‘I feel guilty eating a meal’: Low-income families prepare to lose access to billions in federal aid

Carts full of groceries wait to be given to people in need at Curley's House Food Bank in Miami, Florida, on October 30, 2025. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Annemarie King is eating only once a day, and her husband, Randall, is picking up extra shifts at the drywall factory where he works. They are among the nearly 42 million Americans preparing for their food stamp benefits to run dry in November because of the ongoing government shutdown .

The Kings, who live in Cincinnati and have eight young children, depend on the roughly $1,000 in food stamps that they receive at the start of every month to stock their refrigerator with fresh fruits, vegetables and meat.

But since the US Department of Agriculture announced in mid-October that it doesn’t have the funding to provide next month’s ben