The Atlantic, November 2025
Millions of the poorest Americans are stuck in food-stamp limbo. They still do not know when their benefits will arrive—or if they will at all.
In the past few days, the government shutdown has thrown the food-stamp program, formally known as SNAP, into chaos. On Friday, after the Trump administration said that SNAP was on the verge of running out of money, a federal judge ordered the White House to tap into a reserve of funds and pay out billions of dollars in benefits. Then, yesterday, the administration said that it had the funds to provide people on food stamps with only half of their monthly allotment of benefits. To make matters even more confusing, President Donald Trump today appeared to contradict his own Justice Department: SNAP benefits, he posted on Truth Social, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later appeared to walk back the president’s post. The administration is “fully complying” with the court order, she said. (When reached for comment, the White House pointed me back to Leavitt’s press briefing.) If the administration makes good on its promise, Americans still might not get their benefits for quite some time. In a legal filing, the administration said that it may take some states several months—yes, months—to get the benefits released, despite the fact that the judge ordered the benefits to be released by tomorrow.
Continue reading at The Atlantic.
