After a record-breaking 43 days of political standoffs, thousands of furloughed federal employees and increasingly strained services, decimated air travel and the loss in food assistance for 42 million Americans, the government shutdown is over.
What happens now? And how fast?
President Donald Trump signed the deal Wednesday night, Nov. 12, that Republicans and a small group of Democrats hammered out to end the shutdown. The compromise includes the rehire of thousands of federal employees the Trump administration laid off and a ban on new firings until Jan. 30, as well as full back pay for those furloughed in the shutdown.
It also guaranteed a vote in the Senate on extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act to prevent millions of people from being priced out of healthcare, the reason Democrats were holding out in the first place.
For the 2.9 million Floridians who have not received benefits since October from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides funds for low- and no-income people to buy healthy food, there’s still one question.
When do Florida SNAP benefits go out in November?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told USA TODAY on Wednesday evening that upon the government reopening, funds should be released within 24 hours to all 50 states and U.S. territories to be distributed by state agencies.
Jessica Garon, a spokesperson for the American Public Human Services Association, told the Associated Press that most states will be able to issue full benefits within three days after they get the OK.
In Florida, SNAP is managed by the Florida Department of Children and Families and is distributed on dates based on numbers in recipients’ account numbers. As of 9 a.m. Thursday, it has not yet been announced how November payments will be distributed.
The shutdown deal funds the government through Jan. 30, but funds certain programs including SNAP, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, the School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and Summer EBT through September 2026.
It also replenishes SNAP contingency reserve funds.
The Florida Department of Children and Families in a message on the website urged SNAP recipients to continue to maintain eligibility by meeting all work-related activities and tasks, including job search training, supervised job search, and basic education, so they can receive benefits as quickly as possible once funding resumes.
Florida SNAP benefits update: Where to find free, reduced food in Florida while you wait for benefits
Shutdown deal bumps WIC back up
WIC gets a funding increase of $603 million, bringing it to $8.2 billion, so all eligible recipients should get benefits. Also in the deal is continued funding for fruit and vegetable benefits “which President Trump and House Republicans pushed to significantly cut,” according to the bill’s USDA summary.
The Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which provides monthly food boxes to over 700,000 low-income seniors, will receive $460 million. “President Trump sought to eliminate the program in his budget request,” the summary said.
Trump administration, courts battle over SNAP
Tens of millions of SNAP recipients have watched the last few weeks as lawsuits and court rulings whiplashed back and forth over the federal food aid they rely on. For the first time in the food stamp program’s 60-year history, funding lapsed on Nov. 1, launching a legal scramble to try to keep benefits flowing.
A few days before the money ran out, the USDA announced it couldn’t use the roughly $6 billion of contingency funds to pay for SNAP, despite the agency having used them in at least two previous shutdowns and having detailed plans to do it again in a later-deleted contingency plan on the USDA website, dated Sept. 30.
By the end of October, 25 states plus Washington, D.C. sued the Trump administration to force the release of November SNAP benefits. Two federal courts found withholding the funds to be unlawful and ordered payment. Initially, the Trump administration agreed to comply, but later stated that it only had enough money to partially fund the program.
President Donald Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that payments would be made “only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” although White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said the post didn’t reflect plans to violate the rulings, saying, “The administration is fully complying with the court order.”
Rhode Island federal Judge John McConnell instructed the USDA on Nov. 6 to pay benefits in full by Friday, Nov. 7. The Trump administration filed a last-minute appeal with the Supreme Court to block the ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 7 that partial payments could be made, but at least 16 states had already released the full benefit amount over the weekend and another 13 issued or began issuing partial or mixed payments, according to research by the Food Research and Action Center. Florida, where 2.9 million residents receive SNAP benefits, was not one of them.
The USDA then instructed states that had already begun distributing benefits to “undo” the payments and take them back on Nov. 9, a demand that was blocked in federal court on Nov. 10.
The Supreme Court on Nov. 11 again declined to order full payments, giving Congress time to resolve the issue through a pending deal to end the government shutdown instead.
SNAP benefits cut, more restrictions added
While SNAP benefits will resume, the program has still been reduced and restricted. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed in July cut an estimated $186 billion from SNAP funding through 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The bill also makes it more difficult to qualify for benefits and passes some of the costs to the states.
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Able-bodied individuals without dependents are required to work at least 80 hours per month if they are ages 18 to 65 to receive benefits. Previously, the top age was 55.
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Veterans, people who recently aged out of foster care and unhoused people are no longer exempt from work requirements.
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Benefits are restricted to only certain lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens. Others lawfully present in the United States are eliminated, including those who have qualified for conditional entry under the asylum and refugee laws or based on urgent humanitarian reasons like survivors of domestic violence or human trafficking.
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The federal government has paid for benefits with each state handling the actual management. Under the new bill, states must assume up to 15% of benefit costs, depending on the payment error rate, and are saddled with increased administrative costs from 50% to 75%.
Florida SNAP benefits help low-income families buy healthy food.
What is SNAP, the former food stamp program?
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal program that provides assistance to low-income seniors, people with disabilities living on fixed incomes, and other individuals and families with low incomes to help them buy nutritious food.
It grew out of the nearly century-old national food stamp program and was renamed in the 2008 farm bill. SNAP is part of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
While October payments were pre-funded, money ran out for November payments, leaving millions at risk of hunger.
Other charities like Halifax Urban Ministries load their van with supplies at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida in Daytona Beach, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025
How much money do SNAP recipients get?
In fiscal year 2025, the average monthly benefit per person in the SNAP program was $190.59, per USDA (about $6 a day). For households, the average monthly benefit was $356.41 in total.
However, the exact amount of money that each SNAP recipient gets per month depends on their income and household size, so it varies per person.
How many people are on SNAP benefits?
More than 42 million people across more than 22 million households relied on SNAP benefits every month during fiscal year 2025, according to the USDA. Children accounted for about 39% of the people who received the benefits, according to the USDA’s report on fiscal year 2023, its latest annual data.
About 2.98 million Floridians received SNAP during fiscal year 2024, about 12.7% of the state’s population. The national average is 12.3%.
In 2023, 55% of SNAP households with children included someone employed (28% of the total) and 61% also received some other form of assistance such as Social Security.
Contributing: Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY; Gray Rohrer, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida SNAP payments to resume after government shutdown. When?
