When Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves met with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services director “made it clear” that HHS would “favorably” view states that apply for waivers to ban SNAP recipients from buying sugary, processed foods, the governor says.
“And it’s just the right thing to do. It makes sense,” the governor told the Mississippi Free Press at a Nov. 4 press conference at the Walter Sillers building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.
By applying for SNAP waivers, Reeves hopes to gain support and additional funding for Mississippi’s proposed rural health initiative, which half of Mississippi’s 82 counties have already applied to be part of. The State’s goal with the plan is to improve health-care access and outcomes for patients while bolstering the state’s rural medical workforce.
At the press conference, Reeves announced that Mississippi had submitted its application to be part of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Rural Health Transformation Program. As HHS secretary, Kennedy oversees the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Reeves said Kennedy shared his “Make America Healthy Again” plans with Reeves to encourage the governor to implement policies that align with the Trump administration’s agenda, which includes the rural health program outlined in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I also asked for two SNAP waivers last week. We’re going to get points for those,” Reeves said.
The waivers include one to prohibit SNAP recipients from using it to buy sugary, processed foods and the other is to allow recipients to use it to buy hot prepared chicken, like rotisserie chicken and “non-fried, non-breaded chicken.”
The Rural Health Transformation Program
Gov. Tate Reeves said the state’s rural health initiative is a collaboration between his office, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid and the Mississippi State Department of Health, based on 140 responses they received from over 40 of Mississippi’s counties that requested to participate in the program.
“What this should mean to you is that when something happens to you and you need access to care, that there is a professional near you that can provide that care,” he told reporters on Nov. 4. “That is the primary goal of what we’re trying to do.”
The rural health plan is broken into six initiatives, Reeves said. Initiative one is for a third party to conduct a rural health assessment of the state’s rural health-care needs of today and 10 years from now.
The second initiative is to coordinate a network of community, clinical and emergency services for each region of the state. Third is a workforce-expansion initiative to grow and retain health-care jobs in rural areas. Reeves’ fourth initiative is to modernize rural health-care systems’ online databases.
The fifth initiative is to increase telehealth-care access and improve connectivity. The last initiative is strengthening rural health infrastructure to address unmet needs and make rural health-care systems sustainable, Reeves said.
“Outcomes are everything, and as the outcomes in our rural communities begin to improve, then outcomes for the state will continue to improve,” Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said at the Nov. 4 press conference. “As we improve rural health care, we improve all health care in the state.”
The $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program plan will be split into two sections of $25 billion. The first $25 billion will be distributed equally among all approved states between 2026 and 2030. The other $25 billion will be deployed to states as grants that CMS allocates to states based on various qualifications like rural population, “proportion of rural health facilities in the State, the situation of certain hospitals in the State, and other factors to be specified by CMS,” CMS says on its website.
While the Rural Health Transformation Program is providing aid to hospitals, KFF estimates that the rural health fund amounts to only about 37% as much as the amount of federal Medicaid funding that rural areas are losing due to cuts elsewhere in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Reeves said he wants to get as much grant money as possible from CMS to get “our fair share and the fair share of a couple of other states” that did not write robust rural-health initiative plans.
“Every dollar invested will be focused on improving health care and patient outcomes for rural Mississippians, strengthening our rural-health workforce and ensuring sustainable access to care for the people who need it most,” he said at a Nov. 4 press conference.
The governor hopes that implementing changes to SNAP will impress Secretary Kennedy and other federal officials whose support he will need secure funding for the program.
‘It Makes No Sense At All to Fund Sugar’
Gov. Reeves first announced on Oct. 31 that he plans to stop Mississippi Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients from purchasing “unhealthy processed foods and beverages” through a waiver he requested from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants would be prohibited from buying “processed foods that list sugar, cane sugar, corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient” using food stamps if the USDA approves the governor’s waiver, the press release says.
