty providers could be changing. 

Or their nearby hospital could be gone altogether.

“We are likely going to see rural hospital closures,” said Sheldon Weisgrau, the vice president of health policy at the Missouri Foundation for Health, in a press briefing. 

“We have not had any rural hospitals close since we expanded the Medicaid program,” he said. “We are likely to see rural hospitals close because they operate on the financial edge.” 

What do worsening hospital finances under Medicaid cuts mean for you? 

Mercy, which is based in the St. Louis area, operates 112 hospitals and emergency rooms across Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas and has a large footprint in rural Missouri. Mercy estimates that the budget will lead to bigger revenue losses every year. 

Five years from now, they estimate, they’ll lose $300 million in revenue annually. 

“That’s going to mean we’re going to have to radically look at how we deliver care differently — that is still responsive to our communities,” said Cheryl Matejka, the executive vice president and chief financial officer at Mercy. “It’s going to be different for us to survive and thrive.” 

Under the plan, Missouri stands to lose an estimated $23 billion in federal funding over the next decade, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health.* Much of Missouri’s federal money covers the cost of Medicaid for the Affordable Care Act expansion group, which voters approved coverage for with an amendment to the state constitution in 2020. 

The new federal budget restricts how states and hospitals can pay for the services they provide by limiting the fees that states can collect from health care providers. It also puts limits on what states can pay hospitals to help them fill gaps in their finances for treating Medicaid patients. 

Broken down by year, Missouri’s federal funding for Medicaid will drop about 20% annually as the plan moves forward, Weisgrau said. 

“All of this is going to have a disproportionate impact in rural communities,” Weisgrau said.  

The Missouri Foundation for Health analyzed the budget plan, he added, and found that rural health care providers could lose 21 cents of every dollar they currently get from Medicaid. 

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According to KFF, hospitals overall had an operating margin of 5.2% in 2023. For rural hospitals, that margin was 3.1%.  

The bulk of the concern stems from an expected rise in uncompensated care — hospitals treating patients even if they cannot pay. 

“When folks lose their insurance coverage, it doesn’t mean they don’t continue to get sick,” Weisgrau said. “A lot of them stay out of the health care system because they know they can’t afford it.” 

Once their health deteriorates to a certain point, they go to the emergency room, where they are required to be treated, even if they cannot pay for that care. 

Mercy, for example, sets aside part of its budget to account for that cost. 

“We give away about half a billion dollars of uncompensated or unreimbursed care,” said John Mohart, the executive vice president and chief operation officer for Mercy. “Some of that is for Medicaid patients already, because it doesn’t cover the costs that we have.” 

But for smaller hospitals, the flexibility to provide that uncompensated care isn’t there. Fewer insured people will only increase costs. 

“If you see an uninsured patient, then you probably have to assume that there is a pretty good chance you’re just going to have to eat those costs,” said Timothy McBride, a public health expert and economist at the Washington University School of Public Health.  

As a result, even those covered by commercial insurance could see their premiums rise to help cover the care. 

“These costs are passed on to the rest of us,” Weisgrau said. “We will see private insurance premiums going up. Even folks who have good coverage from their employers and think they might be immune from some of these Medicaid cuts  will see impacts of this down the line.” 

How far will the rural hospital fund go in saving at-risk hospitals? 

To help offset some of the costs rural hospitals are taking on, senators in Washington lobbied for the inclusion of a rural hospital stabilization fund. The budget included $50 billion for rural hospitals over the next five years with the possibility of renewing the fund in the future. 

Half of it will be distributed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, while the other half will flow to states to then send to hospitals. 

But the fund won’t be enough to offset the losses rural hospitals are anticipating.

Medicaid spending in rural parts of the country is expected to fall by $137 billion over the next decade — $87 billion more than was allocated to the rural hospital fund, according to KFF. 

And even those estimates, KFF said, are modest because they don’t account for how states may change the way they fund Medicaid. 

During negotiations surrounding the budget bill, senators asked the University of North Carolina Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research to analyze how many rural hospitals may be at risk under the plan. 

Their report found that nearly 340 rural hospitals were at risk nationwide, based on the rate of Medicaid patients they serve and their consecutive years of financial losses. 

In Missouri, four hospitals were considered at-risk, while in Kansas, six hospitals were listed. 

One of those hospitals is Bothwell Regional Health Center in Sedalia, the city’s largest employer with more than 1,000 employees. 

In 2024, the hospital posted its first profit since 2018, Bothwell CEO Lori Wightman said in a press release in July. Notably, Medicare and Medicaid provided 78% of the payments for its patients. 

“These programs pay well below the actual cost of providing care,” Wightman said in the release. “Commercial insurance alone cannot close the gap, and that is where subsidies available to rural hospitals are essential. Unfortunately, the cost of providing care, from personnel to technology, continues to rise making a difficult situation harder to stabilize.”

