The looming end of the government shutdown means federal food assistance is being restored — but for some Americans, it could take days to get their funds.

Experts said it was unclear when millions of Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will receive benefits again because before now, the program’s funding has never been disrupted by a government shutdown.

About 1 in 8 Americans use SNAP, which disproportionately serves women, children, older Americans and disabled people. But the program’s funding has been in limbo over the past two weeks, a casualty of the national fight over funding the government, which led to the longest federal shutdown on record.

The House of Representatives is set to vote Wednesday evening on a Senate-backed bill that would reopen the government and fund SNAP through September 2026. 

The impact of SNAP’s lapse has varied across states. In some, such as California and Massachusetts, governments have used their own money to continue fully funding the program. Other governments, such as in Texas, have partially funded SNAP, meaning beneficiaries have received a reduced amount of food aid. When SNAP is fully funded, beneficiaries receive about $6 per person per day. 

“Even just these first 12 days of the month have shown how crucial of a support for low-income families these benefits are,” said Anna Gassman-Pines, a professor of public policy and psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. “Loss of benefits abruptly has led to things like parents skipping meals.”

Until this week, Senate Democrats had refused to vote for a Republican-backed funding bill unless it also renewed the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits for people who buy health insurance through the individual marketplaces. Democrats warned that, without those credits, coverage would become unaffordable. Estimates from the nonpartisan group KFF suggest that insurance costs for people covered through the marketplace could more than double. The deal to reopen the government does not renew those tax credits.

Funding for SNAP lapsed on November 1, and President Donald Trump’s administration declined to continue funding the program, the first time a presidential administration has allowed those benefits to lapse during a government shutdown.

In a post last week on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that SNAP benefits would only be restored “when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, has an emergency reserve that it could have used to keep benefits available. But the administration directed USDA not to use those funds — disrupting the program for Americans who rely on it for food.

The lack of precedent has made it hard for even experts to know how long it will take for benefits to get to people.

“If you had a crystal ball right now I don’t even know if that could tell you the answer,” said Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

“A lot of us don’t have great answers because this has never happened and we have always kept this program going,” she added.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration sent a memo to states ordering them to stop issuing full benefits, calling them “unauthorized.” 

Twenty-five Democrat-led states sued the administration, calling for the emergency money to be made available and for the administration to fully fund SNAP benefits. An appeals court ordered the White House to comply. Instead, Trump appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which blocked that order until 11:59 p.m. this Thursday. At that point, the government is likely to be reopened and SNAP funding restored.

As the U.S. House returned to vote on the stopgap bill on Wednesday, congressional Democrats slammed the Trump administration, accusing the White House of playing political games with food assistance.

“During this shutdown, reality hit home for a lot of people. Mothers had to worry about how they would take care of their children, their babies, without WIC,” Rep. Shomari Figures of Alabama said at a news conference Wednesday, referring to the food aid program for women, infants and children. “Families stood in pantry lines. Families are still standing in food pantry lines in the month of November, the month of Thanksgiving, because SNAP benefits were expired, and this administration chose to use them as pawns in this game.”

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico, chair of the House Democratic Women’s Caucus, said at a news conference Wednesday that it “is outrageous that Trump would have used hunger as a political tool.”

How quickly people will receive those benefits will likely vary based on where they live and how quickly federal and state governments move to distribute money.

But at least some are prepared to move quickly, Gassman-Pine suggested, and provide funds as early as Friday.

“States are ready to pay out the benefits once they know the money is there from the federal government,” Gassman-Pines said. “I do think that once the funding is restored, we can expect that states will move as quickly as they can.”