The nearly 70,000 Alaskans who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, likely won’t see their monthly benefits hit their accounts Saturday as scheduled. That’s despite a pair of court rulings ordering the Trump administration to reverse a freeze on the federal dollars that fund the program.
The Alaska Department of Health said in a statement that as of this afternoon, it hasn’t received funding for November’s SNAP benefits and that the rulings had “not changed the bottom line.” Department of Health spokesperson Shirley Sakaye said the department is monitoring legal developments and will distribute payments to SNAP beneficiaries “as quickly as possible once they are received.”
“There are still several unknowns,” she said. “This is the first time the Department of Health (DOH) has been required to temporarily suppress the transmission of SNAP benefits. Once the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) issues final guidance, DOH will immediately release the benefits to our EBT contractor, FIS, so they can be loaded onto recipients’ cards.”
Meanwhile, Rachael Miller with the Food Bank of Alaska said she expected more Alaskans to turn to local food pantries to fill the gap.
"If you don't have access to that benefit, people are going to look for the next best resource, which usually, if they have one, is their local food pantry," she said in a phone interview. "You want to make sure you have some stocks and food on the shelf. You want to make sure you have, you know, whatever little cushion you can build for yourselves in this pretty uncertain time."
In a social media post Friday afternoon, President Trump said he would ask the courts for additional guidance before distributing SNAP funding to states and warned that delays were inevitable.
Refilling electronic benefits cards often takes one to two weeks, according to the Associated Press.
Miller said the government shutdown and the storms in Western Alaska have already put pressure on the state’s food banks. The food pantries her group supplies have reported significant increases in traffic with federal workers missing paychecks and the threat of a gap in SNAP benefits adds additional stress, she said.
“I think that Alaska feels pretty stretched thin right now in multiple crisis responses,” she said.
The Democrat-heavy bipartisan state House majority urged Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy to explore ways to ensure Alaskans don't go hungry in a letter on Friday, noting that several other states had provided emergency funding to food banks and SNAP beneficiaries.
Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner did not respond to an email seeking comment but told the Anchorage Daily News Thursday that state officials had searched unsuccessfully for money to donate to food banks. The top legislative budget analyst told the newspaper the state’s options to fill the gap using existing funds were limited absent a special session.
Savannah Lee, a single mother of a one-year-old and a SNAP beneficiary in Anchorage, said she had spent the last several days stressing about having enough food through November. She said news of the court rulings ordering the funding unfrozen was encouraging, but she said she remained cautious.
"I don't really believe anything until it actually happens,” she said by phone. “But, that does mean that Thanksgiving could happen.”
The Trump administration did not immediately say whether it planned to appeal the rulings.