Other Missouri hospitals included on the list were Scotland County Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Parkland Health Center in Bonne Terre and Lafayette Regional Health Center in Lexington — Sen. Josh Hawley’s hometown. 

Studies show that after a rural hospital closure, low-income and elderly patients were more likely to defer or skip their health care altogether because of transportation challenges. 

Rural hospital closures also lead to a loss of physicians. One study found that the closure of a rural hospital led to an 8.3% drop in primary care physicians and a 4.8% drop in obstetricians and gynecologists. 

“Health care providers are big employers,” Weisgrau said. “They are big users of local supplies and commodities. All of that will have to be reduced. People will lose jobs. Economies will decline as a result of these cuts.” 

* Meg Cunningham’s coverage of rural health is funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health. 

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This story was updated with additional numbers from the state.

Federal proposals to cut food stamps would jeopardize food assistance for 27,000 Kansans, Gov. Laura Kelly’s office estimated.

That number was accurate as of Wednesday afternoon, before congressional Republicans proposed additional changes to the cuts.

Congressional Republicans are trying to pass President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The sweeping proposal would cut things from electric vehicle tax credits to stabilization funds for rural hospitals, and it has the largest cut to the food assistance program ever. 

Takeaways

1. Proposed federal SNAP cuts would shift significant costs to Kansas without the funds to cover it, risking benefit losses for residents.
2. The proposed cuts could impact vulnerable populations. Nearly half of SNAP recipients in Kansas are children.
3. Food insecurity would worsen under the bill, Democrats warn, as local food banks can’t fill the gap left by reduced federal aid.

The bill wants states to pay part of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Kansas is currently expected to pay around 15% of the cost of SNAP. The bill is changing as lawmakers try to pass it by July 4 to meet Trump’s demands, making it hard to pin down the exact cost states could pay until a proposal passes.

That would cost Kansas $63 million a year in benefits and comes with an additional $15.5 million in annual administrative costs, the state estimates. 

The cuts to food assistance are pitched as ways to save taxpayers money, but Kelly said that the cost shift is too much. The state won’t be able to add money back into the program, and people will lose benefits. 

“The idea that states will respond to massive cuts of federally appropriated dollars by backfilling with state resources is total bunk,” Kelly said. “We don’t have the money.”

State lawmakers spent the last legislative session finding cuts to the Kansas budget. Months of work ended with a projected $700 million budget shortfall by 2029. SNAP costs also rose after the COVID pandemic. 

In 2019, Kansas received $265.3 million in SNAP benefit costs. That jumped to $488.5 million in 2021. 

The current federal proposal also requires states to pay a larger portion of SNAP benefits if they have an error rate of 6% or more. Kansas had a 12% error rate as of 2023. Error rates are improperly made payments, which include paying too much in benefits or not enough. 

Kelly asked federal lawmakers to reject the bill, and she was joined by U.S. senators and governors from other states. 

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, said she knows a grandmother who will lose $200 a month in food assistance. The grandmother is raising her grandson, and cuts to SNAP would force her to “make a decision about whether she’s gonna pay for her grandson’s school supplies, be able to pay rent or buy groceries.” 

She knows another 61-year-old-man who was recently laid off and has diabetes. He’s trying to find a job, but that’ll become more complicated if he can’t find healthy food to manage his illness.

In Kansas, 46% of people on SNAP were children, according to state data. 

Local food banks won’t be able to meet the demand. For every meal a food bank provides, SNAP benefits provide nine. That’s in addition to cuts to food banks earlier this year. 

People are also healthier with SNAP. They miss fewer days of work because of illness, pregnant mothers give birth to fewer low-weight babies, elderly people on SNAP are 30% less likely to take prescription medication, and children who got food assistance were 16% less likely to be obese as an adult, a National Institutes of Health study said. 

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said the currently proposed cuts would take away food assistance from 4 million Americans and reduce benefits for tens of millions of additional Americans. 

“The bill would affect every single one of the 42 million Americans who come on SNAP to put food on the table,” she said. 

Congressional Republicans originally pitched larger cuts in the bill. About $41 billion in cuts were struck down in a Senate rule-making process, but congressional Republicans are rallying to put more cuts back in. 

U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told Fox News that the cuts to SNAP are about restoring integrity to the program. That includes work requirements, for example, which would ensure only the neediest people are getting the assistance — though Kelly blasted the work requirements. 

“We’ve achieved something we haven’t been able to do in a very long time,” Thompson said in May, “and that is restoring the intent of Congress, not by cutting or taking people off the roll for the nutrition programs, but restoring program integrity.” 

The post Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill would kick Kansans off food assistance appeared first on The Beacon.

PILSEN, Kan. (RNS and NPR) — Nestled between rolling prairies and wind turbines about 60 miles north of Wichita, the rural farming community of Pilsen has no post office, gas station or stoplight. What it does have is the Chaplain Kapaun Museum and St. John Nepomucene Church, which draws a couple hundred visitors here each month — a number that is likely to grow significantly in the coming years.

