One line inside a sweeping 2025 federal law quietly reset the age at which older adults stop facing one of the toughest rules in the food stamp program. Adults on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program used to stop facing SNAP’s work-hour time limit once they turned 55. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that…

A food stamp recipient in a waived county of Kentucky and a food stamp recipient just across the border in Tennessee can be identical in every relevant way — same income, same age, same lack of dependents in the home — and still land on opposite sides of the same federal clock. The Agriculture Department’s…

Every state Medicaid program in the United States now has paperwork in front of the federal government on the same drug-pricing arrangement. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on September 18 that all 50 states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have applied to a model built to buy brand-name…

Beginning January 1, 2027, most state Medicaid programs must confirm that certain adult enrollees are meeting a new work requirement before those enrollees can enroll in or keep their coverage. When a state’s own records can’t confirm that on file, federal rules don’t let it move straight to a denial or termination. Instead, the state…

USDA’s latest count of which states still shield food stamp recipients from the program’s work-hours clock has landed at zero, and the agency’s own quarterly archive shows that has never happened before in the reports it has posted. The newest update from the Food and Nutrition Administration lists every state, the District of Columbia, and…

A law signed fourteen months ago pushed the food-stamp work-requirement age ceiling five years further out, and states have already been enforcing it since last November. The public explainer page the U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps for the same rule, though, has not been rewritten to match. Applicants, caseworkers and advocacy groups who search for…

A provision buried inside the 2025 federal reconciliation law is about to change how often working-age Medicaid enrollees have to prove they still qualify for coverage. Beginning with renewal cycles that start in 2027, most adults enrolled through the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion pathway will face an eligibility check every six months instead of…

Grocery-aisle purchase rules that Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia spent much of 2025 negotiating with Washington are still frozen, nearly three months after a federal judge threw out the approvals behind them. None of the five states’ soda, candy or energy-drink restrictions has taken effect, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own program…

Ten years after Congress first ordered a tougher stocking test for small grocers, the rule is finally set to bite. Beginning Nov. 4, 2026, any Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program retailer other than a specialty food store — most corner stores, dollar stores, gas station marts and small groceries — must keep a minimum of 84…

Turning 60 used to mean falling out of a federal food-stamp work-hour countdown entirely. Now the countdown reaches to 64, thanks to a provision inside the 2025 tax-and-spending law, and states have been told in writing exactly where the new age band still gets a break. Anyone between 60 and 64 can still be asked…