A volunteer stocks produce at the Independence Food Basket, a food pantry operated by the Community Access Center in Independence, Kan. Like other food pantries across the country, the organization has been providing food assistance to more families even before a disruption to the federal food stamp program. (Photo by Kevin Hardy/Stateline)

INDEPENDENCE, Kan. — Just a few years ago, the Community Access Center’s food pantry here served up to 250 families per month. But that figure has skyrocketed as the price of groceries has pinched more and more families.

Now, the small food pantry serves about 450 families a month in this community of about 8,500 people. Serving that growing number has become increasingly difficult with the high cost of food, cuts in federal aid — and an unprecedented disruption in the nation’s largest food assistance program looming.

Chris Mitchell, who leads the nonprofit that operates the Independence Food Basket and provides other services, said the amount the organization spends on food to supplement donated items increased from $1,700 per month in 2018 to $4,000 per month now.

“And that’s getting it from the food bank without taxes,” he said.

Like other providers across the country, the Independence Food Basket is bracing for a spike in demand when an estimated 42 million people are expected to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP. Monthly benefits will not be provided beginning Saturday because of the ongoing federal government shutdown.

The unparalleled stress of a SNAP disruption on food pantries and the food banks that collect, warehouse and distribute food comes at a time when they were already stretched thin. High grocery prices have pushed more Americans to look to food banks for help. But organizations providing food relief have lost more than $1 billion in federal aid and are bracing for the impacts of legislation that will permanently limit the reach of SNAP.

Food banks now are asking local governments and donors to step in as they prepare for long lines. Many operations have increased orders ahead of the expected SNAP chaos, though some food pantries say they may have to ration food if supplies dwindle too quickly.

“You’d have to be living under a rock somewhere to not know that the prices of groceries went up and stayed up,” Mitchell said. “Now, you’re going to take away the means that people in poverty can afford food.”

The rising price of food has driven up not just visits to pantries, but also costs for the charitable food system in recent years.

Social service providers also are bracing for the impact of permanent changes to food stamps and other social services enacted in President Donald Trump’s major tax and spending law signed in July. The first in a wave of cutbacks to SNAP ended exemptions from work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, likely pushing millions out of the food stamp program.

The administration also has pulled direct aid to food banks.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in March nixed more than $1 billion from two programs that helped food banks and school meal programs buy local foods including fruits, vegetables and proteins.

Also this spring, the administration abruptly cut $500 million from a program that sends domestically produced meat, dairy, eggs and produce to food banks. The items that were delivered through The Emergency Food Assistance Program were some of the healthiest, most expensive items organizations distribute, ProPublica reported.

In Missouri alone, that move canceled 124 scheduled deliveries to food banks, including 146,400 pounds of cheese, 433,070 pounds of canned and frozen chicken and 1.2 million eggs.

“Food banks have been operating on fumes since the pandemic,” said Gina Plata-Nino, interim SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, a national nonprofit working to address poverty-related hunger. “As much as we love the food banks and the superhero work that they’re doing, they can only do so much.”

Already rising demand

Plata-Nino said food banks and food pantries were intended as emergency food aid, but have become “a way of life” for many who struggle to afford groceries.

A disruption in SNAP benefits will cause millions to make impossible decisions about how to stretch their limited dollars, Plata-Nino said. She noted that the majority of SNAP recipients make less than $1,100 per month. (The liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the average SNAP benefit this fiscal year is about $188 per month per person.)

“People are already making really difficult choices,” she said, “and I hate to call it a choice, because it’s not a choice when you don’t have one.”

In Texas, the San Antonio Food Bank has been responding to a surge in need from furloughed federal workers. With major Defense Department operations across the area, San Antonio is home to the largest number of federal employees in Texas.

Eric Cooper, the food bank’s president and chief executive officer, estimates it will serve about 50,000 more people who have gone without paychecks this month. Each year, the food bank serves about 577,000 people across 29 counties.

He recalled one furloughed U.S. Social Security Administration employee who recently visited for the first time. Though she weathered previous shutdowns, she now takes care of her grandchildren.

“She’s like, ‘Hey, I showed up to get food because I don’t know if I’m going to get paid, and I can’t let my grandbabies go hungry,’” Cooper said.

