With 42 million Americans on the brink of losing their SNAP benefits on November 1, many nonprofits and online content creators are asking parents to rethink what they hand out to trick-or-treaters this Halloween. 

Some groups and influencers are using their platforms to remind followers that funding for SNAP — short for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and often referred to as “food stamps” — is about to run out because of the government shutdown. Handing out nonperishable food alongside candy, they say, can go a long way to help neighbors in need. 

In a viral Facebook post, the United Way Family Resource Center recommended adding things like ramen, microwave macaroni-and-cheese cups, shelf-stable pudding, bags of pretzels and protein bars to the sweet treats in every child’s Halloween basket. “Every little bit helps keep a child’s belly full — and shows that kindness can be just as sweet as candy,” the post says.

Many popular pediatrician influencers and other content creators who focus on child well-being are repeating a similar message. Among their suggestions is placing a supply of Cup Noodles and mini cereal boxes on the doorstep so families can take what they need without stigma. 

Heather Black is the vice president of 211 System Strategy at the United Way. 211 is the three-digit dialing code designated at the federal level to connect people to health and human services in their community — and Black said there has been “very significant increases in calls related specifically to food” to 211 since the government shutdown began four weeks ago. 211 has call centers across the country, reaching virtually all of the United States. Callers are connected with a trained responder who, after completing a short intake, connects them with local resources. 

Black told The 19th that housing, utility assistance and food have always encompassed the top needs of 211 callers. Now, she said, “we are starting to see food needs specifically increase from people who maybe have always been able to rely on SNAP benefits and with the increasing publicity that funding from those benefits will not be available for the month of November, there’s beginning to be a lot of anxiety among families around how they’re going to meet those costs.”

Another group of callers concerned about food insecurity right now, Black said, are federal workers who do not receive SNAP benefits, but who are approaching four weeks without a paycheck while also dealing with increasingly high grocery store prices. 

“This is real life for people,” Black said. That’s where the spirit of the now-viral Halloween posts come into play — and speak of ways to extend that energy even further. 

“I think that’s a really creative idea, the Halloween idea — but that’s just one brief moment in time,” she said. “We’re going to need to do a lot more.”

In addition to encouraging people to support local food pantries and other community groups that help provide groceries to those in need, Black said there are other ways people can help.

“We need to check on our neighbors,” she said, mentioning people with children and older adults in particular. “We need to check in and make sure that people that we might know who would in a situation where their income could either be impacted by the government shutdown where they are now not getting a paycheck or if they have relied in the past on some of these programs where funding has now been paused — we need to check in on those folks.”

Black reminded that giving can also go beyond just donating to local food pantries. She recommended that when checking on people whose access to food might have been impacted by the shutdown in some way, ask if they need any items from the grocery store.

“I really encourage people to think in that way because asking for help is not always easy,” she said.

There are few constants in American politics, but one of them has been older Americans’ faith in Social Security. That might be changing for some, including older women, according to recent focus groups hosted by AARP. 

“They’ll find a way to take it from you,” Dorothy B., a 74-year-old Democrat from North Carolina, said during one of the focus group sessions, held this month as part of the organization’s ongoing research into the priorities and concerns of women 50 and older. Focus group participants are identified by their first name and last initial, according to the rules laid out by AARP.  

“I think it’s definitely going to be reduced,” agreed Claudia C., a 65-year-old Democrat from Washington, who said she decided to receive her Social Security benefits earlier than she might have otherwise as a result. 

“I could have waited until 70 or my full retirement age and gotten a lot more money. But I felt that I should take it now. At least I got the money now,” she said. 

All eight participants in the Democratic or Democratic-leaning focus group raised their hands when asked if they were worried about the future of their Social Security benefits. But the fear and uncertainty older women in the focus groups felt transcended politics. