CalFresh food benefits are now being loaded onto users\u2019 EBT cards, after being delayed for days by the Trump administration amid an ongoing federal shutdown, San Diego County said Friday.<\/p>\n
CalFresh users who would normally get their benefits from the first to the seventh of the month should now have funds loaded on their cards, and remaining benefits will be issued on schedule as normal, San Diego County said.<\/p>\n
CalFresh is California\u2019s version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, one of the country\u2019s largest anti-poverty programs that provides monthly funds for low-income Americans to buy food.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has been withholding SNAP benefits from 42 million low-income Americans, including 5.5 million Californians, despite federal court orders saying it must use billions in available reserves to fund the program.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s withholding of SNAP benefits has prompted outrage across the country, and a lawsuit from California and other states. It has created anxiety for families about how they would feed themselves this month and has placed significant strain on food banks, who are also serving federal workers still going without pay because of the shutdown.<\/p>\n
Karola Altamirano, a 29-year-old resident of City Heights, went to a food bank distribution for the first time on Thursday morning. She uses CalFresh to not only to feed herself but her brother\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been crazy. It\u2019s stressful,\u201d Altamirano said. \u201cI literally have nothing in my fridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits by Friday \u2014 a decision that the administration is now appealing.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the Thursday ruling, Gov. Gavin Newsom said CalFresh benefits are beginning to load onto user\u2019s EBT cards. His office did not immediately say whether the funds were coming from the state or federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump administration is literally fighting in court to ensure that families can\u2019t access food,\u201d said Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos in an email. \u201cWe will let them speak to their unconscionable legal strategy, but filing an appeal does not excuse them from following \u00a0the court\u2019s order requiring them to fund these benefits for the \u00a0American people.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 400,000 San Diego County residents use CalFresh, totaling $74 million in benefits every month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CalFresh food benefits are now being loaded onto users\u2019 EBT cards, after being delayed for days by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[8,23,100,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-42917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california-news","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}