Impending November 2025 SNAP Freeze


4:35 PM Monday. 

I should be doing my strength training right now, but I noticed a text from the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance about an impending November 2025 SNAP freeze as I was shuttling my mom out the door for her eye surgery. I spent all of my time in the eye clinic waiting room researching the issue, and when I finally got my mom home, I wasn't able to focus on my strength training because of my emotions. I went for a short walk to try and warm-up, but I couldn't stop thinking about the SNAP freeze. Here is my Google Gemini research thread from the waiting room:


I depend on SNAP for my food expenses, and I don't have enough of a reserve in my SNAP account to make it all the way through November. I've been doing so well with my diet lately - actually eating some fresh produce every day, with help from the Honest Weight Food Coop's participation in the NYS Double Up Bucks program - and I was really looking forward to trying something special and healthy for Thanksgiving. Now I am worried about 3 million New Yorkers and 42 million Americans on SNAP having a very difficult month - and this might only be the beginning. What could happen in December? This must be very triggering for a lot of disabled people with mental health challenges. If SNAP falls through, I suspect there will be a significant increase in suicides and suicide attempts, domestic violence, psychiatric hospitalizations, and other tragic and costly outcomes. 

Yes, I have a very small reserve in my checking account that I can use to get through November. Indeed, I can likely tough it out through December. But 2026 feels like it will be unsustainable for me without SNAP, and certainly without SSI.

Now strangely enough, I feel very calm overall. I am not getting depressed. I am not decompensating. I trust that Congress, the White House, and the Courts will get this government shutdown resolved before the end of the year. 

I appreciate that Governor Hochul is mobilizing $30 million in SNAP contingency funding, but instead of blaming the Republicans, I'd prefer it if she took a more neutral stance toward this power struggle in Washington. I'd prefer it if she lined up closer to Senators Murkowski and Collins by putting the blame first on Senator Schumer and second on President Trump, or at least something closer to equal blame on both. But I only caught a snippet of the New York press coverage. Maybe Governor Hochul did lay proportionate blame on both sides in her recent remarks.

At this point, it's not completely clear to me that Democrats are more responsible for the shutdown. President Trump is saying that he will not be held hostage by Senate Minority Leader Schumer, and I do find considerable procedural merit in this position. But it does concern me that I have not yet heard President Trump speak from the Oval Office at primetime to understandably anxious white, black and Hispanic American citizens (37%, 26% and 16% of SNAP beneficiaries, respectively) about why they should endure a cut to SNAP if Republicans are going to end up approving wildly popular ACA tax credit exemptions before the end of the year anyway. Will it really look worth the cost, in hindsight? As an American patriot and instinctive supporter of Trump's unbelievable global peace dividend, I am willing to support the President on this domestic issue even at a significant temporary cost to my SNAP budget if the President can make a strong enough case to me on three key points:

  1. Republicans do not intend to eliminate or reduce SNAP for the disabled, the working poor and poor senior American citizens in 2026 or over the long-term but rather aim to improve the positive multipliers of the program, especially with respect to healthier eating and increased farm-to-plate resilience.
  2. Republicans do not intend to make healthcare less accessible for children, the disabled, the working poor, and senior American citizens, but aim instead for the best possible American balance of coverage, cost, and quality, in reasonable competition with Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand.
  3. It is fundamentally wrong - i.e., unconstitutional or should be unconstitutional - for a Senate Minority Leader of either party to unilaterally shut down the US government and effectively hold federal employees and SNAP recipients hostage over a disagreement with the US President, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House Speaker, all of the opposite party, on the need for a clean CR in the wake of a stunning election and the significant reform mandate it implied.

This said, I am also willing to publicly castigate the US President, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House Speaker if the Senate Minority Leader from my home State of New York makes an even better case that this is a 3-point hill all New York State and Blue State SNAP recipients should be prepared to die on. Honestly, if it's not an absolute right of the Senate minority, and if it's not about universal healthcare for US citizens and legal US residents, together with increased SNAP benefits for foods that are good for people and planet, together with higher market prices for foods that hurt human and climate health, is this real 21st century American leadership for real 21st century civilizational problems, or is it just partisan political grandstanding?

I don't know. This is not the Knesset, and it's not a battle between Netanyahu and Lapid. It feels that way to me sometimes because of the pivotal geopolitical significance of October 7, but this is definitely not the Knesset. Maybe it's more of a negotiation between Gillibrand and Collins in the Senate. Which one should cross the aisle on the procedural needs for a clean CR and more time to debate, relative to the substantive need for improved healthcare coverage, affordability and outcomes in what is likely to become an increasingly climate-and-illegal-immigrant-stressed world?

OK, my balls are in your court, President Trump, Senate Minority Leader Schumer. I don't know what the next two months will bring, but I am grateful to God and my fellow Americans - faithful Republicans, faithful Democrats, and everyone else. I trust we will get through this together. I trust that I will learn to look at life in a new way as we move forward. I trust that Trump and Schumer each still have a lot to teach me about the meaning of it all and how best to succeed in serving God and country. I am only 53 and my life experience pales in comparison to theirs. Nevertheless, it's my life experience and it counts as much anyone else's in God's eyes, according to Scripture and the US Constitution. What matters is that I share my experience honestly and appropriately, with courage and courtesy, for deliberation by the body politic.

End 9:48 PM. Way past my 6:00 PM device-free time and my 8:00 PM bedtime. Have I solved anything? Should I have stuck with my strength training and sleep hygiene routines, and given this stressor up to God back at 4:30 PM, or was blogging my best coping mechanism? Something for me to explore with my therapist on Wednesday morning.

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