Mississippi’s children, older adults and low-income families will suffer when federal food assistance halts tomorrow if the state does not step in, pediatricians and legislators urged in letters to the governor this week. 

New benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will not be issued beginning Nov. 1 due to the ongoing federal government shutdown, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced Oct. 24. Food assistance has continued to flow in past shutdowns, but the federal government has said it cannot use emergency funds to pay for the program. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has not indicated that he will move for Mississippi to bridge the gap in the food assistance program. Democratic and Republican governors in a handful of other states, including Louisiana, have pledged to use state funds to cover all or part of the program.

There will be long-term consequences for children if Reeves and state legislators do not take similar steps to fund the benefits, leaders of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote in a Tuesday letter. 

“The cost of inaction will be far greater than the cost of temporary assistance,” said the letter penned by President Dr. Patricia Tibbs and Vice President Dr. David Reeves. 

“Families already struggling to make ends meet will be forced to choose between food, utilities, and medicine. Hospitals and clinics will inevitably bear the burden of increased malnutrition and preventable illness. Our children, the future of this state, will suffer the most.”

Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Kabir Karriem, a Democrat from Columbus, encouraged Reeves to declare a state of emergency and call a special session of the Legislature to appropriate funds to cover the shortfall. 

“Ensuring that no Mississippian faces hunger due to gaps in SNAP delivery is a critical public health and humanitarian priority,” he wrote in a letter Tuesday. 

Reeves did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today.

In a social media post Monday, he blamed Democrats for the government shutdown’s ramifications and said the state cannot cover the halted funds. 

“Democrats in Washington are evidently more interested in providing free healthcare to illegals than a safety net for poor Mississippians,” he wrote. 

“They evidently hate Trump more than they like their constituents. There is sadly no simple way for state government to just step in and pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in harm that this shutdown by the Washington Democrats is causing.”

The battle over whether or not to extend expiring tax credits that make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans is at the heart of the government shutdown standoff, with Democrats pushing for their renewal, along with the reversal of cuts to Medicaid. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the subsidies, nor are they eligible for full Medicaid benefits.  

Reeves announced Friday that he has requested a waiver from the United States Department of Agriculture to ban using SNAP benefits to purchase processed foods high in sugar and allow for the purchase of hot prepared chicken. The benefits can not currently be used to buy foods that are hot at the point of sale. Twelve other states have been approved for similar waivers.

“In a nation that is printing money daily just to make our debt payments, it doesn’t make sense to throw your tax money at anything other than the true necessities,” he said in a statement. “So it makes no sense at all to fund sugar instead of hearty nutritious meals. That’s why we’re amending our food stamp rules to allow good sustaining food like rotisserie chickens and disallow sugary candy and drinks.”

Nearly 400,000 Mississippians — or 13% of the state’s population — receive food assistance through SNAP. Two thirds of participants are in families with children, and about 41% are in households with older adults or adults with a disability. 

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the nation, with over 1 in 5 children living in poverty and lacking reliable access to food.  

“I’m really worried,” Tibbs told Mississippi Today. She referenced the effects that hunger can have on children’s development, behavior, academic performance and long-term health. 

Some counties rely heavily on SNAP benefits. In four Mississippi counties, over a third of residents rely on the program to purchase food, according to a report from WLBT. 

The federal government has been shut down since Oct. 1 as Congress works to strike a deal on the national budget. It is now the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the halted food assistance benefits, arguing that the decision was illegal and will harm the 42 million Americans who depend on the benefits. 

Federal officials say they are legally prohibited from extending the benefits by using emergency funds.

“No child in our state should go hungry because of political gridlock in Washington,” Tibbs and Reeves, the pediatrics association’s vice president, wrote in the Oct. 28 letter. 

SNAP beneficiaries in Mississippi must meet income and resource limits, and most able-bodied adults must also meet work requirements. 

New work requirements for SNAP are set to begin next month as a result of federal budget legislation President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. The law increases the existing work requirement’s upper age limit from 54 to 65 and extends the requirement to people who were previously exempt: veterans, those facing homelessness, and young people aging out of foster care. There is still a caregiver exemption, but parents must have children younger than 14 — down from 18. 

Even in the best of times, many Mississippi families aren’t able to provide healthy meals for their kids, said Tibbs. A pause to SNAP could be devastating. 

“I just hope that the state sees the crisis that’s looming for our vulnerable citizens and that they do something to extend benefits for as long as we can,” she said. 

“We need to have said in the future that we tried, we tried to do the things we need to do for the children in our state, regardless of what’s happening in Washington, D.C.”

Update: This story has been updated to include comments from Gov. Tate Reeves on changes he has requested for SNAP benefits.