And for more on all this, we're joined now by Elizabeth Kiever. She's the chief resource officer at Harvesters. That's a regional food bank in Kansas City, Missouri. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

You know, I wonder, even before the shutdown, with higher inflation in the tighter job market, what kind of need were you already seeing?

You know, that's something that a lot of people didn't

realize even before the shutdown is that in this region that we serve and frankly, in a lot of

places across the country, food insecurity and hunger was higher than it's been in a decade.

Year over year, last year, we saw a 10% rise. We went from having one in eight folks in our region facing

hunger to now one in seven. It's just been really challenging for so many of those folks. Like you said,

rising inflation, affordability crisis when it comes to affordable housing, rising cost of food.

It's just right now folks are really feeling the pain even before the shutdown started.

There can be a misconception about who relies on food banks, who relies on food stamps or SNAP.

Who are you really serving? It's absolutely true. There has been a misconception about SNAP recipients

for decades and decades, frankly, since the beginning of the

program. But it's really important for people to know that two-thirds of folks who utilize the

SNAP program are children and folks who are elderly and the disabled. And then the other

vast majority have at least one full-time working member in their household.

It's just a really inaccurate depiction of those who are using SNAP to say that those people are

individuals who aren't working. They're people who have just a challenge between what they make every single day and how much it costs to live and to raise a family.

When the Trump administration says it will provide partial SNAP funding in response to this court order, what's the real life impact of that?

Well, it is a step in the right direction. We are incredibly grateful that there is going to be

signs that funds will be released. But it does create some confusion because we've never,

in the history of the program, released partial payments. So when will folks receive that timeline?

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