Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Austin considers herself a typical recipient of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP) benefits. A single, working mom, she first applied ten years ago, after the father of her two toddler children walked out on them. They needed SNAP, Austin explained in a New York Times opinion piece, for a simple reason: to survive.

She went back to school at the same time. Starting with community college, Austin earned a bachelor’s degree at Temple University and a master’s degree at the University of Vermont. Then, as she recently told NewsNation, she found a job that allowed her to do without SNAP for six years. The program has helped smooth the rough patches in her life, she told MSNBC, with the goal being “always to not need it anymore.” In late 2023, Austin lost her job, went into business for herself, and applied for SNAP again as a stop-gap measure. She says she expects her business to generate enough income soon to make SNAP benefits unnecessary. But in the meantime, Austin says she’s grateful for a program that protects her kids from the psychological and physical damage that food insecurity has been shown to cause.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) describes SNAP as a program that allows “low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.” SNAP helps feed more than 40 million Americans in all. Roughly 40% of them, the USDA says, are children, while 20% are elders, and 10% are nonelders with a disability.

The Trump administration’s USDA stopped funding SNAP at the beginning of November. No other administration has used a government shutdown to take that step since the program’s inception in 1961. President Trump initially threatened to withhold SNAP benefits until the government reopened, despite the availability of contingency funds that Congress had appropriated for that purpose. But the courts overruled him, and Trump has been ordered to fully fund benefits for November (a decision the administration has appealed).

For families like Austin’s, all the uncertainty is stressful. “It’s a lot of mental work to reorganize my budget,” she told NewsNation. Austin said “it feels pointlessly hard” to have to make cuts “that ultimately just end up costing my children.”

The stigma and prejudice long attached to government food stamps should end, Austin says. SNAP recipients are “totally normal families,” she told Ana Cabrera of MSNBC. ”It’s not something I feel shame over, in the same way that I’m sure people in other countries don’t feel shame over having healthcare.”

Posted on November 11, 2025