Millions of low-income Americans will lose access to food aid on Nov. 1, when half of states plan to cut off benefits due to the government shutdown.
Twenty-five states told POLITICO that they are issuing notices informing participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative — that they won’t receive checks next month. Those states include California, Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi and New Jersey. Others didn’t respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service recently told every state that they’d need to hold off on distributing benefits until further notice, according to multiple state agencies.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, told reporters at the state capitol Wednesday that President Donald Trump is the “first president in U.S. history to cut off SNAP benefits to people in America.”
“The state funding can’t begin to match what the federal government provides,” said Healey, whose state is also ending benefits Nov. 1.
Nutrition programs like SNAP and another one serving low-income mothers and infants have been caught in the crossfire of lawmakers’ spending negotiations, with the shutdown now in its fourth week. States are scrambling to maintain the programs using money from their own coffers and emergency funding from the Trump administration, but that pot is rapidly decreasing.
The administration would have to find more than $8 billion to keep SNAP afloat if the shutdown continues.
“We just can’t do it without the government being open,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a NewsNation interview Tuesday. “By Nov. 1, we are very hopeful this government reopens and we can begin moving that money out. But right now, half the states are shut down on SNAP.”
Under SNAP, which serves more than 42 million people, families receive an average of $187.20 per month to pay for groceries. The pause in benefits would kick in just before the Thanksgiving holiday and add further strain on food banks and pantries during a typically busy season.
Even if lawmakers clinch a funding deal before the end of October, anti-hunger advocates and states expect a delay between the government reopening and state administrators being able to issue November’s benefits, after weeks of holding up the typical process. For example, Kansas’ Department for Children and Families told POLITICO that it would take at least three days to fully reboot the program.