The visitors come because of the Rev. Emil Kapaun, a Catholic priest and Korean War hero who’s under consideration by the Vatican for sainthood. Earlier this year, Pope Francis named Kapaun “venerable,” bringing him one step closer to canonization. The road ahead is long, but it could bring big changes to his hometown.

On a recent Friday afternoon at Kapaun’s museum — housed in the rectory where he lived as a young priest in the early 1940s — volunteer tour guide Melissa Stuchlik flipped through the museum’s guest book, filled with names from Kansas, Texas, California and beyond. In the church next door, more than a dozen young men gathered for Mass after making a 75-mile pilgrimage on foot in Kapaun’s honor.

Stuchlik says the journey to Pilsen is a spiritual experience for many visitors.

“There’s something special about driving away from the commotion of the city,” she said. “It’s focusing.”

As an Army chaplain in World War II and the Korean War, Kapaun didn’t carry a gun. But President Barack Obama, while awarding him a posthumous Medal of Honor in 2013 for his bravery on the battlefield, said the priest wielded the mightiest weapon of all.

“A love for his brothers so pure,” Obama said, “that he was willing to die so that they might live.”

Kapaun dragged injured soldiers to safety during the Battle of Unsan. As enemy forces closed in, he allowed himself to be captured so he could continue to care for his men. In the Korean prison camp where they were held, that meant stealing food and medicine to keep them alive and tending to the sick — just as much as it did offering spiritual guidance to men from a wide range of faiths. Kapaun reportedly prayed not only for his fellow prisoners of war, but also for the guards who held them captive.

After falling ill and being denied medical attention, Kapaun died in the camp in 1951 at the age of 35.

As Stuchlik walked a tour group through the Pilsen church, she pointed out the crucifix Kapaun carried as an altar server and the baptismal font in which he was baptized. Both would become second-class relics if — or as Stuchlik says, when — Kapaun is named a saint. Relics are objects venerated by the church due to their connection with a saint, including physical remains and personal artifacts. They serve as tangible points of connection with the holy.

“We’ve had kids (from) as far as South Korea come to be baptized in our baptismal font,” Stuchlik said.

Visitor numbers have picked up in Pilsen since Kapaun was declared venerable. Stuchlik says adding more tours requires keeping the church open every day, meaning higher air conditioning bills in the hot Kansas summer. But it’s nothing compared to what could happen later — the relics of saints can draw tens of thousands of pilgrims to holy places each year. That could mean big changes for Pilsen.

“I think it would be a lot of bed and breakfasts popping up all over the place,” Stuchlik said. “We joke about the McDonald’s and the Hyatt.”

She says there’s a lot for the town to gain — and maybe lose.

“Because right now, if you sat outside on our front porch, you would hear the quiet and the peacefulness. And we’d want to keep some of that.

“But,” she added, “there will always be a place in Pilsen for Father.”

The Vatican declared Kapaun a Servant of God in 1993, beginning a formal investigation into his cause for sainthood. But his cause began to look rosier in 2021 when his remains — thought to be lost in a mass grave in Korea — were identified in an unmarked grave in Hawaii. His body now lies in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita.

The next step on the path to sainthood is beatification, which could jump-start an effort to build a shrine to Kapaun.

“Beatification is really the step where things start to change,” said Scott Carter, coordinator for Kapaun’s cause for sainthood. “I think there’s a great desire to have a shrine to Kapaun.”

Shrines, which are often churches, house relics and artifacts of those venerated by the church. They serve as pilgrimage sites — sacred destinations for Catholics seeking to deepen their connection with their faith through a physical journey.

It’s not clear yet whether Kapaun’s would be in Pilsen, about 3 miles northeast of the farm where he grew up, or elsewhere in the diocese, such as Wichita.

Two hours south, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City wrestled with a similar question after the Vatican beatified Oklahoma martyr and priest Stanley Rother in 2017.

The shrine’s executive director, Miguel Mireles, said leaders determined Rother’s small Oklahoma hometown of Okarche wouldn’t have been able to support the number of visitors the shrine would draw.

“Part of the deal with building a shrine is that you have pilgrims coming on pilgrimage from all over, and you have to have amenities for them,” he said. “They need a place to stay, they need a place to eat.”

Rother’s shrine was built in Oklahoma City and opened to the public in 2023. Last year, around a quarter million people visited.

“Now, there’s more folks that are looking at investing in (hospitality) businesses around us because there’s more demand.”

Mireles says the shrine brought a new, large-capacity church to Oklahoma City’s substantially Hispanic south side, which was struggling with overcrowding in its existing churches. And it served as a new anchor to the city’s growing Catholic community.

“It’s an exciting time to see the church alive, here in our home,” he said.

