By LINDA QIU NYTimes News Service
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WASHINGTON — For two decades, the federal government has rejected states’ efforts to ban purchases of sugary drinks using food stamps, hesitant, in part, to cross an unusual coalition of corporate interests and anti-poverty groups.

Now, the Trump administration has waded in, approving a first-of-its-kind waiver Monday for Nebraska to ban purchases of soda and energy drinks through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps. It is likely to pave the way for more state waivers, signaling a sharp shift in nutrition policy.

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Under the proposal, Nebraska will establish a program, beginning in January 2026 and affecting some 150,000 food stamp recipients in the state.

Nebraska, in its waiver application, said it would regularly survey participants in the state to evaluate changes in their spending habits and examine retailer data to assess reductions in purchases of soda and energy drinks. A spokesperson for the state’s department of Health and Human Services said that Nebraska would also provide technical assistance to help retailers make the transition.

In a statement Monday, Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, called the approval “a historic step to Make America Healthy Again.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen also welcomed the step, saying, “There’s absolutely zero reason for taxpayers to be subsidizing purchases of soda and energy drinks.”

The prohibition adds to the limits recipients face in using the program. Already, their benefits do not apply to hot foods, nonfood items, alcohol and tobacco products. In recent months, Nebraska and other states, largely led by Republican governors, have sought waivers to extend those restrictions to unhealthy purchases.

A spokesperson for the Agriculture Department said Tuesday that the agency was reviewing and working with Iowa, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, West Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah on similar waivers. A wave of approvals would come after decades of Agriculture Department denials under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first.

In letters explaining its rejections over more than a decade and in a 2007 policy paper, the Agriculture Department expressed concerns over the rationale, feasibility and effectiveness of such bans: Which, out of hundreds of thousands of products, should be banned? How would grocery stores, especially smaller shops not using advanced checkout systems, enforce such bans? And how would a state or city study the effect of these bans?

Asked about such bans during a congressional hearing in 2017, Sonny Perdue, Trump’s first agriculture secretary, questioned whether enforcing such restrictions was unduly interfering in people’s lives. “On what level do we want to become a nanny state of directing how, and what, people feed their families?” he said then.

The second Trump administration has struck a different tone. Rollins and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, have written that their agencies had “a duty to fix” the obesity and chronic disease epidemics, encouraging steering “taxpayer dollars to go toward wholesome foods” using waivers.

Past bipartisan resistance to food stamp restrictions on unhealthy foods stems from the messy politics of the issue and the strange bedfellows it has united both in support and in opposition.

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