In just over a week, nearly 42 million people in the U.S. who get federal food assistance are in danger of seeing their benefits disappear because of the ongoing federal shutdown.

About 1 in 8 U.S. residents get an average of $187 a month through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. One of those people is Shari Jablonowski. The 66-year-old widow, who lives outside Pittsburgh, is bracing to lose the $291 in food aid her disabled nephew gets each month. She raised her now-adult nephew and two nieces as her own, and even without this looming crisis, her budget is a tightrope.

“This month, I could not afford to pay … anything, gas or electric,” she says. Instead she paid her monthly car payment, since she needs to drive to doctors’ appointments, visit her mother, and one niece uses the car to get to work.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    The big story here is that 42 million people need help to eat. That’s a lot of people hungry in one of the richest countries in the history of the world.

      • whiwake@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        It’s only threatening food, they have to run out of their own food, charity food, local state assistance, neighbors, etc.

        Nine days meals will NEVER happen.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          If you depend on food stamps, chances are high that you have next to no food stocked up.
          Many who need food stamps also have neighbors and family that do not have a lot to help with.
          To claim nine meals will never happen is outright moronic.
          For many it is already happening at the end of the month.

          • whiwake@sh.itjust.works
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            9 hours ago

            Right,meals. Still will never happen. Don’t get excited. Zero things will come from this just like zero things came from “No Kings”

        • pilferjinx@piefed.social
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          9 hours ago

          I tend to agree. There’s so much excess of cheap calories that missing nine meals would be impossible. Nutritional food would be harder to obtain though.