But sainthood — and a busier Pilsen — could be decades away. The Vatican will next investigate potential miracles attributed to Kapaun’s intercession from heaven. Catholics believe saints can bring prayers to God on their behalf. One confirmed miracle is needed for beatification and a second is needed for canonization as a saint.

“Most of the time, these are medical miracles,” said Scott Carter, the coordinator for Kapaun’s cause for sainthood at the Catholic Diocese of Wichita. “Because we’re able to look for evidence of an actual problem, to show that there’s a change that happens and that change can’t be explained through medical intervention.”

Saints and stories of their miracles perform two key functions in the church, according to Carter. They serve as examples for Catholics on how to live the gospel in today’s age. And they offer solace during times of hardship.

“It reminds us,” he said, “that God has not left us alone.”

One potential miracle attributed to Kapaun involves Chase Kear, a former college athlete who nearly died in a pole-vaulting accident in 2008. Sitting in his parent’s living room in Colwich, Kansas, the memory of the fateful track practice still brings him to tears.

He was 14 feet in the air when, he says, he realized he’d lost control. He flew past the landing mat and landed head-first on the hard track, fracturing his skull from ear to ear.

“All I remember was a white flash,” he said.

After being airlifted to the hospital, Chase was put into a medically induced coma. But it didn’t stop his brain from swelling. Doctors told his mom, Paula, that they’d have to remove part of his skull.

“They told us that he has a better chance of dying on the table than living through the surgery,” she said.

Chase did live through the surgery. And, despite doctors removing around 10% of his brain, he started walking, then talking. He graduated college and got a job; got married and had kids. Paula says he’s defied every doctor’s expectations.

“They cannot explain it,” she said. “And they, every one of them, have said that he is a miracle.”

Through it all, his family and church community prayed. One constant they repeated was the Father Kapaun Prayer, asking him to intercede for Chase’s healing.

Stuchlik thinks Kapaun’s work has continued in the years since his death. Many who live in Pilsen and many who visit have stories of their own.

“They know that Father has touched their lives,” she said. “And we know he touches ours.”

Regardless of what happens next with Kapaun’s cause for sainthood, Stuchlik is excited for his story to continue to spread — and for what it could mean for her community. Including, she says, for its potholes.

“Hopefully, as we get more traffic into Pilsen, we’ll be more of a priority,” she said. “It’d be great if we could get the roads a little less bumpy.”

A broadcast version of this story originally aired on NPR and appears here through a partnership between NPR and RNS.

Kristin Ridgway knows the feeling all too well. The former middle and high school English teacher has been in classrooms as a 16-year-old student stumbles through words when reading out loud. 

“As a teacher, your heart just breaks,” she said, “because as a secondary-level English teacher, you have no idea how to help that kid.”

Middle and high school teachers assume children can already read. When they can’t, Ridgway said, they might offer the student more books or easier books to read. Maybe they just don’t call on the student again. 

More practice seems like the right approach, but it isn’t the best approach. Teachers should instead encourage students to break down the word and sound it out — at least, that’s what the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling program, or LETRS, tells them to do. 

LETRS is an online course that uses science-backed methods to teach the teachers. 

One example from Edina Public Schools in Minnesota shows a teacher breaking down the word “ship.” She encourages students to sound out the “sh” then the “i” and then the “p.” That teacher also points out how “fell” and “well” have similar constructions, but changing the first letter creates a new word. 

“Enforcing the notion that sounding out words is not for babies,” said Ridgway, now a secondary curriculum coordinator with the Shawnee Mission School District. “I encounter words all the time in my world that I don’t know, and I sound it out even as an adult.”

The COVID-19 pandemic rocked Kansas schools and throttled educational advancement. So the federal government gave states millions of dollars to combat learning loss. Kansas used that money on a variety of programs, including LETRS. But the Trump administration is now clawing that funding back. 

For Kansas, that means $22.6 million in cuts to funding that was meant to bridge the learning gap. 

Federal Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told the state in a letter that Kansas ran the risk of losing this money when it didn’t spend the funds before the Sept. 30, 2024, deadline. The agency wants to use the funds until March 28, 2026. McMahon said the federal government previously approved an extended deadline, but that approval doesn’t matter. 

“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent with the department’s priorities and thus not a 

worthwhile exercise of its discretion,” McMahon said. 

The largest cuts include: 

• $7.6 million for LETRS and the Kansas math program. 
• $6.6 million for a data-tracking program that monitors students’ progress so teachers can help those who are falling behind. State assessments don’t start until third grade, so it can be difficult for schools to track progress until then. 
• $3.6 million for teachers to find “high-quality instructional materials” so students who fell behind have the best resources to catch back up. 

The pandemic is still affecting students even though disaster declarations ended years ago, advocates said. 

The Education Recovery Scorecard, a partnership between Harvard and Stanford universities, said 98% of Kansas students are in districts with average reading skills below 2019 levels. The scorecard also ranks Kansas 36th in reading recovery. 