Given the disruption to SNAP, Cooper said the food bank has been gearing up to not only increase inventory but also manage limited supplies and heightened emotions among the public.

“Should the demand start to outpace our supply, we will start to ration,” he said. “Rather than giving a week’s worth of food or two weeks’ worth of food, we’re going to be giving less.”

Generally, the need for free food spikes during times of natural disasters or recessions, said Michelle Ness, executive director of PRISM, a nonprofit providing housing and food assistance in suburban Minneapolis.

But Minnesota food shelves, known as food pantries in other parts of the country, have seen a 150% increase in visits since the pandemic, she said.

“This is during nonemergency times, nondisaster times — needs are going way up,” she said. “Right now, food shelves are at just about the max capacity we can handle.”

To meet the projected increase in demand because of the SNAP disruption, Ness said her organization’s food shelf is considering launching a sort of express lane that would allow people to quickly pick up prepackaged boxes of food. She hopes donors will increase their giving to avoid rationing food.

“If anything, I would like to be able to give out more food, because people will have greater needs without getting SNAP benefits,” she said. “That’s a lot of food that they’re not going to have to fill their refrigerator and cupboards.”

A daily necessity

While nonprofits happily take donated food items, much of the stock is purchased. And that doesn’t come cheap — even with discounts for purchasing foods in bulk from nonprofit food banks.

The Food Group, a Minneapolis food bank that supplies PRISM and other operators, has had to raise its prices and cut back on certain expensive items — including eggs, said Executive Director Sophia Lenarz-Coy.

In the past year, The Food Group has raised its wholesale prices of spaghetti by 26%. Jasmine rice has gone up 6%, and dry potatoes have increased 11%. Between 2022 and 2025, a case of frozen ground beef has increased from just under $50 to $63.08 — a 28% spike. Cases of margarine have risen 39% over that time, and diced tomatoes have gone up 23%.

“I think it’s really hard to overstate just how grocery prices have changed in the last three years,” said Lenarz-Coy.

While higher earners can make adjustments in their monthly budgets, she noted that food is often the only flexible item in lower-income household budgets.

“Housing costs, how much you need to pay for transportation or medical costs or day care — those are all fixed costs,” she said. “The place where people can flex is on food, but those flexes just don’t get you as much as they used to.”

Back in southeast Kansas, Mitchell, of the Community Access Center, has come to appreciate the urgency of hunger.

Mitchell previously worked in homeless services. Oftentimes, people can get by temporarily staying with friends and families, but food is a constant, daily need, he noted.

“It’s like going without liquid,” he said. “You just don’t last very long without it. And that’s probably what hurts me the most about this cutoff.”

The looming SNAP disruption has him bracing for panic among those who rely on the pantry.

The per capita annual income in Independence is just under $30,000, and about a quarter of all children live in poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

To meet surging demand, Mitchell is considering further limiting the pantry’s already rationed offerings, whether families have one person or six in the household.

“That kills my heart,” he said. “But that’s so everybody gets some. … I’ve got this many people, and I’ve got to make sure that I can put something in each hand.”

Located inside a beige cinderblock building, the one-room food pantry is set up like a grocery store, with freezers for meats, refrigerators for fresh veggies and shopping carts for browsing.

Mitchell is proud to offer that kind of choice for people, which makes the process more dignified and reduces the likelihood that food goes to waste.

But a rush of visits next week — and concerns about hoarding and public safety — may force the nonprofit to reinstate its pandemic-era practice of handing out prepackaged boxes outdoors.

“It feels like going backwards,” Mitchell said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

A woman shops at the Feeding South Florida food pantry in Pembroke Park, Fla., this month. Food banks across the country are gearing up for massive demand from an interruption to federal food aid because of the government shutdown. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There’s no way his local government can fill the void created by a disruption in the federal food stamp program, but local official Gregg Wright says his Minnesota county had to do something.

“This is pretty much a crisis for families,” said Wright, a member of the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners.

Last week, the board unanimously voted to send up to $200,000 to a local food bank to help neighbors at risk of losing food assistance because of the federal government shutdown.

