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.

Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR’s series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing the World explores the causes and implications of this trend.

Ashley and Nick Evancho say raising their 3-year-old, Sophia, is one of the most joyous things they’ve ever done. “Watching my daughter run around in the yard is otherworldly for me,” Ashley said on a recent afternoon in their home in Grand Island, a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y.

But the Evanchos also made a decision that’s increasingly common for families in the U.S. and around the world: One is enough.

“I don’t need another one. I don’t want another one. I love having only one child,” said Ashley Evancho, who works as a financial planner.

Her husband, Nick, an Episcopal priest, agreed that big families make less sense in today’s economy. “It really stacks the chips economically against you,” he said.

Sophia and her mom play together at home. “I don’t need another one. I don’t want another one. I love having only one child,” Ashley Evancho told NPR.

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Worldwide, the number of children born to the average family has dropped by more than half since the 1970s, according to the latest United Nations data. Economists say having fewer children is the norm for many families, especially in relatively prosperous countries like the U.S.

The trend is leading to populations that are dramatically older, and beginning to shrink, in many of the world’s biggest economies.

“This demographic issue is poised to potentially remake so much of our society,” said Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Notre Dame.

Experts say a rapidly aging and gradually shrinking population in the world’s wealthiest countries could force sweeping changes in people’s lives, causing many to work longer before retirement, making it harder for business owners to find employees and destabilizing eldercare and health insurance programs.

Already, women in the 15 countries that account for 75% of global gross domestic product, including the U.S., are having too few children to maintain a stable population. Many of those nations have fallen into the “very low” category of “total fertility rate” identified by the U.N. as a serious concern.

“For the countries below 1.4 births per woman, we see much faster population decline and a pronounced shift in the population age distribution to the older ages,” said Vladimíra Kantorová, the U.N.’s chief population scientist. The rate of births per woman in the U.S. dropped to 1.6 in 2024, the lowest ever.

In China, Japan, Italy and South Korea, deaths already outpace births. Demographers say more high-income countries would face population decline, if not for high rates of immigration.

“We seem to be kind of watching a science fiction novel,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

According to Eberstadt, worker shortages, shrinking numbers of young consumers and a growing wave of elderly retirees relying on pension and health care systems could challenge basic assumptions about global capitalism. This trend is being heightened by the fact that people in the U.S. and many other countries are living longer. The global population of people age 80 or older will triple between 2020 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.

“Turning the population pyramid upside down basically upsets the business model, the background music, that we’ve had in modern life for as long as we can remember,” he said.

In one U.S. town, plenty of jobs and few young workers

Some parts of the U.S. are already feeling the population shift as communities age and begin to shrink. In Franklin County, N.Y., where storefronts sit empty in Malone, the county seat, the population has declined by roughly 10% since 2010. Half the counties in the U.S. now have more elderly retirees than children, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

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In the U.S., the world’s largest economy, this trend has been building for decades. Families started shrinking in the 1960s, when the average American woman had between three and four children.

Now, according to U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve Bank data, the typical woman will have one or two children in her lifetime, with a growing number of families opting for no children at all.

“I think it raises questions about do we want to be a more dynamic, forward-looking economy where people are optimistic about the future and about their ability to have kids?” said Kearney at Notre Dame.

With fewer children being born, population growth in the U.S. has already slowed. The population is expected to begin shrinking later this century, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. Americans are also significantly older, with the median age rising from 28.1 in 1970 to a record high last year of 39.1.

Many communities, especially in rural America, already face serious demographic challenges.

“The decline here you see started a long time ago,” said Jeremy Evans, head of the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency in rural upstate New York.

Jeremy Evans heads the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency. In developing a new economic plan for his community, Evans concluded that population loss, especially the declining population of young people, is the top concern. In many parts of the U.S., elderly retirees outnumber children.

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Franklin County, which lies near the U.S.-Canada border, has lost roughly 10% of its population since 2010. Some of that is due to young people leaving, but so few babies are born here that the local hospital closed its maternity ward three years ago.

According to Evans, there are plenty of good jobs, with an unemployment rate of just 3.8%, but not enough workers to fill them. “It became obvious: We have to make this the No. 1 focus,” he said. “Our No. 1 mission is [attracting] 18-to-39-year-olds,” he said.

