Mount Ida Food Pantry volunteers Iris Chiang, left, and Kara Gilmore help people pick out food on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025, at Mount Ida Preservation Hall on Congress Street in Troy.

When the federal government shut down weeks ago, no one imagined it’d mean empty plates at a child’s breakfast, a family's bare fridge or the faces of seniors waiting for food assistance that never comes.

But after weeks of chaos driven by a Republican Party willing to use hunger as a bargaining chip, we are now at an unthinkable place: missing SNAP benefits for thousands of New York families who rely on them to eat.

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In my district alone, more than 64,000 neighbors depend on those benefits to feed their families. Across the country, millions of households now face food insecurity. Our safety net isn’t being stretched thin; it’s being ripped apart at the seams.

It goes beyond hunger. Congressional Republicans have made a deliberate choice to weaponize human need as they push to slash the........

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