Nearly 690,000 fewer Texans were receiving SNAP benefits in August of this year than in July 2025, according to an analysis of state data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. More than half were children. In the Rio Grande Valley, local leaders gathered last month to ask whether that drop means fewer hungry families, or new eligibility rules and paperwork that have made help harder to get.
Many of those changes trace back to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the signature tax-and-spending law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025. Every Texas House Republican voted for it. Republican Eric Flores, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, wasn’t in Congress for the vote, but he has embraced the law on the campaign trail.
“The bill has put more money into the pockets of people in South Texas,” Flores told conservative outlet VOZ in May. “Voters are seeing that these are not promises—they’re results.”
His opponent Gonzalez voted against the bill, which was passed by Republicans mostly along party lines. He called the final version “One Big Betrayal” and said he could not in good conscience support a bill that would “make South Texans sicker and poorer while making the ultra-rich even richer.”
His office noted before the vote that about 26% of households in the district are enrolled in SNAP, the highest share of any Texas congressional district.
Here’s what the legislation has meant for the region Flores wants to represent.
SNAP cuts
The Big Beautiful Bill cut federal spending on SNAP by about $187 billion nationally, expanded work requirements, and will require states to cover part of the program’s cost beginning in fall 2027. Federal officials have said the changes were needed to root out fraud and waste. In the Valley, food banks have warned about the effects since the bill was debated. Libby Saenz, CEO of the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, called the cuts catastrophic for the community as the bill passed last year, noting SNAP gives families about $6 a day. Throughout the state, enrollment in SNAP is down 20% and demand at food banks has surged.
At a forum convened by Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez’s forum last month, US Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) criticized the federal cuts. A University of Texas Rio Grande Valley researcher at the same event noted SNAP dollars circulate through grocery stores, suppliers, and local jobs, so cuts land on the broader economy, too.
Healthcare cuts
The Big Beautiful Bill includes an estimated $911 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, including a loss of $23 billion to $39 billion for Texas, according to a projection by the health policy group KFF. That’s landing in the Valley, where more than a quarter of adults already lack health coverage, according to the Census Bureau.
The law, combined with the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, is projected to leave 1.4 million more Texans uninsured by 2034—including 40,000 in Texas’ 34th Congressional District as currently drawn—according to a Center for American Progress analysis of Congressional Budget Office and KFF estimates.
Those enhanced ACA tax credits expired in January after congressional Republicans declined to extend them. The Valley relied on them more than almost anywhere: 98% of the region’s marketplace enrollees used the credits, and residents in the four Valley counties are now paying about double their previous out-of-pocket premium costs, The Texas Tribune reported.
Cuts all around, but money for border enforcement
While cutting food and health programs, One Big Beautiful Bill directed $170 billion to immigration and border enforcement over four years, including $46.5 billion for border wall construction, despite overwhelming opposition—76%—from those surveyed in the region.
That money is changing the landscape of South Texas. In Hidalgo County, the wall is being built into flood-control levees along the Rio Grande. In December, the administration waived nearly all environmental laws along roughly 100 miles of border from Brownsville to Rio Grande City to speed construction.
The wall is also being built through tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, where endangered plants and animals live, and environmentalists warn it will threaten wildlife and cut off communities from the river.
Flores, a former Texas Army National Guard captain, served on the border and has made border security a central part of his campaign. Asked in a recent interview whether the border is secure, he pointed to his own experience.
“Having been on the border, stood watch on the border as a soldier and a prosecutor, it is a night and day difference,” Flores told Fox San Antonio. “Border Patrol agents are finally allowed to do their jobs.” He also praised the “massive amount of resources” given to Border Patrol under “the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Michelle Serrano, co-director of the Brownsville nonprofit Voces Unidas RGV, said the increased Border Patrol presence has changed how residents use places like Boca Chica Beach.
“It’s sad because this isn’t our beach anymore,” she told Capital & Main.
Stepped-up enforcement has also reached the Valley’s job sites.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained more than 13,000 people in Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy, and Starr counties between October 2022 and March 2026, according to an analysis of federal data by the Edinburg-based Caminos Institute, and deported more than 10,000. Enforcement intensified after Trump returned to office, and the report estimates the region’s economic losses at $180.6 million, with about 43% of that in 2025 alone.
Jesus, a 42-year-old undocumented construction worker, told Texas Tribune in December of last year he earns about 60% less since the raids began and supports a wife and four children. “We wish it would stop, but we don’t control these things,” he said. “The government does.”
Flores has not publicly addressed the ICE arrests at Valley construction sites, and his campaign did not respond to a question about them. Another Republican who represents the Valley in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, Monica De La Cruz, called ICE raids on construction sites there “a crisis” and floated the idea of special work visas granting legal status to migrant workers in the industry back in January.
Beyond the bill and its cuts
The law isn’t the only Trump policy Flores has backed as costs rise in the Valley. He has praised Trump’s “courage” for launching the war with Iran, which has driven up gas prices, and has said little publicly about the tariffs weighing on South Texas.
That leaves Flores with a narrow path: running as Trump’s endorsed candidate while the consequences of those policies affect the district he wants to represent. His campaign removed “Trump Endorsed” and “Republican” from his yard signs after the March primary, even as he continued to tout the endorsement online and at this month’s Republican midterm convention.
Flores’ campaign did not respond to Courier Texas’ request for comment by publication time.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
