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Millions of Americans are in a kind of limbo this morning with the government shutdown, meaning they will not receive their SNAP food benefits, at least for now. The Trump administration has been ordered by a federal judge to come up with a plan by Monday. It's not clear if that will happen. As Grant Blankenship from Georgia Public Broadcasting reports, many Americans are now turning for help to food pantries.
GRANT BLANKENSHIP, BYLINE: It's a cold and drizzly day when 69-year-old Cassie Collins arrives at First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia, and starts down a series of slick steps, looking for the church food pantry.
CASSIE COLLINS: I live alone, and my SNAP benefits help me out a lot. I'm a widow. I lost my husband, like, four or five years ago. And they really help me.
BLANKENSHIP: Now Collins is among the estimated 42 million people around the country - that includes about 1.5 million in Georgia alone - who are preparing to go without their SNAP benefits for a while.
COLLINS: I have a neighbor that has about four children, and she - she's just - you know, it's sad, especially with the people with the children, you know, that's going to suffer through this thing.
BLANKENSHIP: It's her first time here. As she carefully makes her way to the church basement, she says, making the rounds of pantries like this, this is how she's going to make it through for the time being.
COLLINS: That's why I'm out here in the rain now - and I have no business out here like this - trying to get me some groceries.
BLANKENSHIP: The groceries she's picking up come from the warehouse of the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank, where trucks and forklifts are busy moving food in and out of the loading dock.
KATHY MCCOLLUM: OK. What you are seeing here, this is the aisle that we have a lot of the food that comes from the Department of Agriculture - USDA.
BLANKENSHIP: Food bank CEO Kathy McCollum shows me the floor-to-ceiling shelves that supply about 160 food pantries in the region.
But I'm seeing more empty space than I'm seeing full space right now.
MCCOLLUM: You're seeing more empty spaces now than certainly we've had. Back in - at the end of January, every rack in here was full. That hasn't been the case.
BLANKENSHIP: What changed is that in March, the Trump administration cut about a billion dollars in funding to USDA programs that used to steer food to community food banks like this one. That's why so many of these shelves are empty.
MCCOLLUM: For example, a few weeks ago, we realized that we didn't have peanut butter in the warehouse. And we typically get that from USDA, but that was one of those gaps.
BLANKENSHIP: In Georgia - the state the USDA says leads in peanut production - a food bank had no peanut butter. So McCollum has shifted to buying more on the open market.
MCCOLLUM: We are good at taking money and turning it into food because we can buy what we need.
BLANKENSHIP: By the end of the week, food pantries in Macon were struggling.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Excuse me.
BLANKENSHIP: People who knocked on the door at Beulahland Bible Church found it had no food left to share.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We're going to try to start back, but right now, they're closed today.
BLANKENSHIP: That left working mom Ashley Stephenson empty-handed.
ASHLEY STEPHENSON: We're looking at feeding three kids with barely anything after bills and everything else. Unfortunately, the government is not doing its job, and the people are being screwed because of it.
BLANKENSHIP: Stephenson says she doesn't know what her next move will be.
For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon, Georgia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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