Olmsted County, which has a population of about 165,000 and is home to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, expects to lose about $1.7 million per month in benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP. It’s a predicament facing leaders across the country preparing for an unprecedented pause in the nation’s largest food assistance program as the shutdown drags on.

While attorneys general and governors from 25 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to try to force it to pay SNAP benefits next month, the administration says it will not release funds until the congressional budget impasse is resolved.

That leaves food banks, food pantries and local governments scrambling to prepare for an onslaught of demand. States are declaring emergencies, deploying National Guard members and sending millions of taxpayer dollars to local food banks. Nonprofits are bracing for long lines, bare shelves and even panic or civic unrest as some 42 million Americans are expected to lose access to the safety net program in a matter of days.

“The enormity of this issue is almost hard to comprehend,” said Wright, who noted that his county is just one of the more than 3,000 across the country.

The local food bank estimated it could serve SNAP families for one month by spending about $400,000 on bulk food purchases. Rather than front that whole amount, the county board challenged community members to help raise another $200,000.

Wright said the county is unable to keep funding food assistance for long.

“We can’t continue to do this without raising taxes, because it isn’t in our budget,” he said. “ … Who could plan for this? Who would expect that this would come from the federal government?”

Minnesota is among 10 states where counties administer the food stamp program rather than state governments. Across the country, state and county governments have been redirecting local resources to try to fill the shutdown gap.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has set aside $80 million in state funds and deployed members of the National Guard to help food banks.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency, saying the commonwealth would use its own funds to temporarily help SNAP recipients.

In Louisiana, state leaders are preparing to use $150 million monthly to help continue SNAP aid, while Nevada plans to funnel $38.8 million toward local food banks.

Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz announced the state would divert $4 million to food shelves across the state.

“This is meant to be a bridge,” Walz said during a Monday news conference. “It will not make up and backfill everything.”

Food banks across the country are already facing increased demand.

Virginia Witherspoon, executive director of Channel One Regional Food Bank in Rochester, Minnesota, said the phone was “ringing off the hook” last week. The nonprofit distributes food to partners across 14 counties and operates its own food shelf in Rochester. That pantry saw an average of about 450 families per day last month, but by last week was already averaging 550 per day, Witherspoon said.

“I don’t blame anyone who is rushing to their local food shelf and stocking up because they’re afraid they won’t be able to feed their families,” she told Stateline. “What I would say is that food shelves in Minnesota — we’re here, we’re open, we want to serve you. We’re doing our absolute best.”

Channel One and other operators, though, are concerned about the potential for panic by families scrambling for food.

Witherspoon told the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners her organization has considered asking for a police presence, but wants to be careful about what kind of message it sends to the public. She said even increasing food distribution from once to twice a week could cause people to rush in.

She said it reminds her of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she went on local television to tell people not to worry, though she was privately concerned about running out of food.

“It’s tough. On the one hand, I’m in public sounding the alarm to you, to our donors, to our government,” she told commissioners. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to make the public panic and all come shop at once. It’s really not a good situation, and we’ve never been here before.”

Debate over federal funds

The predicament facing nonprofits and local governments is unprecedented: Food stamps have not been disrupted during other government shutdowns. And even the Trump administration previously offered assurance that it would tap into a multiyear contingency fund to continue paying SNAP benefits.

The administration reversed that position on Friday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would not release funds in November and warned states they would not be reimbursed for spending their own revenues on the food program.

SNAP has about $6 billion in its contingency fund — short of the roughly $9 billion needed to cover a full month of the program.

It’s unclear what the administration’s position means for states that have already begun setting aside their own dollars.

Following Virginia’s emergency declaration, the newly created Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance program is expected to send money to SNAP beneficiaries starting on Nov. 3.

The governor estimates that about $37.5 million will be allocated per week to Virginia’s roughly 850,000 SNAP recipients, the Virginia Mercury reported.

Neither the governor’s office nor the Virginia Department of Social Services responded to Stateline requests for comment.

North Dakota officials said they had enough cash on hand to cover November SNAP benefits, but are unable to load the funds onto people’s electronic payment cards, the North Dakota Monitor reported.

State and federal lawmakers, advocates and attorneys general across the country have pushed the administration to release November SNAP funds.

