Republican Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen recently welcomed President Trump’s Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to the cornhusker state and took her on a tour of Cargill Bioscience in the town of Blair.
In a press release, Pillen’s office boasted that the facility “processes over 340,000 bushels of corn daily to produce products such as fuel grade ethanol, corn gluten meal and meat for poultry, pet food and cattle feed.”
During her visit in Nebraska, Rollins signed off on Nebraska’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waiver request, which will exclude soda and energy drinks from the list of approved purchases. Nebraska is the first state to do so; it will go in effect on January 1, 2026.
Note: According to Cargill, the company’s bioscience complex in Blair is dedicated to meeting customer demands for “Sweeteners, such as corn syrup, that are used by food and beverage companies.”
Corn gluten meal and fuel grade ethanol are on the bottom of the list of products produced by the Cargill operation in Nebraska.
In a historic step to Make America Healthy Again, @SecRollins signed the first-ever waiver to amend the statutory definition of food for purchase for Nebraska’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Effective Jan. 1, 2026, taxpayers will no longer be subsidizing the… pic.twitter.com/FpAzqjWLD6
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) May 19, 2025
Pillen said in the press release: “There’s absolutely zero reason for taxpayers to be subsidizing purchases of soda and energy drinks. SNAP is about helping families in need get healthy food into their diets, but there’s nothing nutritious about the junk we’re removing with today’s waiver.”
He added: “We have to act because we can’t keep letting Nebraskans starve in the midst of plenty.”
With his move, Pillen aligns with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has talked about a federal ban on using SNAP funds for sugary drinks as part of his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) agenda.
“[Kennedy’s] department doesn’t have the authority to do so,” Barron’s reported in May, so the Secretary has instead “pushed many states to request waivers from the Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, to remove sodas from the list of qualified products.”