Roughly 42 million Americans rely on food stamps that arrive every month on their electronic benefit transfer cards. On Nov. 1, that aid is set to abruptly stop amid the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, potentially leaving households scrambling to figure out how to put food on the table.

People enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, told CBS News they’re bracing for some tough financial choices. Kasey McBlais, a 42-year-old single mom who lives in Buckfield, Maine, said she’s planning to delay paying her electric and credit card bills to make sure her two children have enough to eat. 

“Now we’ll have to prioritize which bills we can pay and which can wait,” said McBlais, who works for a Maine social services agency and who draws about $600 a month in SNAP benefits. “My children won’t go hungry.”

The suspension of food aid comes as Democratic and Republican lawmakers continue to trade blame over the government shutdown, which now stands as the second-longest funding lapse in U.S. history. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds the SNAP program, warned earlier this month that there would be insufficient funding to pay full November benefits if the shutdown continued, prompting local governments to post notices on their websites about the potential interruption in payments. 

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA said in a memo posted Sunday on its website. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”

Democratic lawmakers have asked the USDA to use contingency funds to cover most of next month’s SNAP benefits, but an agency memo surfaced on Friday that says “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.” The document says the money is reserved for such things as helping people in disaster areas.

That means beginning Nov. 1, the government will halt about $8 billion in monthly SNAP payments, cutting off food assistance for the one in eight Americans who are enrolled in the program. Recipients, who include households in every state, typically get about $187 a month on a prepaid card to help cover the cost of groceries.

Some U.S. states, including Louisiana, Vermont and Virginia, have vowed to continue disbursing SNAP benefits even if the federal government suspends payments. New York on Monday pledged $30 million in emergency food assistance, while also recently committing to provide millions more in support for food banks. 

Yet the USDA memo stipulates that states won’t be reimbursed for temporarily providing food aid to residents, raising questions about the viability of that approach. 

Sharlene Sutton, a 45-year-old mother of four in Dorchester, Mass., who left her job as a security officer last month to care for one of her children, who has epilepsy, said she relies on the $549 she gets in monthly SNAP benefits to feed her family. 

“I was freaking out because I’m like, ‘Oh my god, now I don’t have a job,’” she told CBS News. “I’m not worried about myself that much. It’s about the kids. Like, where am I going to get food from?”

Turning to food banks

Sutton said she’s looking for a food bank to help fill the gap if her food aid is cut off. But experts warn that the non-profit organizations alone aren’t capable of filling the $8 billion monthly hole left by a looming SNAP suspension. 

“The charitable food system and food banks don’t have the resources to replace all those food dollars,” John Sayles, CEO of Vermont Foodbank in Barre, Vermont, told CBS News. 

Already, food banks are getting an influx of calls from SNAP recipients who are worried about the payments freeze, and food shelves could see long lines next month if the shutdown persists, Sayles said. 

“There is no safety net after SNAP other than the food shelf,” he added.

Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Roadrunner Food Bank, which typically serves 83,000 households per week, is “seeing panic” among residents due to the SNAP halt, said Katy Anderson, vice president of strategy, partnerships and advocacy at the nonprofit organization. 

Even before this new surge in demand, food banks were already facing pressures because of the growing number of people seeking their services, aggravated this year by persistent inflation, and funding constraints. In March, the USDA said it was nixing $420 million in funding for a program that allows food banks to buy food directly from local farms, ranchers and producers. 

A surge in patrons could also strain food banks as they face their own funding struggles and contend with growing demand thanks to inflation ticking higher in March, the USDA said it was nixing $420 million in funding for a program that allows food banks to buy food directly from local farms, ranchers and producers. 

Broader economic impact

A temporary halt in $8 billion in monthly food aid could also impact local businesses, from grocers to farm stands, said Sayles of Vermont Foodbank. Each $1 in SNAP benefits provides an economic benefit of $1.60, he said, referring to the so-called multiplier effect in which dollars flowing through the local economy help support spending, jobs and growth. 

“SNAP is the foundation of economic support for a lot of food retailers, like those smaller places in rural areas and the corner store in our cities,” said Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional services at the University of Michigan. “So this has far-reaching impacts beyond just the people who get SNAP.”

SNAP is designed to provide supplemental aid for a family’s grocery budget, but some families depend on it as their main source of income to buy food, Bauer noted. For those living paycheck to paycheck, even a short disruption in benefits can have immediate consequences, experts said.

The loss of SNAP funding threatens some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S., with the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities noting that two-thirds of food-stamp recipients are children, seniors or people with disabilities.

