{"id":253717,"date":"2025-10-27T01:53:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T01:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253717\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T01:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T01:53:13","slug":"us-says-no-federal-food-aid-will-go-out-from-next-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253717\/","title":{"rendered":"US says no federal food aid will go out from next month"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out from November 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on.<\/p>\n

The notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November.<\/p>\n

The program helps about one in eight Americans buy groceries.<\/p>\n

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA notice says.<\/p>\n

“At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”<\/p>\n

The shutdown, which began on October 1, is the second-longest on record.<\/p>\n

While the Republican administration took steps leading up to the shutdown to ensure SNAP benefits were paid this month, the cut-off would expand the impact of the impasse to a wider swath of Americans \u2014 and some of those most in need \u2014 unless a political resolution is found in a few days.<\/p>\n

The administration blames Democrats, who say they will not agree to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate with them on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say Democrats must first agree to reopen the government before negotiation.<\/p>\n

What the history of US government shutdowns tells us<\/a><\/p>\n

While shutdowns have been a possibility since 1976, when Congress introduced the modern budget process, they’ve been a relatively rare occurrence. Here’s a look at how previous shutdowns have played out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Democratic lawmakers have written to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting to use contingency funds to cover the bulk of next month’s benefits.<\/p>\n

But a USDA memo that surfaced on Friday says “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits”. The document says the money is reserved for things such as helping people in disaster areas.<\/p>\n

It cited a storm named Melissa, which has strengthened into a major hurricane<\/a>, as an example of why it is important to have the money available to mobilise quickly in the event of a disaster.<\/p>\n

The prospect of families not receiving food aid has deeply concerned states run by both parties.<\/p>\n

Some states have pledged to keep SNAP benefits flowing even if the federal program halts payments, but there are questions about whether the US government directives may allow that to happen. The USDA memo also says states would not be reimbursed for temporarily picking up the cost.<\/p>\n

Other states are telling SNAP recipients to be ready for the benefits to stop. Arkansas and Oklahoma, for example, are advising recipients to identify food pantries and other groups that help with food.<\/p>\n

US Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn, accused Republicans and Trump of not agreeing to negotiate.<\/p>\n

“The reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” Murphy said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.<\/p>\n

“We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[98855,23,4515,12,299,137851,2420,3,2186,56915,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-253717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-aid","tag-america","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-food","tag-food-stamp","tag-government","tag-news","tag-republicans","tag-shutdown","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}