The Metro: Some metro Detroit families balance on the edge as SNAP faces deep cuts

, June 23, 2025

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FILE - A woman browses produce for sale at a grocery store, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024, in New York.

A woman browses produce for sale at a grocery store, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024, in New York.

In a nation where supermarkets are filled from floor to ceiling, a single missed phone call can empty a family’s pantry and leave children going to bed hungry.

Investigative journalist and author Tracie McMillan knows this firsthand, both from her own experience with SNAP benefits, or food stamps, and her years reporting on America’s working poor. 

As lawmakers debate slashing nearly $300 billion from food assistance, millions of Americans who navigate a complex web of phone calls and paperwork to receive SNAP benefits face an uncertain future. 

In McMillan’s recent piece for The New York Times, we meet Jocelyn Walker, a mother and entrepreneur from metro Detroit who is struggling to make ends meet and is stuck in this bureaucratic maze.  

McMillan joined The Metro to discuss why hunger remains a persistent reality in America today.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

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Authors

  • Robyn Vincent
    Robyn Vincent is the co-host of The Metro on WDET. She is an award-winning journalist, a lifelong listener of WDET, and a graduate of Wayne State University, where she studied journalism. Before returning home to Detroit, she was a reporter, producer, editor, and executive producer for NPR stations in the Mountain West, including her favorite Western station, KUNC. She received a national fellowship from Investigative Reporters and Editors for her investigative work that probed the unchecked power of sheriffs in Colorado. She was also the editor-in-chief of an alternative weekly newspaper in Wyoming, leading the paper to win its first national award for a series she directed tracing one reporter’s experience living and working with Syrian refugees.

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