To do so, the department will tap into a contingency fund the Trump administration initially refused to use. However, the fund is only enough to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” according to a declaration<\/a> from Patrick Penn, a USDA official who oversees SNAP, submitted to a federal court in Rhode Island.<\/p>\n As a result, families could receive only half as much of their usual amounts. Delays in the benefits, which were supposed to be distributed on Nov. 1, were already impacting millions of families.\u00a0<\/p>\n Limited, momentary relief<\/strong><\/p>\n The federal courts\u2019 ruling came after 25 states, including Arizona, sued the federal government<\/a> over the imminent suspension of benefits, accusing the Trump administration of illegally freezing aid.<\/p>\n Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, one of the plaintiffs, criticized the Trump administration for attempting to halt the aid.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are quite literally ripping away access to food and health care for millions of Americans,\u201d Mayes said during a press conference last week. \u201cThis cruelty is totally and completely unnecessary. \u2026 The USDA repeatedly acknowledged that SNAP contingency funds were available for paying benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Mayes, roughly one in eight people and one in four children in Arizona receive food benefits. In rural counties such as Gila and Apache, about half of all families rely on those benefits to buy groceries, she said.<\/p>\n In September, Arizona families receiving SNAP benefits got an average of $360 to purchase food.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that the majority of Arizonans simply don’t have an extra $360 a month,\u201d Mayes said.<\/p>\n Despite the legal win, USDA officials said the contingency funds available were not enough to pay for full benefit amounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Penn said the agency had roughly $4.6 billion from the initial $6 billion available in contingency funds because the Food and Nutrition Service, which administers SNAP, used about $750 million from those funds in October, and was planning to use $550 million more in November, for the state agencies\u2019 administrative expenses and the Nutrition Assistance Program block grants for Puerto Rico and American Samoa.\u00a0<\/p>\n To fully cover SNAP benefits for the roughly 42 million families who rely on the program to buy food during November, the agency would require more than $9 billion, according to the declaration.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the agency said it will deplete the remaining contingency funds \u201ccompletely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis means that no funds will remain for new SNAP applicants certified in November, disaster assistance, or as a cushion against the potential catastrophic consequences of shutting down SNAP entirely,\u201d Penn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Either we eat or we pay the bills\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Six days a week, Rubio wakes up at 5 a.m. to go to her cleaning job. She returns home around 6 p.m., as the sun begins to set.<\/p>\n Despite the long working hours, Rubio said sometimes the money isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been really hard,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were times when the money just didn\u2019t stretch. \u2026 That\u2019s why I applied for the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n The delay comes at a particularly difficult time for Rubio and her family. Her oldest son, who used to help with some expenses, lost his job three months ago \u2014 a serious blow to their household finances.<\/p>\n \n Since then, Rubio has been piling up unpaid bills. And as her household\u2019s debt grows, the uncertainty over the future of the food benefits program does, too.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine how stressed I am,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been racking my brain \u2014 either we eat, or we pay the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n Mar\u00eda Carrillo, another mother from the Phoenix area impacted by the delay in benefits, said she\u2019s worried about how the changes will hit her family.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carrillo lives with three of her children, her 8-year-old grandson and her husband, who had always been the main provider.<\/p>\n But four months ago, her husband, a construction worker, broke his foot after falling from a house, leaving him unable to work.<\/p>\n Since then, the family has relied solely on the income of her 19-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n \u201cIt affects us a lot because my daughter is the only one covering all the expenses,\u201d Carrillo said. \u201cSo, for them to take away that help, even temporarily, really impacts us.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrillo said SNAP benefits usually cover most of her family\u2019s grocery bill, and she only needs to pay a small amount from her own pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n But after receiving a text message notifying her that her benefits would be suspended in November, she began paying closer attention to grocery prices.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything\u2019s so expensive,\u201d Carrillo said. \u201cIf you go to the store today, a pound of meat costs $7. \u2026 Prices are just too high.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrillo said she\u2019s especially worried about her grandson, who also depends on food assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about the children,\u201d Carrillo urged government officials. \u201cWe adults can eat whatever \u2013 but the kids can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018A bucket of cold water\u2019 for low-income families<\/strong><\/p>\n Reyna Gonz\u00e1lez, director of Helping Families in Need, an Arizona organization that assists families in applying for programs such as SNAP and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System AHCCCS, said they\u2019ve received a wave of calls from families who are confused and worried about the change in benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people call us \u2026 asking how this will affect them in the future,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cThey complain that they won\u2019t get enough help this month, ask when benefits will be paid again \u2013 things we don\u2019t even know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Gonz\u00e1lez said this year, the organization has seen an increase in food benefit applications, which she attributes to rising prices.<\/p>\n In recent months, the group has helped fill out between 400 and 500 applications per month, Gonz\u00e1lez said. About half of those are for food stamps.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are low-income families,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cMost of them only have one person working, and they\u2019re really struggling right now, with everything being so expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayes said in a news conference last week that she hopes the federal government will restore benefits to affected families before the end of the month.<\/p>\n \u201cI will not stand by as Arizona families go hungry,\u201d she said. \u201cYanking away low-income grocery support while Trump’s tariffs make household goods even more expensive is just cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n The Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers SNAP in the state, is directing beneficiaries who need immediate help to local food banks<\/a> while the government reinstates the aid.<\/p>\n Rubio said although the news of the benefit suspension felt like \u201ca bucket of cold water\u201d for her family, it was just another in a series of surprises she\u2019s faced in recent months.<\/p>\n \u201cWe keep getting one surprise after another \u2013 we don\u2019t even know what\u2019s coming next,\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully, after everything, something good will come.\u201d<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Cronkite News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Laura Daniella Sepulveda | Cronkite News PHOENIX \u2013 For Ivone Rubio, a single mother of five in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":364983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-365978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115517648066667809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}