Last week, the chief executive officer of the National Conference of State Legislatures asked the USDA to issue clear guidance on states’ ability to spend and be reimbursed for ongoing administrative costs.

North Carolina Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson, one of the officials who sued the Trump administration Tuesday, said 1.4 million people — including nearly 600,000 children — would lose SNAP aid in his state.

“They have emergency money to help feed children during this shutdown, and they’re refusing to spend it.”

Contingency plans

In New Hampshire, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced a state “contingency plan” to help SNAP recipients. Pending approval from other state leaders, the plan would divert $2 million to the New Hampshire Food Bank to open up to 20 locations for SNAP recipients twice a week over the next five weeks.

Officials in Ayotte’s office and the state health department did not respond to Stateline requests for comment.

Elsy Cipriani, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank, said the organization is still working out details with the state. She said the group would likely ask to see people’s electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards — the debit cards people use to access SNAP benefits at grocery stores — to ensure the state-purchased food goes to SNAP recipients.

“While we don’t intend to replace SNAP benefits — because we can’t; there is no way that we can replace that — we are hoping to provide some relief,” she told Stateline.

In Minnesota, county leaders are working overtime in some areas to respond to questions from SNAP recipients and help find other food assistance.

That additional workload comes without any state or federal reimbursement, said Tina Schenk, the health and human services director in rural Meeker County.

“That’s just to respond to our community, because that’s our job,” she said. “But that’s very different work than we normally do.”

The reserve funds of Meeker County, home to about 23,000 people, aren’t large enough to cover even one month’s worth of SNAP benefits, Schenk said. So county staff are instead working with local nonprofits and reaching out to families who will be hardest hit by an interruption in benefits to connect them with other state grant programs.

The sole local food shelf is increasing its orders with a central food bank, Schenk said — but so is nearly every other operation in the state.

“Are they going to have enough to fulfill these orders? That’s a question that I don’t know the answer to.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

Children from the KU Kids Deanwood Child Care Center complete a mural celebrating the launch of a local child tax credit in 2021 in Washington, D.C. New research suggests cities could significantly reduce childhood poverty by creating their own child tax credit programs. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Community Change)

Child tax credits are becoming more popular across the country, with more than a dozen states offering them as financial relief toward the cost of raising kids.

But new research suggests cities could significantly reduce child poverty by offering child tax credit programs of their own.

An analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University and the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that municipal programs could move the needle with relatively small amounts of money: offering $1,000 or less per year to low- and middle-income families could cut child poverty rates by 25% in several cities.  

Researchers say this sort of new assistance would not only boost household finances, but also likely create more demand for local businesses, stabilize housing markets and increase local tax revenue.

The study focused on 14 cities: Baltimore; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago; Denver; Houston; Jacksonville, Florida; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; New York; Oakland, California; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Seattle; and the District of Columbia. The analysis found that most of those cities could make significant gains by spending less than 15% of municipal revenues on new child credit programs. 

In Minneapolis, for example, researchers said a new program that cost less than $30 million per year would cut the city’s poverty levels by half when accounting for existing state and federal credits. (The mayor there has recommended spending about $2.03 billion in the 2026 fiscal year budget.) 

The prospect of creating new tax credit programs would likely pose financial and logistical challenges. Cities already are juggling many other priorities including public safety and housing affordability, while at the same time facing what some experts have characterized as a “fiscal crisis” from growing climate change costs, federal funding cuts and declining downtown activity.

Some cities, including Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, have city income taxes that could incorporate a child tax credit. But, the research noted, cities without that tax managed to distribute pandemic recovery funds through basic income programs. That experience shows cities could create their own standalone applications, leverage IRS data-sharing agreements or  work with third-party administrators.

“So you could use a similar sort of outreach approach, which wouldn’t necessarily be as comprehensive or systematic as a city that already has its own income tax system in place, but it’s a potential option,” said Ryan Vinh, an author of the study and a research analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. 

State interest in creating or expanding child tax credits boomed after the pandemic-era expansion of the federal child tax credit delivered cash directly to millions. That move quickly lifted millions of children out of poverty, researchers found. But the expanded tax credit expired in 2021 — leading to a doubling in the nation’s childhood poverty rate in 2022.

