The Millions of Poor Americans at the Mercy of the Shutdown

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Speaker 2 From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the daily.

Speaker 2 You get benefits on the first, yeah?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And what happened today?

Speaker 2 Um, they just didn't load.

Speaker 4 It says that they will arrive, but they will be late.

Speaker 2 The Trump administration has agreed to restore some of the funding for the food program known as SNAP.

Speaker 2 But there's still uncertainty about how much money will come through and when. What would that normally look like today?

Speaker 3 It would would be like $7.80.

Speaker 2 Is there an account balance?

Speaker 3 I have 12 cents.

Speaker 2 Tens of millions of Americans, one in eight, rely on SNAP. Without federal assistance, many people do not know how they will provide for themselves or their families.

Speaker 5 I adopted my grandson. He's two.

Speaker 6 And it's terrifying thinking I can't feed him.

Speaker 2 Now that that's been frozen, I literally have nothing in the house.

Speaker 5 It's not everybody's fault that Congress can't make a decision on a bill.

Speaker 5 So they shouldn't punish the low-income family, the needy people,

Speaker 3 because that's what we rely on.

Speaker 3 Today,

Speaker 2 we hear from people in one of the communities most reliant on food aid, and from my colleague Tony Rahm about the ongoing fight over SNAP as the government enters its second month of a shutdown.

Speaker 2 It's Tuesday, November 4th.

Speaker 2 Are we getting going?

Speaker 3 It looks like we're going to start rolling now.

Speaker 2 Last Friday, daily producers Olivia Knatt and Anna Foley went to Kermit, West Virginia, a rural town of about 300 people.

Speaker 8 How about Tammy?

Speaker 8 Apples and meat, same thing. One per family, up to two families per car.

Speaker 2 There was a mobile food pantry set up outside a Baptist church. Volunteers loaded items including eggs, potatoes, plums, and cucumbers into people's cars.

Speaker 9 Honey, that's good.

Speaker 9 Thank you.

Speaker 2 West Virginia is one of the top recipients of SNAP benefits in the country. About 16% of West Virginians get food assistance through SNAP.

Speaker 2 And even with the extra help, a lot of people rely on food pantries, especially at the end of the month and especially this month when there hasn't been much clarity about whether benefits were coming or not.

Speaker 3 Hi there.

Speaker 2 My name's Olivia. I'm with the New York Times and I was.
Walking down the line of cars, Olivia and Anna spoke to people about what they were planning to do next.

Speaker 3 I am. Okay.
You all want to talk?

Speaker 2 My name's Anna. So could you start by telling me your name and where you're from, how long you've lived here, a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 3 My name's Roy Masher

Speaker 3 and I'm from Kermit, West Virginia.

Speaker 4 My name's Teresa Hodge. I live here on Stone Cove, right down the holler.

Speaker 3 My name is Brianna Lockhart.

Speaker 3 I was a stay-at-home mama for a while, but just recently went back to work because of the shutdown that's going on.

Speaker 2 And what brings you guys out here today?

Speaker 9 Well, right now times are rough. I mean, they took the food stamps, so you got to do what you got to do.
Feed your family.

Speaker 11 I'm picking up for me, and I brought my cousin with me so she can get me.

Speaker 2 Got some meat.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's what they said. It was supposed to be meat and some food.

Speaker 2 I've seen the list and they have turkey and eggs.

Speaker 11 That'll work. At least I'll be able to have something for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 What can a box of food do?

Speaker 3 Like, what is the impact for your family?

Speaker 7 Well, that's going to be able to effectively feed my family for an extra week.

Speaker 7 You know, we're going to be in a struggle to make sure that it's either going to be food or bills because even though my wife works full-time, we still depend on SNAP benefits to help get us through buying the extra meat and stuff like that.

Speaker 11 Since there'll be no stints, this food bank will be the only food I have to go in my house.

Speaker 2 How much money do you receive, if you don't mind me asking? Snap $136.

Speaker 12 I think it's like $2.92.

Speaker 9 I get a whole $63.

Speaker 2 How far does $63 go for you?

Speaker 9 Two bags. And you might get a box of crackers, maybe.

Speaker 6 You know, even with your food sniffs, usually about two weeks before the month comes back up, you're skimming tight. You're running to food banks trying to get help.

Speaker 6 You know, it's just plain and simple.

Speaker 2 Can you describe like what a dinner would look like with your snap benefits? And then if you can imagine, you know, if you don't have the snap benefits, what a dinner looks like in that situation too.