More students fell behind during the pandemic. Remote learning meant less instructional time and fewer students staying focused in class, the Annie E. Casey Foundation found. It also said that 30% of students in 2021-2022 were chronically absent. That’s almost double pre-pandemic numbers. 

David Hurford, executive director of Center for Reading at Pittsburg State University, said 40% of fourth graders are below the basic reading level. 

“Forty percent of children below the basic level is terrible with a capital T,” Hurford said. “No doubt whatsoever.”

That’s why cutting LETRS funding is a bad idea, education advocates say.  

Hurford said schools haven’t been using the science of reading to teach students. Teachers taught students “based on ideas that we just created.” 

Some teaching methods assume students who are less intelligent would read poorly and need assistance, but that’s not always true. Other methods have students read a word then look at a picture of that word, like flashing a photo of a fox when reading it. That’s not as effective. 

The science of reading has advanced, Hurford said. And LETRS brought standardized, science-backed education into the classroom.

The state can request the funding be returned from the federal government, and it already has. As of early April, 15,000 Kansas educators have taken or are enrolled in the program. Teachers currently enrolled in LETRS can finish their lessons, but the state won’t fund new spots until it is told whether federal funds will be reinstated. 

The money was supposed to identify children who were falling behind and connect them to the best resources available to catch up. That effort is now $22 million short. 

“Our part of it is to spread literacy as much as possible, at any age, as early as possible and (to as) many as possible,” Hurford said. “If you cannot read in our society today, you are at a marked disadvantage to realize the American dream.”

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In a video on her store’s Facebook page in late March, Oak Grove shop owner Jill Easley announced she would be closing her storefront earlier than planned — later that day.

Easley decided to shut down her store in downtown Oak Grove after more than eight years on South Broadway. She relocated her business to a different vintage store in Blue Springs.

“Such a blessing to be in downtown Oak Grove for the last eight and a half years,” Easley told her Facebook followers. “I have truly enjoyed getting to know each and every one of you, hearing a little bit about your life and your story, and I will miss that the most out of everything that has happened in the last eight years. I will miss all of you.”

“Closing” was written in large letters above the shop’s door in late February, after Easley made the call to move the store. She said a lack of foot traffic made it difficult to reach profit margins in her store, which stocked home goods, jewelry and more.

While the store is in the center of the town of nearly 10,000 and sits on the town’s main thoroughfare, it also happens to be along a state highway. Route F, known as South Broadway through town, connects U.S. 50 to Interstate 70 and is a popular route for tractor-trailers as they traverse the area.

The Missouri Department of Transportation has authority over the highway and made the call to expand it to mostly five lanes in 2011. Through the downtown district, the highway shrinks to three lanes as drivers pass by a handful of retail spaces, insurance offices, hair salons and other service businesses.

“There’s just not a lot of foot traffic,” Easley told The Beacon. “That is one issue with having this be such a thoroughfare.”

“It makes me sad,” she said. “I know there’s just not a lot of shopping down here and out this way. But then it makes it too easy to shop on Amazon.”

Easley was a member of Oak Grove’s Chamber of Commerce and part of a group of small-business owners who wanted to start up a downtown revitalization project.

The group worked on staging events to encourage people to shop downtown. Ultimately, without lots of community buy-in, they struggled to get the effort off the ground.

“We were like, ‘You know what, we own these businesses down here. This should not be our responsibility,’” she said.

Oak Grove’s dilemma

The shop owners weren’t alone in their aspirations for downtown.

Oak Grove Mayor Dana Webb has been looking for ways to make it more welcoming to pedestrians since she was elected in 2020.

“I think we got the expansion several years too early,” Webb said of the project, which she wishes had more beautification measures built-in during the time of construction. “I don’t think our town was big enough at that time for it.”

Oak Grove advocates had previously explored joining Missouri Main Street Connection, a nonprofit that provides resources to towns across Missouri that want to launch revitalization efforts. But they ran into the same problem back then: a lack of community buy-in.

A few years later, the group of business owners approached Webb to see if their efforts overlapped with the city’s priorities. But between complicated building leases and the highway, the group ran into roadblock after roadblock.

“Businesses need eyes,” said Kennedy Smith, the former director of National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Main Street Center and a current researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “They need traffic and visibility, so if cars are going through downtown at 40 miles per hour, people aren’t going to see anything.”

The speed limit drops as cars travel through the heart of Oak Grove. Slower traffic can reduce some crash risk and improve pedestrian safety.

“There’s just so many what-ifs,” Webb said. “I hope someday that they have engineers, a team or a board, somebody that starts to look a little bit ahead for pedestrians.… If you go to other states or other countries, you see people walking. We don’t see people walking here. If you do, it’s odd.”