Advocates favor refundable tax credits that provide money directly to families. While parents must still file tax returns to receive the benefit, refundable credits give parents funds even if they earn too little to owe income tax, providing financial relief for groceries, medical care or rent. 

This year, several conservative-led states explored new child tax credit programs, though proposals offering the biggest benefits to families fizzled in Indiana and Ohio. So far, no city has implemented its own credit. 

While many cities and states are facing tight budget constraints, Vinh said a reduction in federal support will likely put more pressure on local governments to tackle challenges like poverty. The federal government has slashed funding for safety net programs including Medicaid and the nation’s largest food assistance program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

“A lot of these things will either lead to the erosion of benefits over time, a loss of benefits, or kind of a decline in what families are able to receive,” Vinh said. “We don’t fully know the number yet, but we do know that child poverty will most likely increase as these program restrictions increase.” 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org

An Oakland, Calif., grocery store displays a sign notifying shoppers that it accepts electronic benefit transfer cards used by state welfare departments to issue food assistance benefits. States are just beginning to implement changes to work requirements for the national food stamp program approved by Congress and President Donald Trump this summer. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

States are rushing to inform some residents who rely on food stamps that they will soon be forced to meet work requirements or lose their food assistance.

Recent federal legislation ended exemptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, among others. A rapid timeline to put the changes into effect has sparked chaos in state agencies that must cut off access if residents don’t meet certain work, education or volunteer reporting requirements.

States are implementing these permanent changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly called food stamps — amid the uncertainty of the federal government shutdown. The budget impasse could result in millions of Americans not getting their SNAP benefits next month if money runs out. But even before the shutdown, states were assessing the new work rules for food stamps — the first in a wave of cutbacks to the nation’s largest food assistance program required under President Donald Trump’s major tax and spending law enacted in July.

Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law mandates cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. In the coming years, the law will require states to pay a greater share of administering SNAP and could cause millions of Americans to lose benefits.

But states are currently confronting the end of exceptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and those recently living in foster care. Those could threaten benefits even for people who are working but who may struggle with the paperwork to prove they’re meeting the requirements, advocates say.

Under the new law, states have also lost funding for nutrition education programs, must end eligibility for noncitizens such as refugees and asylees, and will lose work requirement waivers for those living in areas with limited employment opportunities.

And the federal government wants those changes made quickly.

“They’ve given us a virtually nonexistent window — I’ll just describe it that way — in which to implement the changes, so we are working on them very quickly,” Andrea Barton Reeves, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services, told lawmakers last week.

She said changing work requirements could threaten the benefits of tens of thousands of people in Connecticut.

“We do believe that if we cannot in some way either move them into another exemption category or they don’t meet the requirements, we have about 36,000 people in these new categories that are at risk of losing their SNAP benefit,” Barton Reeves told lawmakers.

The federal government issued guidance to states earlier this month saying several key changes to food stamps would need to be implemented by early November.

The Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to address poverty-related hunger, characterized that deadline as an “unreasonable” timeline for states.

In California, for example, the state previously had been approved for a waiver to work requirements through January 2026. But this month, USDA told states they had 30 days to terminate waivers issued under the previous guidelines. In California, the end of that waiver could affect benefits for an estimated 359,000 people.

Gina Plata-Nino, interim SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, said states must quickly train their social services workers on eligibility changes, communicate those changes to the public and deal with an onslaught of calls from people relying on the program.

“It’s incredibly complex,” she said.

Plata-Nino said implementation will be uneven: Some states are already in compliance with the changes, while others will phase them in as households go through regular eligibility reviews.

USDA and the White House did not respond to Stateline’s questions about the changes.

Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have said the cuts would eliminate waste in the food assistance program. In a June news release, he characterized SNAP as a “bloated, inefficient program,” but said Americans who needed food assistance would still receive it.

“Democrats will scream ‘cuts,’ but what they’re really defending is a wasteful program that discourages work, mismanages billions, and traps people in dependency. Republicans are proud to defend commonsense welfare reform, fiscal sanity, and the dignity of work,” Johnson said in the release.

Rural residents

Changes to work requirements will prove especially burdensome for rural residents, who already disproportionately rely on SNAP. Job opportunities and transportation are often limited in rural areas, making work requirements especially difficult, according to Plata-Nino.

