From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, October 28th.

It looks like a hunger emergency is about to hit the United States. It sounds like hyperbole, right? But as you may have

heard, this is the latest thing coming from a Trump administration decision on how to manage the

government shutdown. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, of course,

or food stamps, will be cut off from federal funds by this Saturday,

November 1st. That could leave 42 million Americans without their food benefits for the month of

November. Now, the Trump administration says it will not trigger a contingency fund or it won't

tap a contingency fund or other nutrition

programs to fund SNAP. The Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, said in a memo

that it cannot tap the contingency fund because it's reserved for emergencies such as natural disasters.

Some people disagree with that conclusion, however. And also in that memo, the legally

questionable partisan blame game resurfaced in a government document. It says, quote, this

administration will not allow Democrats to jeopardize funding for school meals and infant formula

in order to prolong their shutdown, unquote.

Democrats, of course, blame the Republicans for it, so the stalemate goes on.

Who will depriving people of food benefit politically?

That's one of the questions in play.

But, of course, the much bigger one that we need to address is how are people going to eat.

Now, in New York State, on Friday, anticipating this, Governor Kathy Hokel announced

$11 million in state funding for emergency food relief, but that's not going to go on to

your EBT cards.

We'll explain what it would do.

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