Speaker 3 With the snap benefits, we're going to have a good southern meal, like fried chicken and green beans, mashed potatoes, all the good stuff, rolls, all that.

Speaker 3 But without, it's more like hot dogs and raymondles and stuff like that. And that's just not healthy.
It's really not.

Speaker 2 When did you find out that you probably weren't going to be receiving benefits for November?

Speaker 3 Two weeks ago.

Speaker 7 When the government got shut down, we kind of had an idea that, you know, like if people aren't going to get paid their salaries, then

Speaker 3 government assistance is going to be the last thing they're worried about.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when that realization kind of struck you, how did that make you feel?

Speaker 7 It made me feel less important to my lawmakers than what I used to feel. I served our country in the Navy, and it's like...

Speaker 7 I feel like my family as veterans doubly gets looked down upon because we just get cast aside.

Speaker 3 We're angry.

Speaker 4 We're angry. Because, Because, you know, we do count.

Speaker 3 To be honest, I have a lot of hatred. Like, and Trump was one of those that I was all for.

Speaker 3 But now I feel like he's more about the money and helping the rich and like not caring about the people that really do need help.

Speaker 6 The Democrats down there,

Speaker 6 they don't need to be getting their payday, but they're all rich people. So it don't, you know, it don't hurt.
Their kids and grandkids ain't going to go hungry.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 What are are your plans for making ends meet this month?

Speaker 12 Hunting season's coming in, so that helps out a lot.

Speaker 12 You can't really depend on the government for nothing, so you gotta

Speaker 6 eat more squirrel and deer.

Speaker 9 If I had children, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna feed them babies.
Whatever it takes to do it, I'm gonna feed them.

Speaker 2 You think people might get really desperate?

Speaker 9 They are now.

Speaker 4 We're going to be against each other over something as simple as a loaf of bread before it's over.

Speaker 11 There's already people that have to decide between food and their medicine.

Speaker 2 Have you ever had to make a choice like that?

Speaker 3 A couple of times. A couple of times.

Speaker 13 And it wasn't for this food bank, you're about two months ago. If it wasn't for this food bank, me and my little grandson would have starved for about 10 days.

Speaker 13 We eat mashed potatoes and macaronis for four days out of this food bank. And I wouldn't have had nothing to eat with that little boy if I hadn't them.

Speaker 13 And most of the time, I didn't eat it all because I'd make sure he had something.

Speaker 2 I'm so sorry.

Speaker 13 And yes, it's very upsetting. You can understand that, right?

Speaker 13 And I think it's a sad state of affairs when poor people that are not able to work anymore, and I've worked, believe me, my whole life, can't even get away to eat.

Speaker 2 Coming up, my colleague Tony Rahm explains the standoff in Washington that's delayed SNAP funding.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 So Tony, we just heard from people that our producers interviewed at a food pantry in West Virginia, and we heard a lot of confusion and a lot of worry.

Speaker 2 Could you explain what is going on with SNAP funding right now?

Speaker 10 SNAP is in a very difficult place, and the concerns that you're hearing out of West Virginia are concerns that we're hearing nationally as this shutdown now lapses almost into its sixth week.

Speaker 10 SNAP is a program that serves about 42 million people across the country. And even though it's a permanent fixture in law, lawmakers have to put money into that program every year.

Speaker 10 But because the shutdown has gone on so long, SNAP has exhausted its normal budget. And so that's left this program at a bit of a crossroads.

Speaker 2 You've been following some legal challenges to the administration's position that it wouldn't or couldn't release any SNAP funding. What is the status of those challenges?

Speaker 10 We've seen a number of cities and states and nonprofits file lawsuits against the Trump administration over the way that it has handled SNAP during the government shutdown.

Speaker 10 And this all stemmed from a decision that the administration made just a few weeks ago.

Speaker 10 Initially, USDA said it was going to tap a special set of emergency funds to pay SNAP benefits if the shutdown dragged into November.

Speaker 10 This is a pot of money that was roughly about $5 billion or so as of late October. That's supposed to be used in instances where SNAP doesn't have enough to cover benefits for everybody.

Speaker 10 And that's a lot, but still not enough to hit the roughly $8 billion or so that it needs every month to keep those benefits flowing.

Speaker 10 But sort of abruptly, the administration said it wasn't going to use this money after all. And that created this huge fiscal financial cliff that we were seeing for the program as we entered November.

Speaker 10 And so cities and states and religious groups and others filed lawsuits against the administration, essentially to force the release of funds.

