Is a video of a man failing to buy a sandwich with an EBT card at a Subway restaurant from January 2025 and related to the federal funding freeze announced by the Trump administration that month? No, that's not true: The footage was online at least half a year before the second Trump presidency. As of January 29, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a new memo rescinding the previously announced federal aid and grant freeze.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 28, 2025. It said:
I work at subway and people's food stamps are NOT working right now. Trump has frozen SNAP & EBT!!!!! Stop yelling at US!!!!!
This is what the post looked like on X as of this writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Jan 29 14:59:00 2025 UTC)
The video appeared to show a man arguing with a fast-food restaurant worker over a malfunctioning EBT card he planned to use to pay for a sandwich. The scene ended with a physical fight.
The clip showed a location with design elements consistent with the Subway brand colors, and the caption implied that the recording was made at one of the chain's locations.
Contrary to the clip's description, however, the footage predates Trump's second presidency by roughly six months.
The earliest versions of the video found by Lead Stories were published on Vidmax (archived here), Bitchute (archived here), Reddit (archived here) and ISaveddIt (archived here) in August 2024.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (archived here), Electronic Benefits Transfer, widely known as EBT, "is an electronic system that allows a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participant to pay for food using SNAP benefits" across the country.
The agency offers a SNAP retailer locator map (archived here) that details what stores and restaurants participated in the related programs in a particular ZIP code as of January 16, 2025, when it was last updated.
The claim started circulating amid concerns that the federal funding freeze announced in the January 27, 2025, White House memo (archived here) published by The New York Times would affect EBT/SNAP benefits.
On January 28, 2025, "a senior administration official" told Reuters (archived here) that those programs would not be affected.
On the same day, a federal judge temporarily blocked (archived here) the pause on federal payments for grants and multiple programs (case # 1:25-cv-00239).
On January 29, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a new memo that seemed to have reversed the previous decision on the pause on a wide range of federally funded programs. However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X (archived here) that it was "NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze" but "a rescission of the OMB memo".
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Donald Trump can be found here.
