November is on the horizon, and with it the prospect that huge swaths of the public may go dangerously hungry. The ongoing government shutdown now threatens the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which more than 42 million Americans rely on to afford basic food needs. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” said the Trump administration in a message on the website for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1.”
With the largest food assistance program in the country now effectively offline for the coming month, millions of people are bracing themselves for deepening food insecurity. This moment arrives amid a surging demand for help that activists and organizers worry will be impossible to meet.
SNAP beneficiaries facing nutritional shortages “can use food banks and other subsidized meal programs” during the shutdown to supplement their food options, said USA Today. Because the program relies on “cooperation between state agencies, which oversee benefits, and the federal government, which pays for them,” SNAP recipients can also check with their individual states for alternate food programs.
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While alternate supplemental food programs exist, the loss of SNAP funding represents the “greatest hunger catastrophe in America since the Great Depression,” said Joel Berg, the CEO of Hunger Free America, to The Guardian. “I don’t say that as hyperbole.” Food banks, which serve as a “last resort for tens of millions of hungry Americans,” are now bracing for an “even greater surge in demand” that will “almost certainly exceed their capacity to respond,” The New York Times said. “Several” food pantry operators said that “for every nine meals that were supplied by federal food assistance,” local banks can typically offer “only one on their own.”
The looming SNAP disruption has prompted preemptive responses from corporate America. “No one should go hungry in America — period,” said Vice President and Global Head of Public Policy at DoorDash, Max Rettig, in a press release announcing the launch of the company’s new “Emergency Food Response.” DoorDash will deliver “1 million free meals through food banks” and will waive “fees for 300,000 SNAP recipient grocery orders,” the company said. Representatives from the grocery sector have similarly “warned about the potential fallout” of ending SNAP benefits, said Newsweek. SNAP benefits “make up about 8% of all retail spending on groceries,” said economist Ismael Martinez to the outlet. “Even a short interruption of this spending could lead to layoffs or other painful adjustments in this sector.”
SNAP is a “powerful economic engine for communities big and small,” said the National Grocers Association in a statement urging Congress to fund the program. It supports “over 388,000 American jobs” while generating “over $20 billion and $4.5 billion in wages and tax revenue, respectively.”
What next?
The decentralized nature of SNAP administration means that different states have been “reacting to the news differently,” said The Hill. Attorneys general and governors from 25 Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in an attempt to force the Trump administration to fund SNAP, said USA Today. The lawsuit argues that “suspending SNAP benefits is avoidable, arbitrary and is being carried out in violation of the Food and Nutrition Act, which requires that ‘assistance under this program shall be furnished to all eligible households.’”
In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) declared a state of emergency to “provide emergency hunger relief for Virginians” in a press release that was heavy on finger-pointing at congressional Democrats. Leaders in New York, “already bracing for major changes to SNAP under President Donald Trump’s signature policy legislation,” have released $30 million in emergency funds intended to “flow to food banks and other organizations that offer food assistance,” as well as cover 16 million meals for residents “whose benefits will lapse next month,” said Crain's New York Business.
For states that do find ways to load crucial funds onto SNAP beneficiaries' electronic benefit transfer cards, there’s still “no guarantee they will be reimbursed by the federal government,” said CivilEats. “Unfortunately,” said Katie Bergh, the senior food assistance policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “putting up funding for a program as large as SNAP without that guarantee of federal reimbursement is not something that we expect that many states will be able to do.”