“None of these bills came with a job offer,” Plata-Nino said. “None of them came with additional funding to address the lack of transportation. Remote and rural areas don’t have public transportation — they don’t even have taxis or Ubers.”

With waivers, states previously could show USDA evidence that certain areas had limited job opportunities, thus exempting people from work requirements.

“Because it doesn’t make sense to punish SNAP participants for not being able to find a job when there are no jobs available, right?” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the associate director of The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative.

The legislation changed the criteria for proving weak labor markets to what Bauer characterized as an “utterly insane standard,” of showing unemployment rates above 10%. (The national unemployment rate was 4.3% in August, according to the most recently released figures by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

“The national economy during the Great Recession hit 10% in one month,” Bauer said. “Ten percent unemployment is a very, very high level. So they set this standard basically to end the waiver process.”

That change will not only affect recipients now but also will drastically impair the program’s ability to respond to recessions: Traditionally, SNAP has quickly helped people who lose their jobs. But the new law requires states to cover more costs, meaning they will be stretched even thinner during economic downturns when demand increases.

“Not only are these changes difficult to implement — and certainly at the speed that the administration is asking for — they could be devastating to the program, to residents who are in need in their states, and eventually SNAP may no longer be a national program because states will not be able to afford to participate,” Bauer said.

‘Widespread confusion’

Since July, Pennsylvania officials have been working to not only inform the public about the federal changes, but also to update information technology systems — a process that generally takes a minimum of 12 months.

“Strictly speaking from an IT perspective, we’re talking about massive systems that generate terabytes of data and are working with records for hundreds of thousands — and in the case of Pennsylvania, 2 million people,” said Hoa Pham, deputy secretary of the Office of Income Maintenance for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Pham said the timing of the federal legislation and lagging guidance from USDA was “simply not ideal.” But the state is doing its best to train thousands of employees on the changes and help affected recipients get into compliance by finding work, education or volunteer opportunities that meet federal guidelines.

The end of geographic waivers put the benefits of about 132,000 SNAP recipients at risk in Pennsylvania.

“It is difficult, it requires time, it requires planning, it requires money,” she told Stateline. “And I want to be super clear that H.R. 1 [the new law] delivered a ton of unfunded mandates to state agencies.”

Pennsylvania created a detailed webpage outlining the changes and will notify individuals if their eligibility is jeopardized in the coming months. Pham said those who depend on SNAP should make sure their contact information is up to date with both the department and the post office.

“As a state agency, we’re working very hard to make sure that people have accurate, factual information when it is most immediately necessary for them to know it,” she said.

States are implementing the SNAP changes even as the ongoing federal government shutdown might temporarily cost recipients their benefits.

New Hampshire leaders say they are days away from running out of food stamp funds. No new applications will be approved in Minnesota until the government is reopened, officials announced last week.

And the changes hit agencies already strained from staffing shortages and outdated software, said Brittany Christenson, the CEO of AidKit, a vendor that helps states administer SNAP and other public benefits.

“The result is widespread confusion among both administrators and beneficiaries, as states are tasked with integrating new compliance requirements while maintaining service continuity.

“The changes not only increase workloads for states, but they can lead to more errors and longer wait time or applicants,” Christenson said.

“Beneficiaries face a heightened risk of losing aid not because they are unwilling to work, but because they cannot meet new documentation or compliance requirements on time,” she said.

Slow trickle of changes

In Maine, the new work requirement rules are in place, but recipients have some time to meet the altered guidelines, the Portland Press Herald reported. The state estimates changes to work requirements could affect more than 40,000 recipients as soon as this fall.

The state’s Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to Stateline requests for comment. But advocates said food banks are already struggling to keep up with increased demand and decreased supply because of the high cost of food.

“They’re seeing huge increases in families and individuals showing up, needing groceries, needing food every month, some every week, and that’s before any of these cuts to SNAP have happened. So we’re really, we’re very worried,” said Anna Korsen, deputy director of Full Plates Full Potential, a nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in Maine.

More than 70% of Maine households receiving SNAP have at least one person working, Korsen said. While some recipients — including those who are caretakers for relatives — cannot work, many more who are employed will struggle to meet documentation requirements.

