The United States government shutdown entered its 27th day on Monday, making it the second-longest funding lapse in American history, with no resolution in sight and food assistance for about 42 million people set to stop on November 1 unless Congress acts. Federal workers have missed their first full paycheck, air travel is being disrupted by controller absences, and state governments are warning that they cannot replace the scale of federal food aid on their own.
The shutdown began late last month after Congress failed to agree on a spending package, and has since furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers and disrupted services across the country. The Senate was scheduled to reconvene on Monday, but was not expected to vote immediately on a House-passed measure to fund the government, leaving the impasse in place as the November 1 deadline for food benefits approaches.
The Department of Agriculture has said that benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP and commonly called food stamps, will stop on November 1 unless funding is restored. The department warned that “the well has run dry,” and said it would not use $5 billion in emergency reserves to keep payments flowing. At least 25 states have told participants they will not receive benefits next month, according to reports, including California, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi and New Jersey.
A deadline with human consequences
SNAP is the nation’s largest anti-hunger programme, federally funded but administered by the states, which means the shutdown’s effects will vary across the country. Households use the benefits, loaded onto electronic benefit transfer cards, to buy food, and for many low-income families the monthly payment is the difference between eating adequately and going without. The programme supports about 42 million people, including large numbers of children, older people and people with disabilities.
State agencies have warned that they cannot simply replace the federal money. Connecticut, for example, distributes about $75 million a month in federal SNAP benefits to roughly 360,000 people, and officials there have said the state cannot set up a replacement system in the time available, since doing so would require building a whole new payment infrastructure. Food banks and community organisations across the country are organising emergency food drives, but have said their shelves cannot begin to match the scale of SNAP.
The human impact is already visible in other parts of the shutdown. Federal employees missed their first full paycheck at the end of last week, and House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he was not “100 percent sure” whether members of the US military would receive their pay this week. Air traffic controllers are preparing to miss their first paychecks, and air travel disruption worsened on Monday, with more than 5,600 flights delayed nationwide amid a surge in controller absences, according to reports.
Essential functions, including air traffic control, border protection and federal law enforcement, have continued to operate, but with staff working without pay. National parks, museums and research facilities have closed or scaled back operations. On October 15, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from firing federal workers during the shutdown, removing one source of pressure on the workforce but not resolving the underlying funding dispute.
Who is to blame
As with previous shutdowns, each side blames the other. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, issued a statement urging lawmakers to pass a clean continuing resolution, a temporary funding bill, to reopen government operations immediately. “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today,” the union said.
Republican leaders have accused Senate Democrats of blocking the budget measures that would keep the government funded, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said the administration cannot distribute November SNAP benefits while the government remains closed, telling interviewers: “By Nov. 1, we are very hopeful this government reopens and we can begin moving that money out. But right now, half the states are shut down on SNAP.” Democrats counter that Republicans have loaded spending bills with unacceptable conditions and are using food aid recipients as bargaining chips, while budget analysts have argued that the administration is legally required to provide SNAP during a shutdown and could use available reserves.
A dispute over emergency reserves
The dispute over the reserves is central to the November 1 deadline. The administration says the contingency fund is not available to support regular benefits for the new fiscal year, because the appropriation for those benefits no longer exists. Critics, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, say the administration itself admits reserves are available and should have taken steps weeks ago to be ready to use them. The disagreement has not been resolved in court, and for recipients the legal argument matters less than the practical question of whether money arrives in November.
What happens next
The immediate focus is the Senate’s return and whether either party moves towards a temporary funding agreement before November 1. If a deal is reached, the Agriculture Department has said it can begin moving money out quickly, though the timing of payments would still depend on state systems. If no deal is reached, November will begin with millions of households receiving no food assistance, and food banks facing a surge in demand they have warned they cannot meet.
The longer the shutdown continues, the greater the risk to other programmes. Households receiving housing assistance should have their rent paid at least through November, according to housing analysts, but the risk grows with each passing week. New work reporting requirements for SNAP, enacted earlier this year, are also due to take effect on November 1, and are expected to result in an estimated 2.4 million people losing assistance each month until 2034, adding a further layer of pressure on low-income budgets.
At 27 days, the shutdown is now second only to the 35-day closure of 2018-19, during which contingency funds were used to cover SNAP benefits. That precedent is one reason critics argue the current cutoff is a choice rather than an inevitability. Whether Congress acts before November 1 will determine whether this shutdown merely approaches that record, or surpasses it while leaving tens of millions of Americans without the food assistance they rely on.