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a pedestrian hit by a vehicle traveling 32 miles per hour has a 25% risk of death. That risk increases to 50% when the vehicle is going 42 miles per hour. The World Health Organization recommends that the maximum road travel speed should be about 20 miles per hour in areas where bicyclists and pedestrians share the space.

“The key thing is that the interests of transportation engineers and people who are interested in healthy, vibrant downtowns are not necessarily the same thing,” Smith said.

Beautification projects, like adding trees, flowers or benches, were the first projects Webb brought to MODOT for its approval. She also wanted ways to make sidewalks feel more enclosed and less noisy for pedestrians, in an effort to limit perceived exposure to traffic and large trucks.

The city first asked if it could plant trees along the sidewalks throughout downtown. That plan was rejected due to driver safety considerations — if Oak Grove wanted trees, they had to be under 4 inches in diameter in case a car crashed into them.

Then, the city asked if it could put trees in large pots. That was also rejected for safety. They returned with other requests: shrubs, flowers or benches. They were all turned down.

“MODOT sometimes views a road going through a town as getting people from A to Z,” said Matthew Randall, the city administrator in Oak Grove. “When you live in the town, the road is your town. It’s integral to your city.”

They’ve had luck with some projects, while others haven’t gotten off the ground as quickly as they would like, Randall said.

“Just being downtown, the heavy commercial traffic and tractor-trailers definitely have a negative impact on the experience,” Randall said.

How MODOT works with Missouri cities on projects

MODOT’s area engineers are integral links between communities and the state. They help coordinate projects and maintain infrastructure across Missouri. Usually, they are the ones who make the requests to MODOT on behalf of cities for the projects they want to pursue.

“There’s a number of places where the state highway may function more as the main street of a community,” said Eric Schroeter, the deputy director and chief engineer at MODOT. “We have to balance all of that out – not only is it somebody’s main street, but it’s also a link in a transportation system that has to help people get places, and goods and products move around as well.”

MODOT is in charge of the seventh-largest highway system in the country, but ranks 48th nationally in funding per mile. MODOT only pays for projects that relate specifically to their domain. Everything else falls to the cities.

Officials in Oak Grove and other Missouri towns are thankful for MODOT’s collaboration and the easy access they have to their area representatives. Lebanon, Missouri, launched its downtown revitalization project officially in 2019. The town’s main street intersects with state Route 5.

“The highway intersection, it can be a little dicey,” said Sarah Angst Stewart, the executive director of Downtown Lebanon. “It’s not dangerous, it’s just a little more challenging for a person who is not used to walking near semi trucks blowing by.”

Lebanon has been working with MODOT over the past decade to improve walkability throughout downtown. The public works department meets with the state on a monthly basis to talk about future projects and address concerns as they arise.

“There are challenges involved with having a highway where there are pedestrians,” Angst Stewart said. “MODOT has put an effort into making sure that it is more pedestrian friendly.”

Since putting a concerted effort into downtown revitalization plans, the mix of businesses in downtown Lebanon has started to shift.

“This is probably every rural downtown. It’s the cheapest rent because it’s a lot of stuff packed close together, in older buildings that haven’t had a lot of love and attention,” she said.

But the exact opposite has started to happen in Lebanon. What was once a downtown that was heavily saturated with insurance companies, accountants and attorneys is now home to new retail and dining.

“It’s really cool to see. I don’t know if it’s finally the right time,” Angst Stewart said. “What’s happening is this resurgence of small-town downtowns. Where do you find that real community? It’s downtown.”

In the four years that Lebanon has invested in having a director for the downtown district, the area has doubled its taxable sales from $5 million in 2019 to $10 million in 2023.

“By just focusing on it, that is a lot of tax revenue that can then go back to our local economy and fund things like our police, fire and capital improvements,” she said.

Up north in Chillicothe, the town has reaped the benefits of long-term planning and making a name for its history. The city is the home of sliced bread, which was invented there in 1928. U.S. 65 runs north-south through Missouri and is Chillicothe’s main street.

“Highway 65, or Washington Street, is the heart of that artery that fuels our town,” said Amy Supple, Chillicothe’s tourism director. “(People) get to travel right through the heart of our community, so they’re not bypassed. It’s not an exit sign that they see.”

In the early 2000s, business owners, the tourism organization and the main street organization put their heads together to find ways to diversify downtown. What resulted was a 30-year strategic plan, and the organization set short-term priorities to reach long-term goals.

A long-term plan is crucial for investment in infrastructure, said Chris Hess, the executive director of the Pioneer Trails Regional Planning Commission, which coordinates efforts across Johnson, Lafayette, Pettis and Saline counties in Missouri.

“Funding follows planning,” Hess said. “The knee-jerk reaction for funding does not end well very often. We’re thinking about what can drive the economics. Do we see a population boom coming up? Is there potential for expansion in this area?”

That’s part of what Oak Grove is trying to assess. The city’s population is growing. In 2010, the town had about 5,000 residents, according to the census. Today, the town is pushing toward a population of 10,000.

