The Millions of Poor Americans at the Mercy of the Shutdown

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tens of millions of Americans depend on the food-stamp program known as SNAP. Without federal assistance, many of them do not know how they will provide for themselves or their families. “The Daily” visits one of the communities most reliant on food aid. The Trump administration has agreed to restore some of the funding for SNAP, but there’s still uncertainty about how much money will come through, and when. Tony Romm, who covers economic policy and the Trump administration for The New York Times, discusses the fight over SNAP as the government enters its second month of shutdown. Guest: Tony Romm, a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The New York Times, is based in Washington.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.
0:09.3	You get benefits on the first, yeah?
0:11.7	Yeah.
0:12.4	And what happened today?
0:13.7	They just didn't load.
0:16.3	It says that they will arrive, but they will be late.
0:19.2	The Trump administration has agreed to restore some of the funding for the food program known as SNAP.
0:25.1	But there's still uncertainty about how much money will come through and when.
0:30.3	What would that normally look like today?
0:32.5	It would be like 7.80.
0:34.5	Is there an account balance?
0:36.7	I have 12 cents.
0:39.1	Tens of millions of Americans, one in eight, rely on SNAP.
0:43.5	Without federal assistance, many people do not know how they will provide for themselves
0:47.7	or their families.
0:49.6	I adopted my grandson, he's two. And it's terrifying thinking I can't feed him.
0:55.0	Now that that's then frozen, literally had nothing in the house.
1:00.0	It's not everybody's fault that Congress can't make a decision on a bill.
1:05.0	So they shouldn't punish the low-income family, the needy people, because that's what we rely on.
1:15.2	Today, we hear from people in one of the communities most reliant on food aid,
1:20.8	and from my colleague Tony Rahm, about the ongoing fight over SNAP
1:24.4	as the government enters its second month of a shutdown.
	...

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