The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programor SNAP, is a major piece of the U.S. social safety net used by nearly 42 million, or about 1 in 8 Americans, to help buy groceries.

Originally known as the food stamp program, it has existed since 1964, serving low-income people, many of whom have jobs but don’t make enough money to cover all the basic costs of living.

Public attention has focused on the program since President Donald Trump’s administration announced last week that it would freeze SNAP payments starting Nov. 1 in the midst of a monthlong federal government shutdown. The administration argued it wasn’t allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it to help keep the program going. But on Friday, two federal judges ruled in separate challenges that the federal government must continue to fund SNAP, at least partially, using contingency funds. However, the federal government is expected to appeal, and the process to restart SNAP payments would likely take one to two weeks.

Here’s a look at how SNAP works.

Who’s eligible?

There are income limits based on family size, expenses and whether households include someone who is elderly or has a disability.

Most SNAP participants are families with children, and more than 1 in 3 include older adults or someone with a disability.

Nearly 2 in 5 recipients are households where someone is employed.

Most participants have incomes below the poverty line, which is about $32,000 for a family of four, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, says nearly 16 million children received SNAP benefits in 2023.

Who’s not eligible?

People who are not in the country legally, and many immigrants who do have legal status, are not eligible. Many college students aren’t either, and some states have barred people with certain drug convictions.

Under a provision of Trump’s big tax and policy law that also takes effect Nov. 1, people who do not have disabilities, are between ages 18 and 64 and who do not have children under age 14 can receive benefits for only three months every three years if they’re not working. Otherwise, they must work, volunteer or participate in a work training program at least 80 hours a month.

How much do beneficiaries receive?

On average, the monthly benefit per household participating in SNAP over the past few years has been about $350, and the average benefit per person is about $190.

The benefit amount varies based on a family’s income and expenses. The designated amount is based on the concept that households should allocate 30% of their remaining income after essential expenses to food.

Families can receive higher amounts if they pay child support, have monthly medical expenses exceeding $35 or pay a higher portion of their income on housing.

How do benefits work?

The cost of benefits and half the cost of running the program is paid by the federal government using tax dollars.

States pay the rest of the administrative costs and run the program.

People apply for SNAP through a state or county social service agency or through a nonprofit that helps people with applications. In some states, SNAP is known by another, state-specific name. For instance, it’s FoodShare in Wisconsin and CalFresh in California.

The benefits are delivered through electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, cards that work essentially like a bank debit card. Besides SNAP, it’s where money is loaded for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program, which provides cash assistance for low-income families with children, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

The card is swiped or inserted in a store’s card reader at checkout, and the cardholder enters their PIN to pay for food. The cost of the food is deducted from the person’s SNAP account balance.

What can it buy?

SNAP benefits can only be used for food at participating stores — mostly groceries, supermarkets, discount retail stores, convenience stores and farmers markets. It also covers plants and seeds bought to grow your own food. However, hot foods — like restaurant meals — are not covered.

Most, but not all, food stores participate. The USDA provides a link on its website to a SNAP retail locatorallowing people to enter an address to get the closest retailers to them.

Items commonly found in a grocery and other participating stores that can’t be bought with SNAP benefits include pet food, household supplies like toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning products, and toiletries like toothpaste, shampoo and cosmetics. Vitamins, medicines, alcohol and tobacco products are also excluded.

Sales tax is not charged on items bought with SNAP benefits.

Are there any restrictions?

There aren’t additional restrictions today on which foods can be purchased with SNAP money.

But the federal government is allowing states to apply to limit which foods can be purchased with SNAP starting in 2026.

So far, a dozen states — 11 of them Republican-controlled plus Colorado — have received permission to do so.

All of them will bar buying soft drinks, most say no to candy, and some block energy drinks.

BOSTON (AP) — Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to pay for SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using emergency reserve funds during the government shutdown.

The judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November. That also brings uncertainty about how things will unfold and will delay payments for many beneficiaries whose cards would normally be recharged early in the month.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs about $8 billion per month nationally.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee that oversees the food aid program, said Friday’s rulings from judges nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama confirm what Democrats have been saying: “The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so.”

