Sherry Stone TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER – Nov 13, 2025
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Though President Donald Trump signed a funding bill this week that ended a historic government shutdown, many residents are still without food benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
State officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that they are working to get full SNAP food benefits to millions of Americans, who made due with little-to-no assistance for the past couple of weeks.
A series of court rulings led to a partial distribution of November SNAP benefits. While some already had issued full SNAP benefits, about two-thirds of states had issued only partial benefits or none at all before the government shutdown ended late Wednesday, according to an Associated Press tally.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Human Services told The Philadelphia Tribune on Monday that about $70 million of the $100 million owed to Pennsylvania SNAP cardholders was paid out Nov. 7 before the Supreme Court stopped the disbursement that night.
That partial status is hurting many Philadelphians who have either received some or non-SNAP benefits, said the Rev. Henry J. Buck Jr., senior pastor of the Grace Baptist Church of Germantown. He and other religious and community leaders are demanding immediate full SNAP benefits.
“This is not a Republican issue,” Buck said. “This is a humanitarian issue. And when you have a humanitarian issue and a dictatorship, this is what you have. There are Republicans who are hungry as well as there are Democrats who are hungry. And so I want us to understand that we’re dealing with something else, much more deeply rooted in a system that leans in favor of the rich, the wealthy and those who want to be rich.”
Buck joined a group of leaders and activists for a rally outside of Reading Terminal this week at 12th and Filbert streets to call for the full funding of SNAP.
Protesters held signs that read “No Cap: Fund SNAP,” “People have to eat,” “Don’t take food from children,” and “Honk If You Support SNAP Replenishment.”
The Rev. Randy Barge, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Olney, said the heart of the gospel has always been one of compassion and justice for the vulnerable and the poor.
“It’s a shame right now that there are people who are going hungry, children who are going hungry, while $200 million ballrooms are being built,” he said. “It’s a shame that people are going hungry while our political leaders are feasting sumptuously on exotic dinners. It’s a shame that people in Congress are being able to get paid while children have the possibility of not having food for the holiday season. We say, fund SNAP.”
Adam Goldman, executive director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, called the president’s refusal to fully fund SNAP monstrous.
“They’ve been ordered multiple times to fund the program, and they’re resisting at every turn,” he said. “There’s no reason they can’t do it. The money is available. They’re just, you know, keeping food out of people’s mouths.”
Last weekend, Trump appealed a court decision that nearly put back funds on the cards of SNAP users. The president said he might not reimburse states who issued some of those funds, anyway.
“The administration actually went as far as to threaten states, telling them, you need to claw some of that money back from people, or we’re going to retaliate against you, which is just, I mean, it’s appalling,” Goldman said. “They literally want to take money back, take benefits back.”
According to Goldman, in Pennsylvania nearly 2 million people rely on SNAP, and 40% of them are children. Almost 500,000 Philadelphians depend on the benefits for food.
“Whether SNAP recipients are unemployed, whether they are working, whether they have disabilities, they work a low-income job, they rely on those dollars to put food on the table,” Goldman said. “New rules and work requirements for SNAP are going into effect right now, actually, and we are worried that people are going to lose their benefits because of those new requirements — even people who should still qualify, just because paperwork can get lost in the shuffle.”
Jeff Garris, outreach and partnerships director at the Pennsylvania Policy Center, said he was disappointed in the response of Republican elected officials during the SNAP crisis.
“Not one Republican member of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation protested even one iota the Trump decision,” he said. “None of them called on the president to fund SNAP. Not one. Our Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania including Congressmen Brian Fitzpatrick and Ryan McKenzie. Neither of them and none of their Republican colleagues from Pennsylvania spoke out against this. They all voted for the huge, ugly reconciliation bill, which will have a devastating impact on hunger in Pennsylvania.”
Neither Fitzpatrick nor McKenzie could be reached for comment.
Garris said roughly 145,000 Pennsylvanians will lose vital food benefits because of the creation of new work requirements for SNAP recipients.
“And the state’s share of SNAP costs will go up by a minimum of $113 million because Pennsylvania will have to pick up 75% of the administrative costs of the program instead of the present 50%,” he said.
For every one meal provided by a charitable and religious organization, SNAP delivers nine, according to Goldman.
“Food banks and other organizations have engaged in a heroic effort to help the hungry throughout the shutdown, but there is simply no way for them to help on the scale required by the loss of SNAP benefits,” he said. “The only answer is fully funding the program now.”
