Millions of low-income Americans are losing access to food aid as the nation’s largest anti-hunger program goes dark for the first time.

Congress failed to reopen the government before funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out Saturday. A federal judge, in an eleventh-hour decision, directed the Trump administration to use emergency funds to pay for food aid in November — but even that wasn’t enough to prevent the immediate lapse of benefits, which officials say could take weeks to resume.

“I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible … even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out,” President Donald Trump wrote on social media Friday evening. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding.”

For now, states, food banks and nonprofit organizations are scrambling to backfill the loss of critical federal dollars, however temporary it may be, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

“It’s going to get ugly fast,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this week.

The unprecedented pause in benefits reveals just how difficult it has become for Washington to find common ground on previously bipartisan issues, from food aid to health care. SNAP, which serves nearly 42 million people, has always been funded during government shutdowns, including in Trump’s first-term.

“I don’t know that I can describe the level of anxiety from a family that doesn’t know if they’re going to be able to put food on the table or not,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján, whose home state of New Mexico has the nation’s highest rate of SNAP participation, with more than one in five people relying on the program.

Trump administration officials have insisted that they don’t have the authority to tap emergency money for SNAP and that they don’t have enough funds on hand to support the estimated $9 billion needed for November benefits.

It’s unclear whether officials will appeal the Friday ruling requiring them to pay up.

Even if they comply with the court order, it will still take days and, in some states, weeks to get SNAP benefits to low-income Americans, especially since the administration has not stood up a system to disperse any partial funds since the shutdown began one month ago.

“The sooner the USDA just does the right thing, follows the law, the sooner [participants] will get the benefits. But there could easily be a few day delay because of their intransigence,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said in an interview after the court decision Friday.

“I think we know that the courts are clear, and if the department chooses to appeal and not provide the benefits, it won’t be a legal decision, it will be a political one,” she added.

The impact of the food aid lapse will sweep across red and blue states alike: Just over half of all SNAP recipients live in states that backed Trump in last year’s election.

More than two dozen Democratic state officials — including those in California, Massachusetts, Kansas and Kentucky — sued the Trump administration over the lapse in benefits in a separate lawsuit that is still pending a formal decision. Republican officials have pointed the blame at Congressional Democrats, who continue to block the clean funding stopgap which includes money for SNAP.

“Due to a failure by Democrats in the U.S. Senate to pass a clean funding bill … SNAP benefits that many Nebraska families and kids depend on are now unavailable in November,” Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said in a statement displayed on his state’s SNAP administration website. “This shutdown was absolutely preventable. We urge members to approve a clean funding bill and stop using Nebraska’s most vulnerable people for political leverage.”

SNAP provides low-income people with an average of $177 in food benefits each month.

In the interim, several states are dipping into their own coffers to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars — in some cases, millions — to food banks and offer other nutrition assistance. Virginia, Louisiana and New York, among others, have declared states of emergency on SNAP.

But their budgets will only cover a fraction of the federal funds they’ve received for the past 60 years, and states haven’t been given any promise of reimbursement from the Trump administration.

“You have 42 million Americans who will go without food,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who, like Luján, tried to push through a standalone bill to fund SNAP before the Nov. 1 funding cliff. “So every day this goes on, the worse it gets.”

The SNAP pause isn’t happening in a vacuum. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children is also running out of federal funds, meaning families with young children will have a harder time accessing infant formula and everyday groceries. And Head Start centers, which provide several nutritious meals to children, are being forced to close across the country.

The need for nutrition assistance rose sharply in recent years as rising food inflation and broader increases in cost of living made it difficult for low-income families to purchase basic necessities. But Trump has looked to slash overall spending on safety net programs with his One Big Beautiful Bill and cut funding for food banks and nonprofits across the country.

George Matysik, executive director for a food bank in the Philadelphia region, described the reality as “going from a brown out to a black out.” His organization’s budget was slashed by 20 percent thanks to the loss of federal funding earlier this year, but his food pantries have seen a 12-fold increase in new families seeking help just in the last two weeks.

“Our own federal government is making this choice to hurt its people, and in particular, working-class people,” he said.

In the Washington area, nonprofits like Capital Area Food Bank have hosted several food distributions targeted at the thousands of federal workers who have gone without pay for a month or have lost their jobs permanently.

One furloughed Defense Department worker, who visited a Virginia distribution site and was granted anonymity for privacy reasons, said it was her first time seeking help from a food bank.

“I usually donate,” she said. “The roles are reversed. You never think you’re going to find yourself in a challenging position.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.