For now, Oak Grove has negotiated with MODOT that the city will take control of the parking spaces that line the downtown district. And they’ll keep trying to work with the state to make the area more inviting to potential visitors, despite its popularity for commercial truck drivers.

“We haven’t really talked to them in detail about that aspect of the pedestrian versus the car versus the connectivity,” Webb said. “Because we’re pretty much just stopped at the driver effect.”

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After weeks of uncertainty, two tribal colleges have been told they can hire back all employees who were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts across the federal workforce in February, part of a judge’s order restoring some federal employees whose positions were terminated.

Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, widely known as SIPI, in New Mexico lost about 70 employees in mid-February amid widespread staffing cuts to federal agencies. While most of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities are chartered by American Indian tribes, Haskell and SIPI are not associated with individual tribes and are run by the federal government.

About 55 employees were laid off and 15 accepted offers to resign, according to a lawsuit filed last month by tribes and students. The colleges were forced to cancel or reconfigure a wide range of services, from sports and food service to financial aid and classes. In some cases, instructors were hired by other universities as adjuncts and then sent back to the tribal colleges to keep teaching.

Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

It was not clear this week when and if the workers would return, whether the employees who resigned would also be offered their jobs back, or if the government would allow colleges to fill vacancies. Both colleges said some employees had turned down the offers.

The Bureau of Indian Education, which runs the colleges, declined to answer questions except to confirm the laid-off workers would be offered jobs with back pay to comply with a judge’s order that the government reverse course on thousands of layoffs of probationary employees. But the agency also noted the jobs would be available “as the White House pursues its appeals process,” indicating possible turmoil if an appeals court reinstates the layoffs.

Both colleges said the bureau also has refused to answer most of their questions.

SIPI leaders were told last week that the positions were being restored, said Adam Begaye, chairman of the SIPI Board of Regents. The 270-student college lost 21 employees, he said, four of whom decided to take early retirement. All but one of the remaining 17 agreed to return, Begaye said.

The chaos has been difficult for those employees, he said, and the college is providing counseling.

“We want to make sure they have an easy adjustment, no matter what they’ve endured,” Begaye said.

Related: How a tribe won a legal battle against the federal Bureau of Indian Education and still lost

The chairman of Haskell’s Board of Regents, Dalton Henry, said he was unsure how many of the 50 lost employees were returning. Like SIPI, Haskell was forced after the layoffs to shift job responsibilities and increase the workload for instructors and others.

Haskell was reviewed by accreditors in December, and Henry said he was worried how the turmoil would affect the process. Colleges and universities must be accredited to offer federal and state financial aid and participate in most other publicly funded programs.

Henry declined to discuss his thoughts on the chaos, saying there was nothing the college could do about it.

“Whatever guidance is provided, that’s what we have to adhere to,” he said. “It’s a concern. But at this point, it’s the federal government’s decision.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to make the presidents of the two colleges available for interviews.

Tribal colleges and universities were established to comply with treaties and the federal trust responsibility, legally binding agreements in which the United States promised to fund Indigenous education and other needs. But college leaders argue the country has violated those contracts by consistently failing to fund the schools adequately.

In the federal lawsuit claiming the Haskell and SIPI cuts were illegal, students and tribes argued the Bureau of Indian Education has long understaffed the colleges. The agency’s “well-documented and persistent inadequacies in operating its schools range from fiscal mismanagement to failure to provide adequate education to inhospitable buildings,” plaintiffs claimed.

Related: Tribal college campuses are falling apart. The U.S. hasn’t fulfilled its promise to fund the schools

Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, both Kansas Republicans, said before Trump took office that they plan to introduce a bill shifting Haskell from federal control to a congressional charter, which would protect the university from cuts across federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education.

“[F]or the last few years the university has been neglected and mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moran said in a written statement in December. “The bureau has failed to protect students, respond to my congressional inquiries or meet the basic infrastructure needs of the school.”

The February cuts brought rare public visibility to tribal colleges, most of which are in remote locations. Trump’s executive orders spurred outrage from Indigenous communities and a flurry of national news attention.

“We’re using this chaos as a blessing in disguise to make sure our family and friends in the community know what SIPI provides,” said Begaye, the SIPI board president.

The uncertainty surrounding the colleges’ funding has left a lasting mark, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. But she added she was proud of how the schools have weathered the cuts.

“Indian country is always one of the most resourceful and creative populations,” she said. “We’ve always made do with less. I think you saw resilience and creativity from Haskell and SIPI.”

Contact editor Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingereport.org.

This story about tribal colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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The Trump administration has canceled orders for truckloads of food — including cases of milk, eggs, cheese, chicken and fruit — that had been slated for Missouri and Kansas food pantries and hunger outreach groups beginning in April.

As part of an ongoing campaign to slash the federal budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture pulled the plug on $500 million worth of government commodities designated for food banks nationwide.

