Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The good news is that 50 percent of food stamp benefits will be paid out during the month of November. The bad news is that a lot of food stamp recipients are still extremely angry. Food stamp protests are already starting to happen, videos are being posted on social media that show people how to take groceries right out the front door of a Walmart, and one woman is claiming that "everyone was stealing" when she visited her local grocery store. Of course if you live in an area where food stamp use is very low, conditions may seem perfectly normal. It just depends on where you live. Hopefully the government shutdown will be resolved very soon, because if we get to a point where no more food stamp money is coming from Washington at all things could get really crazy.

On Monday, we learned that the Trump administration has agreed to use 4.6 billion dollars in a contingency fund to "cover 50% of eligible households' current allotments" in the month of November…

In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration "intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025."

There is roughly $4.6 billion in the contingency fund that can be used to cover November benefit payments, according to Penn. Officials have said fully covering those benefits would require roughly $9 billion. The $4.6 billion will be used to "cover 50% of eligible households' current allotments," Penn said.