California Prepares to Vote on 5% Tax on Billionaires’ Assets as SNAP Enrollment Declines Under New Federal Work Requirements

More than 665,000 SNAP recipients in California could lose benefits under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut the program by more than $186 billion over the next 10 years. The measure, passed in June, also extended cuts to income tax. Estimates show more than 3 million people nationwide could lose SNAP benefits.

U.S. state — the impacts began in April when 72,000 immigrants started losing SNAP benefits. Nearly 600,000 SNAP recipients will be screened for work eligibility starting in June.

Recipients including those who are homeless, seniors, foster youth and veterans will have to work, study or volunteer to receive benefits, with failing the screening for three months leading to cuts. The OBBBA shifts the administrative cost of meeting work eligibility requirements to states beginning next year. Part of the cost of SNAP will also fall on states at that time.

SNAP rolls in California shrank by 288,000, or 6 percent, from July 2025 to February 2026, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. 3 million, or 8 percent, from July 2025 to January 2026. 4 percent since July 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

SNAP rolls in Arizona dropped 51 percent after implementing OBBBA cuts. Greer Dove, a single mother in Marin County, has been on SNAP for six years and has used the food bank for more than three years.

She studies business and finance, does administrative work at college and cares for her eight-year-old daughter with special needs. “We need this so we can keep functioning at a high level,” she says. “The anxiety of it all is adding up.

At a food bank in San Francisco’s Mission District, recipients line up for vegetables, fruit and bread donated by grocery stores near expiration. California’s proposed billionaire tax seeks to impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of more than 200 billionaires in the state. 5 million signatures in April and is likely to be on the ballot for the November midterm election.

It is expected to raise nearly $100 billion, with most going toward filling the gap in health insurance created by the OBBBA and 10 percent used to make up for the retrenchment in food benefits. Brian Galle, professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the tax measure’s authors, noted that in California, the state that introduced gig work, “jobs are increasingly precarious.

You may find enough work or not.

You may get tips or not. ” Sergey Brin has spent more than $57 million on opposing the billionaire tax. 5 million signatures respectively and will appear on the November ballot.

Governor Gavin Newsom has opposed the billionaire tax. Newsom is in the last year of his last term as governor. ” Before receiving SNAP benefits, Greer Dove fed her daughter all she had and skipped meals herself.