Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The good news is that 50 percent of food stamp benefits will be paid out during the month of November. The bad news is that a lot of food stamp recipients are still extremely angry. Food stamp protests are already starting to happen, videos are being posted on social media that show people how to take groceries right out the front door of a Walmart, and one woman is claiming that “everyone was stealing” when she visited her local grocery store. Of course if you live in an area where food stamp use is very low, conditions may seem perfectly normal. It just depends on where you live. Hopefully the government shutdown will be resolved very soon, because if we get to a point where no more food stamp money is coming from Washington at all things could get really crazy.
On Monday, we learned that the Trump administration has agreed to use 4.6 billion dollars in a contingency fund to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments” in the month of November…
In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
There is roughly $4.6 billion in the contingency fund that can be used to cover November benefit payments, according to Penn. Officials have said fully covering those benefits would require roughly $9 billion. The $4.6 billion will be used to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” Penn said.
Will this be enough to stop widespread rioting and looting from breaking out this month?
I hope so.
But we are already seeing lots of videos on social media that allegedly show people stealing food from grocery stores.
If food stamp recipients start receiving some money, that could help settle things down. Unfortunately, we are being warned that it may take some states “weeks” or even “months” to distribute reduced benefit amounts…
In his declaration with the court in Rhode Island, USDA official Patrick Penn said that getting SNAP benefits into the hands of recipients could face delays, since states will have to rework their systems to provide partial payments.
“Given the variation among State systems, some of which are decades old, it is unclear how many States will complete the changes in an automated manner with minimal disruption versus manual overrides or computations that could lead to payment errors and significant delays,” Penn wrote.
He added: “For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes States must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”
This is yet another example of how incompetent government agencies have become.
How long does it take to calculate a 50 percent reduction in benefits?
This isn’t exactly rocket science.
There could be millions of food stamp recipients that have to wait for an extended period of time for their reduced November benefits, and that certainly isn’t going to make them very happy.
Meanwhile, the USDA has specifically warned grocery stores that they must not give special discounts to food stamp recipients…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has told grocery stores not to give special discounts to around 42 million Americans who use food stamps.
An email sent by the department to stores, posted on X by Catherine Rampell, co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend, said: “You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customer.”
Was that really necessary?
There are a lot of people out there that are really hurting right now.
Yes, it is certainly true that there are some that choose to abuse the system.
For example, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just admitted that thousands upon thousands of people have been illegally using food stamps…
“We have found thousands and thousands of illegal use of the EBT card, we have been moving people off of SNAP, we’ve got about 700,000 people that we’ve moved off SNAP since the president took office, and we’ve arrested about 118 people,” Rollins said.
She added that investigators also discovered about 5,000 dead people who were still receiving benefits.
There should be consequences for abusing the system.
I think that is something that we should all be able to agree on.
One woman posted a video in which she claimed that she actually gets $4,194 in food stamp benefits each month.
I have no idea how she is able to get that much money.
Is she telling the government that she has 12 kids or something?
People like that ruin the system for everyone else.
There really are millions of Americans that do not have enough food to eat every month, and the food stamp program is an important lifeline for them.
Unfortunately for them, it does not appear that this government shutdown is going to end any time soon.
During an interview with CBS News, President Trump explained that the government shutdown will finally end when the Democrats decide to give up…
“I’m not going to do it by being extorted by the Democrats who have lost their way,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s something wrong with these people.”
Mr. Trump said he believes that Democrats will eventually capitulate and vote to end the shutdown.
“And if they don’t vote, that’s their problem,” he said.
I don’t think that the Democrats are going to give up for quite a while.
I think that the Democrats feel like they have an opportunity to turn the political mood in this country in their favor.
So for now, millions of food stamp recipients will just have to stretch their meals as far as they can…
Christophe Niyibizi, 67, said he and his wife had begun limiting themselves to one full meal each day, in midafternoon, to try and make their food last longer. After spending $14 on Saturday for a few groceries, he had $83 remaining — and no way of knowing if his next monthly benefit would show up as scheduled in 10 days.
Placing his small grocery bag into his car, Mr. Niyibizi shrugged and smiled when asked if he felt hungry. A U.S. citizen who immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo a dozen years ago, he recalled how he had prayed, while still in Africa, that he would make it to America one day.
“This country is a good country, 100 percent,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had this problem.”
If we get to Thanksgiving and the government shutdown has not ended, I think that things could get really wild.
But it doesn’t have to get to that stage.
If our politicians in Washington can work things out, we could potentially avoid a scenario in which we see widespread rioting and looting.
The level of anger among America’s impoverished masses is rising very quickly, and if it rises high enough we could see a very frightening explosion.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.