Many Questions Remain After Judges Order USDA to Fund SNAP During Shutdown.
Many Questions Remain After Judges Order USDA to Fund SNAP During Shutdown
The federal government must use emergency funds to disperse November benefits to SNAP recipients, but many families still do not know when or how much of those funds they will actually receive to ensure they have enough to eat.
At the eleventh hour on Friday, October 31, two New England federal judges ruled that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) must use billions of dollars in emergency funds to partially cover Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for 42 million Americans living in every county in the nation.
The orders followed weeks of dire warnings from anti-hunger advocates and public officials that freezing these benefits, which were set to expire on November 1, would cause “irreparable harm” to the families who depend on these monthly SNAP benefits to access affordable and adequate food.
Despite the rulings, millions of SNAP recipients remain anxious and uncertain about exactly when and how much of their November benefits they will receive, and how much they will struggle to feed their families in the coming weeks. Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani also required the Trump administration to explain by Monday, November 3, how it would disperse the benefits as soon as possible but recognized that the funds would not be available to people at the start of the month.
“It is encouraging that the courts are pushing the Trump administration to provide at least partial benefits using the contingency funds available. However, millions may still struggle to put food on the table this week while the details are worked out,” says Paul Shafer, associate professor of health law, policy & management. “States and food banks are mobilizing to fill the gap, but they can’t make up the billions of dollars per month in food purchases that SNAP supports. For example, SNAP benefits support $1 of every $5 spent in grocery stores in Massachusetts.”
The SNAP developments are occurring at an already stressful time for many food-insecure families in the US, including millions of people who do not qualify for federal food assistance, but are still unable to make ends meet with limited incomes. The tax and spending megabill that Republicans passed in July will cut $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade and include significant restrictions to eligibility.
The new requirements, which will be implemented over the next few years, will expand work reporting requirements while stripping prior exemptions from veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and parents of children ages 14-17, end eligibility for many lawful immigrants, restrict the purchase of certain food items, and shift much of the burden of administrative costs of the federal program to states—in addition to lowering the monthly allotments for almost all recipients who remain eligible.
The changes to work reporting requirements are already being implemented, while states are awaiting federal guidance on how to phase out SNAP support for lawful immigrants and refugees. The cost-sharing provisions will roll out over the next two years. Early estimates suggest that at least four million SNAP recipients, including one million children, will lose all or most of their benefits.
Families face ‘colliding forces’
Meanwhile, the USDA also cancelled The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) which provides food to food banks in addition to more than $1 billion in funding for the Local Food for Schools and the Local Food Purchase Assistance programs, two COVID-19-era initiatives that ensured that local, healthy, and affordable food would be available in school cafeterias and food banks. And soon, families who are already stretched thin could see significant increases in their Affordable Care Act insurance premiums if the subsidies at the center of the government shutdown impasse expires at the end of the year.
“Families are facing a toxic brew of colliding forces, which will all result in people struggling to make ends meet across multiple fronts, including difficulty affording enough healthy food, staying up to date on rent, and affording utilities and healthcare,” says Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, research associate professor of health law, policy & management. “Reductions in funding for the emergency food system, combined with inflation and tariffs driving up the cost of food, rising housing and energy prices, rising unemployment, and new work reporting rules means that families’ health is at risk just when community organizations are least able to respond.”
For every one meal that food pantries provide, SNAP provides nine meals, she says.
Shafer and Ettinger de Cuba have published several studies that capture the critical role of SNAP and other public assistance programs on the physical, mental, and financial health and well-being of families in need, particularly families with children. A Health Affairs study by Ettinger de Cuba showed that families whose SNAP benefits were reduced or cut off were more likely to lack enough food, as well as be unable to afford utilities and stable housing, and forgo healthcare because of other expenses. Caregivers were more likely to be in poor health and report depressive symptoms, and young children were more likely to be in poor health, and at risk of developmental delays.
A recent study in Preventive Medicine by both Shafer and Ettinger de Cuba also showed that families that received emergency SNAP benefits during the pandemic were less equipped to afford adequate food and household expenses once states began rolling back those additional benefits.
Effects on local communities
These changes and challenges are reverberating across communities and contributing to constant waves of anxiety, confusion, and fear, with no clear end in sight. While undocumented immigrants do not qualify for public assistance, many lawful immigrants—such as naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, and those who have secured refugee or asylum status—who are eligible for federal support, are being driven into hiding by the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on migrants, says Ettinger de Cuba.
“In the best of times, immigrants are at higher risk of food insecurity due to a combination of factors, including the complexity of program rules,” she says. Even before the government shutdown, “the recent increase in ICE activities was driving immigrant families underground and away from community support systems and public benefits—including those who were perfectly eligible to access them. Hardship in immigrant communities is spiking and will only worsen with the suspension of SNAP benefits.”
The loss of SNAP benefits will also create a ripple effect across local businesses that depend on this revenue.
“Each dollar of SNAP benefits can generate between $1.54 and $1.80 in total economic activity,” says Ettinger de Cuba. “So a suspension of benefits would negatively affect shelf stockers, cashiers, truck drivers delivering food to grocery stores, farmers supplying the food, and more if SNAP participants no longer have benefits to spend at their local food stores and farmers markets.”
Numerous reports also capture how food banks are struggling to keep up with increasing demand and limited resources over the last several months, exacerbated by mass layoffs in the federal government and private sectors, rising food costs, and federal funding cuts. In a research collaboration with the Greater Boston Food Bank, a team led by Jacey Greece and Jacqueline Hicks sought to identify the factors that affect hunger among people who utilize food pantries. They found that more than a third of food pantry users were moderately or severely hungry—and that hunger decreased among those who utilized the pantries consistently.
But now, the local food programs that would typically fill the gaps in federal assistance recognize that they will likely fall short of meeting the current demand.
Tracking food insecurity
In yet another blow to efforts to understand and mitigate hunger in the US, the USDA recently announced that it will stop measuring US food security, the main tool that is used to gauge hunger across the country, claiming that the data is “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”
Shafer disagrees with the agency’s decision to cancel the report.
“The USDA’s annual reporting has provided nonpartisan surveillance of food insecurity trends for the public and policymakers to rely on for three decades,” Shafer says. Think tanks and researchers will certainly look to fill the gap, he says, but that may be a complicated task, as the report’s underlying survey, the Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey, is also ending. “Now, we will have to cobble together smaller surveys at the local and state levels or look to privately fund national surveys to replace these data, which may be collected and analyzed in ways that are not always comparable across geographies and time. The decision to do this on the brink of major changes to SNAP will make it harder to measure the impacts on food insecurity.”
For now, public reporting of programmatic data for SNAP should still capture how enrollment and benefits are affected, he adds.
Quality of food is also an important factor that should remain a part of the broader conversations and policies around food assistance programs, says Monica Wang, associate professor of community health sciences.
“For millions of families, SNAP is the bridge that makes fresh produce, whole grains, and other nutritious foods affordable,” Wang says. “Without it, many may be forced to rely on cheaper, high-calorie foods that raise longer-term risks like diabetes and other chronic diseases. While much of the current focus is on immediate food security and hunger, we also need to recognize that a lapse in SNAP undermines long-term nutrition and public health well-being.”