Fruit is displayed at an Anchorage grocery store. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

WASHINGTON — The near-certain freeze on key federal nutrition programs will put particular pressure on tribal communities, according to advocates and U.S. senators of both parties.

American Indian and Alaska Native communities are scrambling to fill anticipated gaps in food security and assistance created by the lack of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, during the ongoing government shutdown.

Sarah Harris, the secretary of United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc. and United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, a nonprofit and an associated advocacy group for 33 federally recognized tribal nations from Texas to Maine, told the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee during a Wednesday hearing that uncertainty over the availability of SNAP and WIC benefits is forcing tribal nations to cover the shortfall.

“Given the emergent nature of all of this crisis, tribes are scrambling, and so they’re spending their own time and resources to provide the most basic of human needs — food — for their citizens,” Harris said.

Harris gave an example of her nonprofit’s president, Penobscot Indian Nation Chief Kirk Francis, who was working with his tribal council to reallocate $200,000 to bridge the nutrition funding gap for November alone. 

“This includes asking tribal hunters to donate moose meat so that elders can be fed,” she said.

A 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that food insecurity among American Indian and Alaska Native households is “significantly greater than for all U.S. households.” 

Federal ‘failure’ squeezes tribal nations 

Congress failed to fund SNAP and WIC, two major U.S. Department of Agriculture initiatives — and nearly every other discretionary federal program — for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

USDA has said it will not tap into its multi-year contingency fund to keep the program that serves 42 million people afloat in November — an about-face from its Sept. 30 shutdown plan that said it would use such funds during the shutdown. 

Lawsuits are underway to force USDA to use its reserve fund.

WIC serves nearly 7 million people and offers “free healthy foods, breastfeeding support, nutrition education and referrals to other services,” according to USDA. The program got a $300 million infusion from USDA to keep it running through October. But as November approaches, advocates are calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to provide additional emergency funds.

Some states are working to cover the funding shortfall for SNAP recipients. Tribal nations are as well, Harris said Wednesday.

“We must further subsidize to provide for the failure of our federal partners to meet their trust and treaty obligations,” she said.

“It’s also important to recognize, too, that tribal nations, we already face long-standing and continuing challenges with providing access to healthy and nutritious food for our citizens, and the challenges contribute to health and educational and overall wellness disparities across all of our tribal communities,” Harris added. 

Deciding between ‘fuel and food’

Ben Mallott, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said that without SNAP and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, “our communities and tribal citizens will have to decide between fuel and food.” 

LIHEAP helps assist low-income families with energy costs and is managed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The program has faced funding uncertainties and disruptions due to the shutdown. 

Mallott, who leads the largest statewide Native organization in Alaska, noted that “in some of our communities, elders are there alone and might not have family to help them with food security.” 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Senate committee, said concerns about “food versus fuel” are “very real when we talk about food insecurity.” 

The Alaska Republican also pointed to a major typhoon that hit her state earlier in October and its impacts on food supply. 

“We have heard and seen the pictures of the loss from the Typhoon Halong, and you see devastation within the village,” Murkowski said. “But the part of it that is really heartrending is when you see freezers that have been stocked with subsistence foods … all that had been gathered that would take these families through the winter that now is lost because there’s no power in these villages, and so their food source for the winter is gone.” 

Coupled with the reliance on SNAP, Murkowski said “this is a point that for many in Alaska is tangibly real and tangibly frightening, and so, everything that we can do to make sure that SNAP and WIC funding is able to proceed, I think, has got to be a priority for us.”

Impacts on tribal nations in Minnesota, Nevada 

Other senators on the panel highlighted the consequences of funding for nutrition programs running out for Native communities in their states.

Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said that 200 families living in the Duck Valley Indian Reservation would “lose access to essential food support.”

In response, the “tribe is preparing to rely on traditional practices such as hunting elk to feed their members,” adding that “it’s important to highlight how serious of an issue this will become,” she said.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said she’s hearing from tribal nations in her state about people switching from SNAP to another USDA program, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, or FDPIR.

“I’m hearing from Minnesota tribes that there’s kind of switching happening right now, as people are trying to figure out where is the best place to be able to get stable sources of nutrition assistance for folks on tribal lands,” she said.

FDPIR provides food “to income-eligible households living on Indian reservations and to Native American households residing in designated areas near reservations or in Oklahoma,” according to USDA. 

Households are not allowed to participate in both SNAP and FDPIR in the same month. The agency said average monthly participation for FDPIR in fiscal 2023 included 49,339 people. 