“In a nation that is printing money daily just to make our debt payments, it doesn’t make sense to throw your tax money at anything other than the true necessities,” Reeves said in an Oct. 31 press release. “So it makes no sense at all to fund sugar instead of hearty, nutritious meals. That’s why we’re amending our food stamp rules to allow good sustaining food like rotisserie chickens and disallow sugary candy and drinks.”
SNAP recipients could still purchase “granulated sugar, raw sugar and other single-ingredient sugars used for cooking and baking” under the waiver if the USDA approves it, he noted.
Mississippi’s SNAP program would also prohibit recipients from buying “beverages that contain carbonated water and sugar, cane sugar, corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup as the first two ingredients,” Reeves said. SNAP benefits will still pay for drinks that have aspartame or “other low- or noncaloric sweeteners” in the first two ingredients, he said.
“People sometimes drink carbonated beverages to feel full because they can’t eat food because they can’t afford food,” Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, the director of Master’s Programs in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 6.
Craig Gundersen, the director of the economics department at Baylor University, said banning people from using SNAP benefits to purchase sugary, processed foods is a “slippery slope.”
“If you’re going to start banning sugar-sweetened beverages, (you) might as well ban orange juice. I mean, orange juice is about as healthy as some sugar-sweetened beverages,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 6. “Or candy—if you’re going to ban candy from being purchased, why not ban buying Clif bars? Why not ban buying granola bars and cereal?”
The USDA reports that it has approved similar waivers for 12 other states, including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Florida. Reeves noted at the press conference that most of these states received waivers within the past two to three months.
About 13% of Mississippians, or around 384,800 people, receive food stamps, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities data from January 2025 shows. Of those who receive SNAP benefits, 67% are families with children, 41% are families who are older adults or disabled, and 26% are working families, the center reports.
“One of the great things about SNAP that I love about SNAP is that it respects the dignity and the autonomy of individuals. … I can shop along the same aisles as I did before I got SNAP and after I got SNAP in the same ways my friends, family and neighbors can do,” Gundersen said. “It also respects the autonomy of recipients. It says to them, ‘We think you can make the best choices for the family.’”
‘The Uncertainty Around SNAP Is a Disaster’
Reeves’ announcement came at a time of uncertainty over whether Mississippi SNAP recipients would be able to access November’s food benefits due to the Trump administration’s decision not to release them during the government shutdown. Amidst a series of federal court orders and challengers, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced on Monday, Nov. 10, that it would begin releasing partial SNAP payments.
“I worry about the children that are enrolled in the program and are not getting benefits. … Children who are food insecure are more likely to miss school due to illnesses. They have lower education attainment, they have worse test scores, and essentially, because we know educational attainment is quite correlated with how much you make,” Haynes-Maslow said.
“That means they probably enter the workforce, and they’re making lower-paying jobs. And essentially, you get back into just a cycle of you can’t get out of poverty or being in a low-income family or community,” she continued.
Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed emergency funding to extend SNAP benefits through an executive order while the federal government paused funding to states’ SNAP programs. However, Reeves told reporters on Nov. 4 that Mississippi’s Constitution and emergency statutes do not allow the governor to appropriate money.
“I think the uncertainty around SNAP is a disaster and it is ridiculous. It is awful and it is a direct result of the Schumer shutdown,” he said.
The Mississippi governor speculated that the Democrats in Congress, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, shut down the federal government to provide additional support to New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mandami during his mayoral campaign for the Nov. 4 election.
That is not true. The government shutdown centered around health care tax credits for Americans who obtain their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Those tax credits expire on Jan. 1, risking massive increases in health care costs for millions of Americans. Congressional Democrats said they would not vote to reopen the government unless Republicans agreed to negotiate on extending ACA tax credits to avert the skyrocketing costs.
A group of Democrats struck a deal with Republicans on Sunday to reopen the government based on a promise of a vote in the U.S. Senate in December on extending the ACA tax credits. Most Democrats opposed the deal, noting that it is unlikely the Republican-led House will vote on extending the tax credits and that President Trump could veto an extension of the tax credits.
The legislation to reopen the government is now headed to the U.S. House.