Speaker 10 In both cases, federal judges have found serious issues with the way that the Trump administration has handled the SNAP program.

Speaker 10 But only one of those courts, at least so far, has ordered the administration to spend that money and told the administration that it had until Monday to essentially say how it was going to do so.

Speaker 10 We finally got that information from the administration.

Speaker 10 And the short of it is that the Trump administration is just going to tap only the small set of emergency funds that it has for SNAP and not some of the other money it has laying around across government.

Speaker 10 And as a result of that, it's going to make partial payments to people, but those partial payments may be... perhaps half of what families are expecting to see in the month of November.

Speaker 10 And it's not even clear when that money might reach the millions of people who depend on SNAP.

Speaker 10 So while in some ways it was a bit of a victory for people who subscribe to this program, it's a little unclear if it's actually going to provide the kind of relief that these families truly need.

Speaker 2 Is there any precedent for any of this? Has anything like this happened before?

Speaker 10 No, no, we haven't seen anything like this with the SNAP program.

Speaker 10 I mean, there are fights around federal safety net programs all the time, but, you know, both sides admitted while they were in court that there had never really been anything like this.

Speaker 2 So I can imagine that this is really confusing to the 40 million people that rely on this funding to feed themselves or their families. Can you remind us who are these folks?

Speaker 2 What does the money get used for? And how exactly does the program work?

Speaker 10 So SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and it's the largest anti-hunger program that the federal government offers.

Speaker 10 There are about 42 million or so people who receive benefits under SNAP every single month, which amounts to about one in eight Americans. And these are people located all over the country.

Speaker 10 They live in rural and urban areas. They live in Democratic and Republican-leaning communities.
Many of them are children. Some of them are veterans.
They're seniors.

Speaker 10 It's a pretty wide swath of the population that relies on this critical federal safety net program. But there are some restrictions to it.

Speaker 10 Generally speaking, to get on SNAP, you have to make or earn an amount of money near the poverty line.

Speaker 10 For people who qualify, the average benefit per person is about $187 a month, which is critical to helping these people buy groceries, but doesn't go all the way in meeting all of their nutrition needs.

Speaker 10 And so that's why SNAP is part of this bigger picture of food pantries and other services that help address the issue of hunger here in the United States.

Speaker 10 And in short, the way it works is that the federal government approves money for SNAP, and eventually that money makes its way to states and onto benefit cards that millions of Americans use.

Speaker 2 How did SNAP end up in the crosshairs of the administration to begin with?

Speaker 10 Snap has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for some time now.

Speaker 10 It even predates this administration because there's a belief among Republicans that many of the people who receive those benefits don't actually need them or don't deserve them.

Speaker 10 And so we've seen a number of instances in which Republicans have led efforts to restrict who can be part of SNAP and the kinds of benefits that people can receive.

Speaker 10 And we saw this most recently in the context of the debate around the president's tax package, where one of the ways Republicans offset the massive costs of that bill was to cut SNAP, to impose new work requirements on recipients, which helped save Washington some money, but also created a situation in which millions of people may lose access to benefits as a result.

Speaker 10 And so in many many ways, what we're seeing right now is that play out on a much larger scale.

Speaker 10 Because while President Trump has been willing to move around various pots of money within the budget during the shutdown to ease some of its impacts, he's largely done that for programs that he personally cares about or those that may be essential to his political agenda.

Speaker 10 But in others like SNAP, where Republicans have long sought to cut, this administration has not been as generous and hasn't been as willing to move money around.

Speaker 10 And indeed, that's why this administration is only providing partial payments. It's because a court has told them to.

Speaker 2 Basically, what you're saying is that during the shutdown, the administration has found ways, sometimes questionable, sometimes temporary, but nevertheless, has found ways to pay for other things it needs to fund, like the military, for example, other federal employees.

Speaker 2 So this feels a little bit more deliberate. And I just sort of wonder what purpose withholding SNAP serves politically.

Speaker 10 In some ways, this is about political retribution.

Speaker 10 If you rewind the clock back a few weeks, when President Trump was asked about the shutdown and how he was going to handle it, he said that he was going to go after, quote, Democrat programs.

Speaker 10 And President Trump at the time didn't really explain what he meant. He didn't identify anything specific.

Speaker 10 But what we have seen since the president made that threat is a very deliberate effort across the administration to cut funding streams that they associate with members of the political opposition.

Speaker 10 And even President Trump sort of acknowledged this just a few days ago when he said that the SNAP program was one that largely benefited Democrats, that most of the people on the program were Democratic voters.

