Grace, who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy, is one of the 41.7 million people nationwide who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps families like hers buy food. Nearly 40% of the recipients — including Grace’s 5-month-old daughter — are children. Despite Grace’s ongoing struggle to make ends meet, when I spoke to her, Grace kept saying she was “thankful” and “lucky,” and, “It’s OK,” while her daughter cooed nearby.
But Grace has caught a lot of bad breaks the past year. She says she was trying to figure out her employer’s maternity leave policies when she was fired — a week before her daughter was born — after reporting elderly abuse she had witnessed at work. As a first-time mom under stress, Grace struggles to make enough milk to breastfeed or pump bottles so family members can feed her daughter while she works (she is now self-employed as a full-time freelance nurse). So she turned to the baby formula options covered by the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits, but each one caused her daughter either reflux or constipation. She finally found a formula that worked, but it costs about $70 a can and can’t be purchased with WIC benefits.
But Grace is savvy. She found out the Similac formula she wanted was covered by a different aid program, SNAP. After going through the application process four times, Grace finally received her first SNAP benefits, totaling $500, two months ago. “It made a drastic change to my stress level in terms of figuring out how I would feed her,” Grace tells Yahoo. Half of that monthly payment covers food and formula for her daughter, and the other half goes to Grace, which adds up to less than $9 a day for her own meals.
Then came a text message from the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) on Oct. 30, notifying her that the state would not be receiving its SNAP benefits from the federal government due to the ongoing shutdown. Like millions of others, Grace is facing a month or more without the funds that may be the only thing standing between her family and hunger. “As a parent, I can starve, but my daughter can’t,” Grace says.
A looming crisis unfolding online
On social media sites, including Reddit and TikTok, families who rely on SNAP have been posting their outrage, fears, tips and pleas for help, while familiar arguments and blame games play out in the comments sections.
On Reddit, a 20-year-old who lives with their mother wrote, “panic setting in, family of 6 no SNAP in Nov.,” and asked for tips on how to make food last longer. A mother of five posted on TikTok about losing her SNAP benefits, only to get trolled by people in the comments. Another mom who relies on SNAP asked people to stay engaged with her TikTok page, hoping she’d make a little money to make ends meet. “Due to being in nursing school full-time, I’m only able to work part-time,” she wrote. “After paying the bills, there’s nothing left for food” without SNAP benefits. Other SNAP beneficiaries are trying to boost morale — like in this Reddit thread called “We are worthy” — while some issue warnings, such as, “This may last longer than November.”
“I’m angry because it’s children and the elderly who suffer, and I’m probably going to be extremely stressed figuring this out again,” Grace says. But she can’t “create room” for that disappointment right now; she’s too busy working and trying to come up with a plan to feed herself and her daughter.
What will happen?
The experts I spoke with say they don’t really know what will happen next. “In the decades-long history of food stamps and the supplemental nutrition assistance program, there has never been a month when funds were not delivered,” says Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where she studies social and safety net policies. “So we’re on the precipice of an unprecedented action — and a seemingly unlawful one.”
That’s because Congress created a contingency fund that’s supposed to be used to pay out SNAP benefits during emergencies when the program falls short or in the case of a government shutdown. Twenty-five states have sued the Trump administration over the SNAP freeze, insisting the federal government release the contingency funds — an estimated $5 billion or more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that benefits cannot be released because they haven’t been appropriated amid the shutdown. SNAP benefits are supposed to start going out Saturday, Nov. 1. The judge in that case and a judge in a second similar one each ruled on Friday, Oct. 31, that USDA must distribute at least partial funds. The USDA was given until Monday to respond.
For families who typically receive SNAP, it may yet mean a month of hunger ahead and real health consequences. “It really puts one in eight American families [who rely on SNAP] at risk of facing immediate consequences of food insecurity, going hungry and needing to make choices about how to put food on the table,” Julia Wolfson, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, tells Yahoo. That may mean putting off or leaving other bills unpaid, risking housing security or electricity.
For Grace, the car payment will probably be the first thing she puts on pause while she surveys the pantry to figure out how to stretch the food she has for as long as possible. Food pantries are already low on stock and far from equipped to fill the void left by the frozen SNAP benefits, says Wolfson.
So what now? “I’m at the point of looking at other resources,” says Grace. “If that means uprooting myself and my child … I will.” She’s begun looking into dual citizenship or simply starting over in another country. “It’s better than sitting here trying to figure out: Do I pay my car payment or my utilities? My power or my water? Do I pay my rent or do I go homeless?” in order to afford to feed her baby and herself, Grace says.