For McBlais, the single mom, the issue isn’t political. Rather, it’s about making sure families can eat in an economy where many are already struggling to afford rent, utilities and basic groceries, she told CBS News. 

“Everybody needs food — SNAP recipients are Democratic, Republicans and everything in between,” McBlais said. 

Since taking office, President Trump has relied on the National Guard to help implement a sweeping agenda on crime and immigration, kicking off a blitz of deployments that have rattled cities, tested the limits of his legal authority, and drawn in the Supreme Court.

So far, Mr. Trump has called upon the military force to help stop illegal crossings at the southern border and staff immigration facilities; to guard federal property and personnel amid protests in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.; and to back crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., and Memphis. He has done all this while publicly mulling similar actions in cities like Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco.

National Guard deployments to U.S. cities

Who is in charge of National Guard deployments?

The deployments, which have provoked fierce lawsuits from state and local leaders, are not all on the same legal footing. The main difference, according to experts in armed forces law, comes down to who commands the Guard: the president, or the governor of an individual state.

When called into action by a governor responding to a state-level emergency, the Guard serves under a status known as state active duty, under which there is no general prohibition against troops conducting law enforcement. In recent years, Guard members under that status have policed the southern border, patrolled New York City’s subway platforms and helped support crime-fighting efforts in Albuquerque.

But when deployed under the president’s command — typically, when called to train or fight overseas — National Guard troops become federalized and are subject to a section of the U.S. Code known as Title 10, the same laws governing other active-duty military branches.

Crucially, troops under that status are forbidden, with narrow exceptions, from performing law enforcement under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which came about after the federal government withdrew troops from the Southern states defeated in the Civil War.

In Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, where Mr. Trump has deployed the Guard over governors’ objections, he has done so by placing the troops directly under federal control — itself a legally contentious move. As a result, troops’ activities there are largely restricted to guarding federal property.

A third status, known as Title 32, combines aspects of state and federal duty. In that hybrid designation, Guard troops remain under their governor’s command, but the deployment receives federal funding and comes at the request of the president or secretary of defense.

In Memphis, where the governor is commanding the Guard mission at Mr. Trump’s urging, and in Washington, D.C., where the president has authority over the local Guard, troops have deployed under a hybrid status. Guard soldiers in those cities have more openly patrolled the streets, but they have so far steered clear of serving warrants or making arrests.

Military law experts say the distinction between those different deployment statuses is critical not only to what troops can do on the ground but also to how courts will weigh the legal questions posed by Mr. Trump’s rapid assumption of power.

“There is very little case law on all of this,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, “partly because domestic deployment of the military has happened extremely sparingly in our nation’s history.”

What the courts say

In court, the Trump administration has argued that the president has broad authority to federalize the National Guard anywhere in the country, at any time, whenever he feels it is necessary to enforce the law or suppress disorder.

That power, federal lawyers say, extends from an obscure, rarely invoked statute that gives the president authority to federalize the force in times of rebellion, invasion or when the president is otherwise unable to enforce federal law.

But the Trump administration has gone further, arguing that the same statute grants the president a sweeping exemption from the Posse Comitatus Act, the law barring the use of federal soldiers for law enforcement. Presidents typically have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, an extreme step, to claim such an exemption.

Further complicating the issue are Mr. Trump’s moves to deploy the National Guard across state lines, a step usually taken only with the consent of all parties involved, said Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law.

Mr. Trump has pushed to deploy federalized Guard troops from Texas to Chicago, and troops from California to Portland, while several Republican governors have agreed to send troops under their command to Washington, D.C.

State leaders in California, Illinois and Oregon have contested the Trump administration’s arguments in court, and rulings so far have been divided. The administration has recently appealed to the Supreme Court in the Illinois case, setting the stage for a high-stakes decision that could shape how the Guard is used moving forward.

Officials in Tennessee and Washington, D.C., have also challenged the deployments to their cities.

Military law experts described Mr. Trump’s actions as a rarity in U.S. history, highlighting that the president’s aggressive maneuvering of federalized Guard troops comes in the face of protests far more subdued than the kind of mass unrest that has been used to justify their use in the past.

But Kevin Greene, a co-director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for the Study of the National Guard, said it also strikes at a question dating back to the country’s earliest days, and the founders’ skepticism of a standing army on domestic soil.

“The history of the United States is about the pendulum swinging back and forth as it relates to the militia and the National Guard, as to who has authority over it, and who should,” he said.