Speaker 10 We know that that is not indeed the case.

Speaker 10 But throughout all of this has just been this very clear effort to go after areas that Democrats like in a bid to pressure them into coming to the negotiating table.

Speaker 2 How does does this fit into sort of the larger agenda of the Trump administration vis-a-vis

Speaker 2 cutting the government, shrinking the government, cutting programs?

Speaker 10 Yeah, in many ways, this fight, this crisis around SNAP is just a microcosm of everything that President Trump has been trying to do with federal spending since he returned to office.

Speaker 10 You know, on one hand, This is about rethinking the size and the reach and the role of government in Americans' lives. And you can see that in the programs that the president has looked to cut.

Speaker 10 That's cuts to federal health and education and science and research and other programs and the reality that his budget for the 2026 fiscal year, if Congress were to adopt it, would set domestic spending at its lowest level in modern history.

Speaker 10 But beyond that, The other really dynamic facet of all of this is that President Trump and his top budget advisor, Russell Vogt, have gone to great lengths to recalibrate the the budget without the approval of Congress, which has that power of the purse under the Constitution.

Speaker 10 They have closed entire agencies and laid off droves of workers and halted billions of dollars in federal spending enacted by Congress without getting lawmakers' support.

Speaker 10 And so the SNAP program just really sits in the middle of all that because it shows the ways in which the president wants to rethink those federal safety net programs and the cuts that he aspires to make, but also the ways he's willing to use presidential power to achieve them.

Speaker 2 So now that the administration has said that it will comply with a court order and find a way to fund the SNAP program, at least partially, how quickly does that mean that people who receive SNAP benefits will actually see that money in their accounts?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's the big question. And in short, we just don't know yet.

Speaker 10 Because the Trump administration previously told the court that by providing partial payments, it could take potentially weeks weeks or maybe in some cases, months before the federal government and the states could get these benefits out to the millions of people who depend on them.

Speaker 10 This could have been avoided potentially if the government had chosen to provide full payments and had tapped other sources of money to backfill that shortfall.

Speaker 10 But the Trump administration opted not to do that.

Speaker 10 And as a result, millions of people still find themselves facing the same uncertainty today that they did a few days ago about when that next snap payment is going to arrive.

Speaker 2 Which makes me wonder, just to go back to West Virginia for a minute, a state that Trump won handily in the last election.

Speaker 2 People are angry and people are confused. They don't understand why they're losing their benefits.

Speaker 2 And so it sounds like the political calculation is that this will ultimately benefit Republicans more. especially in the shutdown negotiations.
But do you think that that is correct?

Speaker 2 What is your assessment of the political calculation that's been done?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think they bet that, A, it it will be the kind of thing that pressures Democrats into negotiating.

Speaker 10 And B, that absent that, the president can accomplish what he proposed to do as part of his 2026 budget, even without having Congress vote on it.

Speaker 10 Whether that translates into a victory in the eyes of the American people remains to be seen.

Speaker 10 I think there have been times where people have blamed the administration for the cuts across government and the ways that that's affected their daily lives.

Speaker 10 But there's also been times where I think people just blame what's happening on just the general mess of Washington.

Speaker 10 And the result isn't that they see it as the work of one party or another, but just another chip away at their confidence in the work of government.

Speaker 10 And so I think that's in many ways one of the lasting repercussions here.

Speaker 10 It's just another instance where people look at Washington and think, this place isn't doing anything for me, and I can't count on it for help when I'm in my greatest need.

Speaker 10 And so, in many ways, it really just distills how bad things have gotten here in the nation's capital and the real people who might be hurt in the process when the two parties can't talk to each other.

Speaker 2 Tony, thank you so much.

Speaker 10 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 8 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 The president and others have made unproven claims that the use of Tylenol and other acetaminophen products during pregnancy can lead to autism.

Speaker 2 And President Trump weighed in on the race for New York City mayor on the eve of Election Day.

Speaker 2 In a social media post, he endorsed former Governor Andrew Cuomo in his uphill battle to defeat Assemblyman Zoron Mondani, the Democratic nominee.

Speaker 2 And he vowed to limit federal funds going to New York City if Momdani wins.

Speaker 2 Today's episode was reported and produced by Olivia Knatt and Anna Foley with help from Mooj Zaidi. It was edited by Patricia Willins with help from Paige Cowett and fact-checked by Susan Lee.

Speaker 2 Contains the music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to David Farenthold, Rachel Culbertson, and the Facing Hunger Food Bank.

Speaker 2 That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams.
See you tomorrow.

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