“They call them work requirements, but we’ve started calling them work reporting requirements, because we think that’s a more accurate way to portray what they are,” she said.

Alex Carter, policy advocate at the nonprofit legal aid organization Maine Equal Justice, said SNAP recipients will be affected on a rolling basis because of regular six-month eligibility reviews. For example, a 59-year-old who previously would have been exempt from the work requirement may not be notified until next month that their eligibility status is in jeopardy.

“So people are not going to be losing their benefits this month because of those changes, which I think is the thing that is hard to explain to people,” she said. “These things are happening, but we can’t tell people this will happen to you in October or this will happen to you in January. It’s different on a case-by-case basis.”

Carter said her organization is urging Mainers to ensure their contact information is correct with the state and to remain vigilant for official communications on SNAP.

While states are forced to implement the federal changes, Carter said they should emphasize they’re only the messengers. She said Congress and the president should be held responsible for the fallout when people begin losing benefits.

‘It’s very natural to think this is a state decision, or this is a departmental decision, and to direct your anger and your frustration there,” she said. “ … In this case, this is not a state decision. They are required by federal law to implement these work reporting changes.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

A man closes the entrance to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine on Oct. 3 in Baltimore because of the federal government shutdown. States are currently covering costs of some federal programs, but it’s unclear whether they will be repaid once the government reopens. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

States are doing what they generally do during a federal government shutdown: continuing to operate programs serving some of the neediest people.

That means schools are still serving federally subsidized meals and states are distributing funding for the federal food stamp program. For now.

If the shutdown drags on and federal dollars run out, states can only keep programs going for so long. States may choose to pay for some services themselves so residents keep their benefits.

But this time, state leaders have new worries about getting reimbursed for federal costs once the federal spending impasse is resolved. That’s traditionally been the practice following a shutdown, but the Trump administration’s record of pulling funding and targeting Democratic-led states has some officials worried about what comes after the shutdown.

Many states already struggled to balance their own budgets this year. And some fear going without federal reimbursement for shutdown costs could force states to make painful cuts to their own budget priorities.

Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat, said the administration has not made good on its word to states in recent months — freezing some congressionally approved funding and cutting already awarded grants. So it’s likewise unclear whether the federal government will follow previous practice and reimburse states for covering shutdown costs of crucial federal programs such as food assistance.

“I think everything is a risk with this administration. … We in the states are kind of left holding the bag yet again as the federal government tries to sort out what it wants to be when it grows up,” he told Stateline.

Nevada entered the shutdown with more than $1.2 billion in reserves. Last week, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office said in a statement that state funds would be adequate to cover “a short period of time with minimal disruption to services.”

But the governor’s office said a shutdown of more than 30 days would cause more significant challenges for the state.

Lombardo’s office did not respond to Stateline’s questions. But last week, it released a three-page document on the shutdown, saying it expected the federal government to reimburse states once the budget stalemate is resolved.

“As D.C. works through its issues, our administration will continue to support Nevadans in any way we can throughout this unnecessary federal government shutdown,” Lombardo said in the statement.

While mandatory programs such as Medicaid and Social Security continue to send funds to beneficiaries during the shutdown, funding for other safety net programs such as food assistance are more uncertain. The federal government told states there were enough funds for the food stamp program to cover October benefits, though the special food program for women, infants and children may run out of money sooner.

By furloughing workers and halting federal spending, the shutdown could cost the national economy $15 billion per week, President Donald Trump’s economic advisers estimated.

The White House says a prolonged shutdown will affect the economies of every state by reducing employment, federal benefits and consumer spending. White House estimates say this could cost Michigan $361 million per week in lost economic output, for example, while Florida could lose $911 million each week.

‘Fend for themselves’

Some federal services are shuttered during a shutdown: The Environmental Protection Agency has ceased many research, permitting and enforcement efforts, and official jobs data is no longer being released. Federal funds for other programs, including food assistance, are expected to last through the end of the month. But states can elect to spend their own funds on these programs, which were previously authorized by Congress and state legislatures.

Before the shutdown, states were stockpiling reserve funding. The National Association of State Budget Officers reported most state budgets this year maintained or increased rainy day funds. At the same time, state and local governments are borrowing record amounts: As much as $600 billion in municipal bonds is projected to be issued by the end of 2025.