“People are in the midst of sort of trying to figure out how to change their benefits,” Smith said.

She added that this came on top of massive cuts to SNAP in Trump’s signature tax and spending cut package he signed into law earlier this year. 

This report was corrected to reflect that Sarah Harris, the secretary of United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc. and United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, in her remarks referred to moose meat.

Canned foods on grocery store shelves. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

WASHINGTON — The stakes of the ongoing government shutdown rose Monday as the U.S. Department of Agriculture doubled down on its position that food benefits for November could not be paid and a union for federal workers implored lawmakers to pass a stopgap measure.

As the government shutdown entered day 27, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to add pressure on U.S. Senate Democrats to approve the House Republicans’ stopgap government funding bill by refusing to use USDA resources to stretch critical food assistance benefits to the most vulnerable Americans. 

USDA confirmed over the weekend it will not follow its own contingency plan — which the department has removed from its website — to tap into its multi-year contingency fund to cover food assistance for more than 42 million people for November. 

The department also pinned a fiery message to its website blaming Democrats for the lapse in benefits and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Democrats to approve a stopgap funding measure to restore food assistance.

Democrats have voted against the GOP short-term spending bill to draw attention to and force negotiations on tax credits that will expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” according to the banner across USDA’s website. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”

The banner falsely indicated that Democrats’ sole goal was to provide health insurance to immigrants in the country without legal authorization and transgender patients.

Reversal on SNAP contingency

But the move represents a reversal from the administration’s own policy, laid out in a Sept. 30 contingency plan on the eve of the shutdown that States Newsroom reported Friday. 

The plan detailed how the agency would use the contingency fund provided by Congress to continue benefits. The fund holds roughly $6 billion, about two-thirds of a month of SNAP benefits, meaning USDA would still have to reshuffle an additional $3 billion to cover the remainder for November.

Hundreds of Democratic lawmakers, and the top Senate Republican appropriator, Susan Collins of Maine, have pressed USDA to use its contingency fund. 

Democrats, such as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, have also criticized the Trump administration for refusing to use its resources, despite the contradiction in its own Sept. 30 contingency plan and its shuffling of funds for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.

“We know that Trump has the resources to continue SNAP and other programs like WIC,” Booker said. “Weaponizing food assistance is, simply put, a new and disgusting low.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed that sentiment in a floor speech Monday.

“The administration is making an intentional choice not to fund SNAP this weekend,” the New York Democrat said. “The emergency funding is there. The administration is just choosing not to use it.”

USDA did not respond to a request for comment Monday. 

Millions of vulnerable people, such those who have low incomes or are living with disabilities, rely on SNAP. About 40% of SNAP recipients are children 17 and younger.   

Union calls for stopgap

Another form of pressure on Democrats arrived Monday with the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, calling for lawmakers to strike a deal to reopen the government.  

As the shutdown nears a month, most of the roughly 2 million civilian federal workers have already missed paychecks. 

The AFGE is typically more politically aligned with Democrats and had held off on publicly weighing in in favor of a stopgap until Monday when Everett Kelley, the union’s president, called for Congress to end the government shutdown and pass a continuing resolution to resume funding.

“Because when the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” Kelley said in the statement. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.” 

Johnson added that he hopes the recent statement from the union representing 800,000 federal workers pushes Senate Democrats to approve the House’s stopgap.

“They understand the reality of this,” he said. 

Johnson defends USDA move

Johnson defended USDA’s decision not to use its contingency fund for SNAP during a morning press conference.

USDA has argued that those funds can only be used for natural disasters or similar emergencies. 

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, agreed with that reasoning.

“It certainly looks legitimate to me,” he said. “The contingency funds are not legally available to cover the benefits right now. The reason is because it’s a finite source of funds. It was appropriated by Congress, and if they transfer funds from these other sources, it pulls it away immediately from school meals and infant formula. So … it’s a trade off.” 

USDA earlier this month reshuffled funds to several nutrition programs, including WIC,  the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. 

States scrambling

States are demanding answers about why USDA has paused SNAP benefits. On Friday, 23 state attorneys general sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and questioned the legal basis for the agency to pause benefits for SNAP.

In the face of disappearing federal funds, states may choose to spend more on food assistance,  

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Monday she would “fast-track” $30 million in state emergency food assistance to supplement SNAP benefits.

Johnson said that if Senate Democrats are worried about SNAP benefits not being available for November, they should pass the House’s stopgap government funding bill. 

“The best way for SNAP benefits to be paid on time is for the Democrats to end their shutdown, and that could happen right now, if they would show some spine,” Johnson said.