Trump posted on social media Friday blasting congressional Democrats for the shutdown and suggesting the government would comply with the rulings but also that it needed more clarity first: “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding.”

Judges agree at least one fund must go toward SNAP

Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states and the District of Columbia challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.

The administration said it wasn’t allowed to use a contingency fund of about $5 billion for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic officials said not only could that money be used, but that it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion is available for the cause.

In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled from the bench in a case filed by cities and nonprofits that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds. He asked for an update on progress by Monday.

Along with ordering the federal government to use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, McConnell ruled that all previous work requirement waivers must continue to be honored. The USDA during the shutdown has terminated existing waivers that exempted work requirements for older adults, veterans and others.

There were similar elements in the Boston case, where U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in a written opinion that the USDA has to pay for SNAP, calling the suspension “unlawful.” She ordered the federal government to advise the court by Monday as to whether they will use the emergency reserve funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits for November or fully fund the program “using both contingency funds and additional available funds.

“Defendants’ suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments,” she wrote. “This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.”

For many, benefits will still be delayed after the ruling

No matter how the rulings came down, the benefits for millions of people will be delayed in November because the process of loading cards can take a week or more in many states.

The administration did not immediately say whether it would appeal the rulings.

States, food banks and SNAP recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries. Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.

Most states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the SNAP debit cards.

Across the U.S., advocates who had been sounding the alarm for weeks about the pending SNAP benefits cut off let out a small sigh of relief as the rulings came down Friday, while acknowledging the win is temporary and possibly not complete.

“Thousands of nonprofit food banks, pantries and other organizations across the country can avoid the impossible burden that would have resulted if SNAP benefits had been halted,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs in the Rhode Island case.

The possibility of reduced benefits also means uncertainty

Cynthia Kirkhart, CEO of Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia, said her organization and the pantries it serves in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia will keep their extra hours this weekend, knowing that the people whose benefits usually arrive at the start of the month won’t see them.

“What we know, unless the administration is magical, is nothing is going to happen tomorrow,” she said.

Kristle Johnson, a full-time nursing student and mother of three in Florida, is concerned about the possibility of reduced benefits.

Despite buying meat in bulk, careful meal planning and not buying junk food, she said, her $994 a month benefit doesn’t buy a full month’s groceries.

“Now I have to deal with someone who wants to get rid of everything I have to keep my family afloat until I can better myself,” Johnson said of Trump.

The ruling doesn’t resolve partisan tussles

At a Washington news conference earlier Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of the program for long. Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a “disgusting dereliction of duty” by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of health care funds.

A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.

To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children.

“The court’s ruling protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight and upholds the principle that no one in America should go hungry,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said of the Rhode Island decision.

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Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey; and Kruesi from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D.C., contributed.

Buckingham Palace would like for us to see power and majesty in its announcement Thursday that King Charles III is stripping his younger brother Andrew of the title of “prince” and booting him from his 30-room residence. After all, no British prince has been officially de-titled in more than a century. None has been so publicly evicted.

But while removing all royal vestiges from Andrew is a momentous step, make no mistake: Charles was backed into a corner. If the monarchy is to survive this saga, the monarch had little choice but to distance the royal family from its most disgraced member — or at least appear to do so. Distinguishing Andrew from the rest of the royal family is Windsor brand management after years of taint by association.

Distinguishing Andrew from the rest of the royal family is Windsor brand management after years of taint by association.

Andrew has been in headlines over his friendship with a convicted sex offender; accusations of sexual assault (which he continues to deny); and links to figures in a government spy case. Allegations of questionable relationships and lavish trips shadowed his years as a British trade envoy. Charles may be used to heckling, but questions shouted at the king this week about what he knew about Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein were replayed over and over on U.K. media — reflecting a national disgust that had sparked talk in Parliament. The king acted partly to ensure lawmakers didn’t.

“These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” the palace statement said. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

This language suggests Charles supports women such as Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an American whose allegations that she was trafficked as a teenager by Epstein and forced to have sex with Andrew three times were first published in Britain in 2011. (Andrew has repeatedly denied the accusations. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with Epstein for $500,000 in 2009.)

Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, wrote a memoir that was published posthumously last week. Excerpts from the memoir — which is No. 1 on the Amazon sales chart — intensified media scrutiny on Andrew, who’d been in headlines since the summer publication of the biography “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.” Pages were stuffed with anecdotes and mostly anonymous recollections of not just Andrew’s boorish behavior but also his penchant for private flights on the public’s dimeallegations of self-enriching business deals and details of his encounters with Epstein starting in 1999. The biography “hasn’t so much cemented Prince Andrew’s reputation, as put it in concrete boots and thrown it in the river,” the BBC’s royal correspondent wrote in August.

Further blows came from newly surfaced links to Epstein, with the most radioactive reports showing the prince in friendly conversation with Epstein months after he’d claimed to have cut off contact. Andrew’s denials of wrongdoing, previously trusted by royal aides, were compromised — as was the palace practice of letting Andrew manage fallout.

For years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on a solicitation charge in Floridaquestions were asked about the friendship. Sketchy affiliations were part of the criticism of Andrew’s tenure as U.K. trade ambassador. But it wasn’t until after Epstein died in 2019 — while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy — that Andrew spoke out. His BBC “Newsnight” interview that November was a debacle of such proportions that it has been dramatized by both Netflix and Amazon. Andrew claimed not to sweat, categorically denied Giuffre’s allegations and expressed no regret over his friendship with Epstein. His tone-deaf statements and failure to apologize were swiftly condemned.

Ever since, Andrew has been trying to draw a line under this scandal. Days after the “Newsnight” interview, he announced he would step back from public life. In early 2022, he returned his military honors and said he would not use his Royal Highness title. Soon after that, he settled a civil lawsuit with Giuffrewith no admission of guilt, for an undisclosed sum. This month, he announced he would not use his Duke of York title. Global humiliations all, and made under intense pressure, but technically the prince had lost none of his privileges.

Things took a turn this month when U.K. news outlets published more emails purportedly between Andrew and Epstein, including messages reportedly showing Andrew had asked his taxpayer-funded police guard to dig up dirt on Giuffre. This prompted a response from London’s Metropolitan Police — it is looking into the reports — but no comment from Andrew or the palace. Details emerged of Andrew’s lease for the 30-room crown-owned mansion he’s rented since 2003.

Turns out nothing sparks outrage like rent of one peppercorn per year.

No one knows what other details about Andrew’s activities could still emerge.

Although Parliament and the monarchy traditionally stay out of each other’s affairs, and control over Andrew’s titles rests with the sovereign, public anger prompted some members of Parliament to question why Andrew should live effectively rent-free in a grand home. For the palace, such discussion is a slippery slope. The monarchy doesn’t want clarity brought to opaque royal financial arrangements, and it’s unlikely people are going to stop asking how, exactly, Andrew affords his lavish lifestyle. No one knows what other details about Andrew’s activities could still emerge.

After the king announced he would strip Andrew of his royal titles, Giuffre’s brother publicly thanked Charles and reflected on his sister’s bravery in speaking out. “This normal girl from a normal family has taken down a prince,” he tearfully told the BBC. That she did not live to see the response to her harrowing story compounds the sadness.

But this is not the end of Andrew’s story. He has been banished — to the Norfolk countryside. Reportedly sometime after Christmashe will move to a property on the Sandringham estate, which is privately owned by the king. His daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, will retain their titles, while the king will fund his brother.

Now the question is whether there will be a police investigation, potentially clearing Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s name — or resulting in charges he would have to face without royal protection.

Giuffre’s brother has said Andrew should be behind bars. Others have suggested Andrew could tell authorities what he witnessed at Epstein properties — details that might corroborate accounts from victims. With U.S. lawmakers still focused on Epstein, this issue isn’t closed.

The palace statement says royal sympathies are with the victims of abuse, but if that were the case, the royal family could have acted more firmly years ago. Distancing themselves from Andrew is not the same as calling for accountability.

Autumn Brewington

Autumn Brewington is an opinion editor at BLN Daily. She was previously an opinion editor at The Washington Post, where she oversaw the op-ed page for seven years, and has also edited at The Wall Street Journal and Lawfare. She launched The Post’s royal newsletter and writes about the British royal family on Substack.