One in eight Americans go hungry as shutdown ravages world’s wealthiest country

The United States is 30 days into a shutdown of the federal government, and yet the prevailing feeling is not one of panic but a kind of resignation.

Today, 1.4 million federal workers are going without pay. Half are being forced to work without pay, including hundreds of thousands of US military service members, and the other half aren’t allowed to work, hampering critical operations in government. Most national parks are shuttered, and funding for school lunches has lapsed, leaving kids without meals in many places.

Starting on November 1, more than 40 million Americans – that’s nearly one in eight people – will lose their critical food assistance unless states tap into their emergency reserves, which many Republican-led states have said they will not do. This will leave millions who live below the poverty line in the wealthiest country in the world without food on the table.

A friend, a schoolteacher back in our hometown in South Carolina, is preparing for next week, when more than half her students will either have lost their food assistance, or have parents in the military who will have gone without a pay cheque for three weeks. She got into this work to help young people – now instead of teaching them how to read and write, she’s thinking about how much of her own meagre savings she can tap into to keep her students fed.

Food assistance had not been affected in any of the US’s shutdowns over the past decade. But starting later this week, communities around the country will be in the same situation as my friend in her classroom, wondering how to help the people who are having suffering inflicted upon them because it suits Donald Trump and the Republican government not to properly govern the country.

Meanwhile, about 1400 workers who oversee the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile have been furloughed, though Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations remain essentially unchanged. In 2018, the first shutdown on Trump’s watch ended at least in part because air traffic controllers forced to work without pay started taking leave, and airports had to change their operations. That could happen again, with more than 20 airports having to delay more than 8000 flights this week due to a shortage of controllers.

The 2013 shutdown lasted 16 days and was a scandal that dogged US politics for years. We passed that shutdown mark nearly two weeks ago, and it’s just become background noise. In the intervening years, Americans have become so accustomed to the dysfunction of Washington that we’ve adapted to it like you adjust your morning commute because of bad traffic.

As soon as this shutdown began, Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and director of the Office of Management and Budget, got to work, firing thousands of federal workers from offices he deemed opponents to Trump’s agenda (despite being congressionally authorised and funded). Trump and Vought have made it clear that they have no intention of bringing back many of the 750,000 furloughed workers whose role they see as superfluous.

This is the core struggle in American politics right now. Trump himself is not overwhelmingly popular – his approval rating of about 40 per cent is the lowest of any president in modern history at this point in a presidency, excepting his own first term. His policies, especially his tariffs and immigration action, are starting to raise costs for Americans. Just last weekend, more than a million people rallied in opposition.

A disheartening part of this is the failure of the Democratic Party to meet the moment. The leaders of the party talk like sleepy middle managers as the nation unravels.

People want an alternative to Trump, and they aren’t finding an effective opposition. Part of this is the structural problem of a party in minority in a two-party system – there isn’t much they can do to pass laws. But Democrats are trying to play chess while Trump has thrown the board away, eaten the pieces and stolen the table.

The crisis in the United States right now isn’t that government is broken; it’s that so many people have simply stopped expecting it to work.

There is no end in sight for this shutdown, though 50 per cent of voters blame Trump and the Republicans (43 per cent blame the Democrats) in most polls conducted last week. All of this is against a backdrop of rising inflation, poor employment numbers and Trump’s own approval rating, which is steady at 40-42 per cent. The healthcare subsidies that Democrats are holding out over are supported by the vast majority of Americans, including 57 per cent of Trump voters.

There seem to be two paths forward. One is that the polling flips and Democrats cave in order to preserve a possibility of victory in next year’s midterm elections. The other, bolder prediction is that Trump returns from his Asia trip at the end of the week and grows bored with the shutdown, offers some concession so he can continue to call himself the dealmaker-in-chief, then move on to the next thing. Next week’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey may come to play a role in Trump’s calculus, especially if his Republican candidates are handed a resounding defeat and he needs to pick up his own political capital.

For the sake of the tens of millions of people without pay, food, or support, and for the millions who stand to lose healthcare coverage if Republicans have their way, let’s hope sanity prevails.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

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