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MIAMI – The President Donald Trump administration has frozen roughly $1 billion in food aid to local schools and food banks to help low-income families.

The Department of Agriculture announced it is slashing $1 billion in funding for low-income people who sought aid from schools, food banks and local farmers.

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which provides food to food banks and organizations that reach underserved communities, was also included in the cuts, according to the Associated Press.

School Nutrition Association, a non-profit organization, said the cuts will impact families struggling to make ends meet.

“With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,” the group’s president Shannon Gleave said in a statement. “These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”

An estimated $660 million in funds through the Local Food for Schools program for 2025 will no longer be available to support childcare institutions and schools, the group added.