Caught in the fray were scheduled deliveries to Harvesters, the food bank that serves the Kansas City area and helps supply food to area food pantries, community kitchens and shelters. The organization got word on March 25 that orders coming to both Kansas and Missouri had been called off. 

For Kansas, Harvesters said canceled commodity orders included 4,176 cases of foods like canned vegetables and soup, along with 11,736 packages of items like containers of eggs, packages of cheese and cartons of milk. The organization had not learned details about what orders to its Missouri service area had been called off, but officials said the entire state is destined to lose 45 truckloads of shelf-stable and perishable commodity food.

Karen Siebert, public policy and advocacy adviser at Harvesters, said no explanation came with word of the canceled shipments, which had been slated to arrive between April and August. It’s possible some of the food was already en route, she said. 

Siebert hopes the orders can be reinstated if they are shifted to a different federal funding source — one that hasn’t been slashed by the Trump administration. But any shipments that are lost, she said, will be a blow to people who rely on food pantries.

The high-protein staples that come from the U.S. government aren’t easily replaced by donations or other sources.

“It’s some of the best food that we receive,” Siebert said. “I heard someone here call it ‘center of the plate food.’ … It’s a really healthy, important resource for families.”

The canceled shipments represent only a portion of the food Harvesters is expecting from the federal government. And Harvesters is less dependent on government shipments than food banks in other parts of the country. About $7.6 million of its $27.3 million in 2024 revenue came from government programs. Meanwhile, $18.6 million came from private support.

But at a time when the cost of food and other basic needs continues to increase, any loss of government support will be felt. News of the canceled deliveries comes as Congress seems poised to cut safety-net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which gives low-income Americans money to buy food.

Harvesters distributed 60 million pounds of food in 2024, down from the 77 million pounds it distributed in 2021 during the height of COVID-19, but still more than the 53 million pounds it distributed in 2019, the year before the pandemic. 

The food bank operates in 27 Missouri and Kansas counties, working with 489 food pantries, 69 school pantries, 54 community kitchens and dozens of other programs that connect those in need with food.

Epidemic of food insecurity

Food insecurity is a growing issue nationally.

Feeding America, an organization that focuses on hunger, estimates that in 2023 more than 47 million Americans, including one in five children, were experiencing food insecurity, meaning that they didn’t have the money or other resources necessary to get enough food. That was a 38% jump from 2021.

Organizations that work to mitigate hunger said the problem is only growing. Even before federal aid cuts, food banks and other hunger organizations were struggling to keep up, Siebert said.

“It’s not like it’s easy now,” she said. “We are just nervous about what’s coming down the pike.”

The cuts affecting Harvesters, involving commodities purchased through a program overseen by the secretary of agriculture, come on top of $1 billion in cuts the Trump administration made to federal funding that was designated to help schools and food banks buy fresh food and meat from local farmers. 

Thomas Smith, chief business officer with The Kansas City Food Hub, a cooperative association of small urban farmers, said many of his organization’s members increased production based on a belief that those federal programs would provide a reliable market. One farmer sold meat to school districts in Kansas, for example, while others sold produce to food banks. 

The programs, set up by the Biden administration to help bolster local food production markets during the COVID pandemic, supported farmers and brought a nutritious food source to hunger outreach programs. Eliminating the programs, Smith said, will be devastating.

“We’re going to lose some of the few small farmers we have,” he said.

A Kansas program modeled after the federal farm-to-food-bank program has also been eliminated, Siebert said. During recent budget negotiations, state legislators eliminated $900,000 that would have funded the program next year.

Other Kansas City-area hunger outreach groups are also seeing federal funding go away.

Double Up Food Bucks, a program administered by the Mid-America Regional Council, hasn’t lost federal funding yet, but two grants that were up for renewal have been put on hold. Donna Martin, the program’s director, said most of the program’s budget is at stake, but the government isn’t explaining anything, including whether funding will return.

The program, which reached about 180,000 people in 2023, gives people in Missouri and Kansas who receive SNAP benefits matching funds to spend on fresh produce at farmers markets or grocery stores. Like many food assistance programs, Double Up Food Bucks doesn’t just support people in need of food. It also puts money in the pockets of local farmers and grocers.

Cultivate KC, which promotes urban farming and runs a program to help immigrants become farmers, has already seen several of its 14 federal grants frozen, said Brien Darby, the organization’s executive director. 

Federal grants provide three-quarters of Cultivate KC’s funding, but right now the organization is sitting on $80,000 in bills that haven’t been reimbursed under those federal grants. Darby said the organization has enough funding to make it until June. After that there will have to be changes if federal dollars aren’t restored.

Darby is trying to remain hopeful. Cultivate KC has joined other farming organizations in a lawsuit filed last week against the Trump administration.

“It feels like we’re in a time right now where that’s the best way to keep the government accountable,” Darby said.

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