But economists say recruiting young people will get harder nationwide as smaller families continue to transform the American population. Last year, the number of children in the U.S. declined slightly, while the number of seniors surged to 61 million.

Eberstadt, at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks the population shift could destabilize key U.S. programs that underpin the economy, including Social Security and Medicare.

“The way public finances are organized makes no sense if you’re heading into an aging, shrinking world,” he said.

Many experts told NPR the shift toward an older, smaller population with fewer working-age residents will accelerate, if the U.S. maintains strict new limits on migrants imposed by the Trump administration.

For America’s trading partners, a demographic cliff

A man walks past a Human Resources and Social Security Bureau office, with the Chinese characters for “Social Security” visible in the background, on Sept. 2 in Chongqing, China. China’s population of retirees is expected to surge by more than 200 million people by 2050.

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If this demographic earthquake were only reshaping the U.S. economy, researchers say it would already pose serious challenges. But rapid aging and population decline are hitting America’s biggest trading partners far harder and much faster.

“If you live in Europe or parts of Asia, this [population shift] is everything,” said Lant Pritchett, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

He noted that basic assumptions about capitalism and economic growth evolved when nearly every country was experiencing rapid population increases. Now that era is over.

“Hard to tell what’s going to happen when things that have never happened before happen. We just don’t have any examples of countries doing this successfully,” Pritchett said.

This population shift is happening fastest and on the largest scale in China, the world’s second-biggest economy. According to Pritchett, China’s working-age population will crash by 2050, losing more than 211 million workers.

On a recent morning outside one of Beijing’s busy shopping malls, it was hard to see the massive change underway here. But Mia Li, 20, who works in China’s struggling real estate sector, said she’s already feeling it.

“Housing prices will fall and the number of homebuyers will decrease as well,” Li said. She doesn’t have children and worries that motherhood would be expensive and risky. “Having children requires financial support, but if the economy goes down, how can you possibly afford to raise them?”

Xiujian Peng, an expert on China’s population at Victoria University in Australia, said the economic impact of the trend could be profound.

“Population will decline very fast,” she said, adding that vast areas of rural China, home to many of the country’s elderly, could face “a huge problem.”

Fears of a backlash as countries adapt to fewer children

Ashley and Nick Evancho prepare dinner as Sophia plays in the kitchen. Nick Evancho told NPR that big families often make less sense in today’s economy. “It really stacks the chips economically against you,” he said.

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Some researchers, including Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin, think fears about shrinking families are overblown. Goldin described much of the concern as a political backlash against high rates of immigration and women’s empowerment.

Asked about economic impacts of an aging, declining workforce, Goldin said, “I am not worried about that. Scarcity is everywhere; trade-offs are everywhere. There is no optimal birth rate.”

But many economists believe nations, and companies, that hope to remain stable and prosperous through this transition need to begin adapting. Some may be able to compensate by attracting more migrant workers or boosting the efficiency of the labor force through education, automation and AI.

Experts: Small families here to stay

In Greece, the birth rate is so low that the population is shrinking and aging. On the tiny Greek island of Thymaina, schoolchildren commute by ferry to another island as a decreasing birth rate has led to school closures.

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Many countries are also rolling out programs designed to encourage a return to larger families. The Trump administration included a modest package of incentives in this year’s budget, including an expanded child tax credit and a temporary program offering $1,000 investment accounts to babies born during Trump’s current term.

Some governments are going much further. Last month, the Greek government approved a multibillion-dollar tax package aimed at slowing Greece’s rapid depopulation.

“This is an existential problem for us,” Greece’s minister of economy and finance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, said in an interview with NPR.

But many experts are skeptical of policies aimed at boosting birth rates. Past programs have shown limited or no success, apparently because much of the trend toward fewer children is driven by improvements in society — from economic progress for women to declining teen pregnancies.

“One thing about [smaller families] is that it’s all accounted for by good things, which means it’s not turning around,” said Pritchett, at the London School of Economics.

Ashley Evancho reads to Sophia before bed.

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Ashley Evancho, the financial planner and mom who lives near Buffalo, agrees families like hers aren’t likely to have more kids, even if governments offer incentives and benefits. 

“My opportunity cost, the opportunity cost to my career or my education [of having more children] is so much higher,” she said. “So the economy, the way it works, will probably have to fundamentally change.”

Reporting contributed by Jasmine Ling, NPR Beijing producer.