Trump Admin to Partially Fund SNAP in November

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer continue funding during the federal government shutdown. The program serves approximately 1 in 8 Americans and is an important part of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8 billion a month nationwide. The government says its emergency fund is $4.65 billion, enough to cover about half of normal aid.

Depleting the fund could set the stage for a similar situation in December if the shutdown is not resolved by then.

It’s unclear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive or how quickly value will show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. Millions of people have already had their November payments postponed.

“The Trump Administration has the ability to fully fund this program, and while the government is taking the additional steps necessary to partially fund this program, it has made the decision not to leave millions of Americans hungry and waiting any longer for relief,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who led a coalition of Democratic state officials in one of the lawsuits challenging the funding, said in a statement.

The administration also contributed to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which helps low-income mothers purchase essential nutrients. WIC received $450 million in additional funding, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity Monday because they were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly. POLITICO first reported news about the fund Monday afternoon.

Last month, some states warned they only had enough money to run their WIC programs through mid-November. The administration last month reallocated $300 million in unspent tariff revenue to keep the program running.

How will SNAP beneficiaries handle it? People who benefit from aid are trying to find out how they can increase their shopping dollars even more.

Corina Betancourt, who lives in Glendale, Arizona, already sometimes uses a food bank to buy food for herself and her three children, ages 8 to 11. With SNAP benefits reduced and delayed, she expects to use the food bank more and find ways to expand her holdings even further.

With $400 this month instead of nearly $800, she worries there won’t be enough food for her children. “We always somehow make things work,” he said.

In Camden, New Jersey, Jamal Brown, who is paralyzed after a series of strokes and is on a fixed income, said family members asked him for a list of groceries they needed so they could stock up.

But not everyone has this help.

“How did you expect to live a healthy life if you weren’t eating the right things?” he asked. “If you don’t have access to food stamps, you’re going to go for the cheapest thing you can afford.”

Details on how the payments will be made are still to come. The administration said it will release details on calculating partial aid per household to states on Monday. The process of installing SNAP cards, which includes steps from state and federal government agencies and vendors, can take up to two weeks in some states. But the USDA warned in a court filing that it could take weeks or even months for states to make all the system changes to provide reduced benefits. The average monthly benefit is usually around $190 per person.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference that it would take about a week for his state to load benefit cards once funding becomes available.

“These are hungry people and every day counts,” Bonta said.

USDA announced last month that November benefits would not be paid due to the federal government shutdown. This has left food banks, state governments and the nearly 42 million Americans receiving assistance scrambling to find ways to access food.

Democracy Forward, the liberal group that represented plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, said it was considering legal options to mandate full SNAP funding.

Other high-profile Democrats are calling for the government to do it on its own.

“USDA has the authority to fully fund SNAP and must do so immediately. Anything short of that is unacceptable,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on social media.

State governments are stepping in Most states have increased aid to food banks, and some are setting up systems to reload welfare cards with state taxpayer dollars. The threat of delay also triggered lawsuits.

Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled separately but similarly on Friday, telling the government in response to lawsuits filed by Democratic state officials, cities and nonprofits that an emergency fund should be used to at least partially pay for the program. They gave the government the option of using additional money to fully fund the program and until Monday to decide.

USDA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Patrick Penn said in the lawsuit filed Monday that the department chose not to tap other emergency funds to ensure there would be no gap in child nutrition programs for the remainder of this fiscal year, which runs through September 2026.

Advocates and beneficiaries say stopping food aid would force people to choose between buying food and paying other bills. A majority of states have announced increased or accelerated funding for food banks or new ways to load at least some benefits onto SNAP debit cards.

Some SNAP beneficiaries received funds from weekend emergency programs, New Mexico and Rhode Island officials said Monday. Officials in Delaware are telling beneficiaries that benefits won’t be available until at least Nov. 7.

To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a household’s net income after certain expenses must not exceed the federal poverty line. For a family of four, that works out to about $32,000 a year.