This sabotage began in the 1970s, culminating politically in the Reagan years and institutionally with the Clinton administration’s decision to “end welfare as we know it” in 1996. At its root is a carefully manufactured suspicion of undeserving recipients of assistance, and a determination that support should only be earned through work. In its current form, this project is cultivated by a network of conservative think tanks and embraced—at the expense of their own citizens—by Republican statehouses and governors. We saw it in cuts to unemployment programs after the Great Recession, in the decisions to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, and in the eager and early retreat from pandemic-era programs and program extensions. And we see it in the politics of food assistance.