“So states and localities are kind of getting the message they really need to fend for themselves much more than they ever had,” said William Glasgall, public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that works to support public sector workers.

Since January, the Trump administration has stripped states and cities of billions of dollars that Congress approved for education, infrastructure and energy projects. Glasgall said that record leaves states with legitimate concerns about getting repaid for their shutdown-related expenses — a prospect that would likely spark even more lawsuits from Democratic-led states.

“They’ve already, before the shutdown, started rolling back federal funding, and I don’t see any reason why they would stop now,” he said. “The recissions that have been announced are pretty harsh, and it’s money we’re expecting and not getting.”

The last shutdown, which lasted five weeks during Trump’s first term, delayed billions in federal spending and reduced gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced — by $11 billion, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019. Experts say states were repaid for costs they incurred providing federal services during that shutdown.

In Minnesota, State Budget Director Ahna Minge said staff have been studying previous shutdowns. But at a news conference with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz last week, she characterized this shutdown as “unpredictable.”

“The current federal administration may not follow the historic playbook,” she said.

Walz said farmers would be among the first hit as the federal Farm Service Agency has ceased operations in the middle of the state’s harvest season. Among other duties, that agency works on disaster assistance and processes loans during harvest to protect farmers against commodity price fluctuations.

Minge said Minnesota officials think programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children have enough existing federal funds to operate through October. But she said the state budget cannot backfill all the commitments made by federal programs.

“What we know is that the longer a shutdown lasts, the greater the impact to state programs and services,” she said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has pledged to use state dollars to keep WIC afloat if needed, The Associated Press reported. And Colorado lawmakers set aside $7.5 million just before the shutdown to keep WIC running.

Already under strain

In Maryland, the shutdown is compounding the economic instability from Trump’s ongoing efforts to shrink the number of federal employees, agencies and spending.

With more than 160,000 federal employees, Maryland’s economy relies heavily on the federal workforce. The Trump administration has said it may deny back pay to hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers, despite a law he signed in 2019 guaranteeing such back pay.

Chief Deputy Comptroller Andrew Schaufele told lawmakers last week that a shutdown could cost the state $700,000 per day in lost tax revenue.

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore pledged to continue funding some federal programs, but said the state would not tap into its rainy day funds to do so.

“We’re going to continually evaluate how long we can go,” he said at a news conference.

As for getting repaid, Moore spokesperson David Turner told Stateline that the state had received no indication that the federal government would deviate from past practice, “but we are monitoring closely.”

This fiscal uncertainty hits states as they are already struggling to respond to the strain of federal agency layoffs and cuts in the major tax and spending law Trump signed this summer. The law slashed billions in social service funding and created costly new bureaucratic burdens for states, which administer Medicaid and food assistance programs.

“There’s no way, really at this point, to sort of assess with any level of confidence what’s going to happen when you also have these massive layoffs that were going on pre-shutdown,” said Lisa Parshall, a professor of political science at Daemen University in New York. “There’s just a real sense from states and localities — and I think rightly so — that that kind of reliability of the federal government is now in question.”

It may not be a question of whether states are reimbursed for their shutdown expenses, but which states are reimbursed, Parshall said. The Trump administration has publicly targeted funding of liberal-led states and cities over policy disagreements, raising the possibility it could do something similar with the shutdown.

“Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, you know, you could argue,” she said. “But it’s definitely a thing that seems to be adding to this level of uncertainty — this shutdown feels different.”

In California, officials just closed a nearly $12 billion shortfall when negotiating the budget that was approved in June. The budget deficit is expected to grow to more than $17 billion next year, said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the State of California Department of Finance, which advises the governor and state agencies on budget issues.

“There isn’t a long-term, open-ended line of credit available if this drags out,” he said of the federal government shutdown.

The depth of reserve funds available varies by federally funded program, he said. CalFresh, California’s name for its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, has enough funds to cover food stamp benefits for this month, but anything beyond that is uncertain.

“If the duration of this is in the matter of days, it will be an inconvenience, but should not pose a massive problem,” he said. “However, if it does drag out for an extended period of time, then clearly it’s going to be a problem.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.