On September 27th, 2025, FRAC (the Food Research & Action Center) uploaded a blog describing what would happen to SNAP benefits under a government shutdown, which described how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP for short, works. Every month, states send out electronic files to EBT that contain information on each SNAP household’s benefit amount. The EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) processes these files and loads SNAP benefits onto EBT cards. The money for SNAP comes from the federal government.
The government shutdown has now followed well past mid-October and into November. FRAC stated in their blog that the USDA, “could technically tap its contingency reserve funding to cover SNAP costs, and that under the previous administration, that reserve was at $6 billion. But now, we are unaware of how much of that $6 billion remains and if the Trump administration would choose to use it.
CPR News released an article on October 23rd, 2025, detailing how SNAP benefits would “become the next shutdown casualty” under the government shutdown. In this article, CPR interviews people that were preparing to deal with the government shutdown, which, beginning its fourth week, would mean that the government is not providing federal dollars towards food aid. Both people interviewed by CPR spoke about food banks.
Dawn Washington said that, “I’m going to hit up the local food banks to see what they’re offering and make do with whatever they give me,” and Travis Haynes stating that, “I’ve never been to a food bank. I know there’s multiple locations here in town, but I’ve never had to go that route, yet.”
Weld County alone has 12% of residents that receive SNAP benefits (data from the official Colorado SNAP recipient map). Food banks are vital for people currently. Some people are only able to afford to eat due to their SNAP benefits; without them, they can’t eat.
Food banks are in high demand for those in need, and Colorado governor Jared Polis announced a plan to request $10 million for state food banks on October 22nd, 2025. According to Colorado Newsline, approximately $120 million in SNAP benefits are given to low-income households each month in Colorado, being distributed to 600,000 Coloradans.
Spread across the month, Polis is requesting the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee to approve $3.3 million per week. Adding up to $10 million. This amount is clearly nowhere near enough to cover $120 million worth of benefits. But it is a step in the right direction to keeping people fed that need it.
On November 6th, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to distribute the full funding of November food stamps by Friday the 7th, Politico states. Currently, around 42 million people have lost their SNAP benefits during this government shutdown. Politico links another one of their articles, stating that “the Trump administration previously agreed to pay for partial SNAP benefits using emergency money but said that doing so would result in weeks, if not months, of delays.”
Currently, the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to withhold SNAP payments for November temporarily. Which NBC News says is about $4 billion in payments. The Trump administration is claiming that the government shutdown means that there is only enough money to pay partial benefits for the month of November, for which they had previously agreed to pay about $5 billion from a SNAP contingency fund.
