As I brace for the end of the semester and its final exams, papers and projects, thoughts of the upcoming Thanksgiving break have helped me get by. 

Sometimes I feel like the only thing getting me out of bed for my 8 a.m. lecture is remembering that I’ll be soon waking up to the smell of my dad’s homemade caramel rolls, and preparing for my family’s annual Christmas cookie-baking day.

However, as I anticipate the loving excesses of my family’s holiday food traditions, it’s hard to ignore the number of families whose Thanksgiving plans have gone haywire thanks to federal food assistance disruptions and increasing food insecurity.

President Donald Trump’s administration announced at the end of October that nearly 42 million Americans would not receive their November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments due to the then-ongoing government shutdown.

As millions of Americans, including more than 440,000 Minnesotans, lost access to SNAP benefits, nonprofits and organizations tackling food insecurity needed to compensate.

Executive director of Groveland Food Shelf Sharon Abel said the SNAP cuts ushered in an influx of new people wanting to help out.

“A lot of folks have wanted to come in and volunteer and help out, which is awesome,” Abel said. “But the thing is, a lot of that is short-lived, and that is not helpful. And then as soon as it’s no longer trendy or sexy, they’re going to stop helping.” 

Abel said Groveland is open five days a week and operates several pantries throughout Minneapolis. They were forced to limit guests to three visits per week earlier this year due to increasing demand. In the past two months, Abel said they had an unprecedented level of new guests coming in every single day.

Abel said Groveland’s patrons have been in dire need for months as a result of actions from the Trump administration, though the public only started paying attention due to the pause on SNAP.

“The people that are impacted by SNAP in November are people on the razor edge between being unhoused and housed, people choosing between paying their groceries, buying their groceries or paying their mortgage,” Abel said. “My people have been f—ked for six months and nobody cared until now.”

Abel referenced a guest from Groveland whose SNAP benefits went from $86 to $23 a month after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act dramatically cut funding to SNAP.

Sophia Lenarz-Coy, executive director of The Food Group, a non-profit targeting food insecurity, said the cuts to federal food assistance have only applied more pressure to growing food insecurity.

“So you’ve just seen this dramatic growth in people needing to access food shops because of grocery prices and the strain that’s putting on household budgets,” Lenarz-Coy said. “And so to have the federal safety net get smaller at that time, we knew we were kind of bracing for some difficult things to come.”

Lenarz-Coy said she was shocked by Trump’s continued efforts to block SNAP funding during the shutdown, despite court orders to distribute funds.

“It felt like there was a really intentional decision to use that as almost a political bargaining chip, as opposed to this idea that it is absolutely our responsibility to make sure everyone has the food that they need,” Lenarz-Coy said.

Despite emergency funds being available to cover at least partial benefits, the Trump administration initially refused to fund SNAP. The president instead used the opportunity to blame Democrats for the shutdown, knowing millions of Americans would go hungry in the process. 

On Nov. 6, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, chastising the administration for using the program as political leverage.

The irony of all this occurring in the month of a national holiday centered around how the sharing of food contributed to American success speaks for itself. 

“People are more stretched at the holidays than probably any other time of year, trying to figure out in a super limited budget how you’re going to get just a couple gifts for kids, or that kind of thing,” Lenarz-Coy said. “So the idea that the additional stress and chaos hit our lowest income folks, it kind of made me rageful.”

Second Harvest Heartland public affairs manager Sophie Wallerstedt said that since SNAP benefits were cut, large numbers of people have been looking to help out. The food bank was also able to begin a new program curating pre-packed emergency food boxes for people who didn’t have time to go shopping through food shelves.

“We pulled together a pretty big operation to have volunteers pack food boxes with a number of items in it and then offer them at cost to food shelves as well,” Wallerstedt said. “Those were pretty successful.”

Wallerstedt added that Second Harvest also worked to provide food to federal workers who hadn’t been receiving their paychecks during the government shutdown.

Every group I spoke with said they receive an influx of support during the holidays, commonly known as the season of giving. 

However, it’s important to remember that these organizations need support year-round, especially as the Trump administration continues to strip federal support from vulnerable communities.

“People care about poor people during the holidays,” Abel said. “Poor people still exist. People still need help after December 24th.”

The best way to help food shelves and banks is to be consistent in your support, Abel added.

“Be a consistent volunteer even if it’s once a month,” Abel said. “So that when the next big, bad scary thing happens, you are somebody who is already skilled and trained.”

While speaking with these organizations, I was inspired to go out and look for volunteer opportunities at my local food shelf, like I know many others have in the past month.

But in doing so, I’m also making the commitment to go back in January after the holiday season has ended and after headlines about SNAP stop populating my newsfeed. The fight against food insecurity exists 365 days a year, regardless of its political salience.

“Food is like a central piece of how we come together,” Lenarz-Coy said. “I think food does have this magic way of creating community and connection. I think it’s really important to remember that we better make sure everybody has it.”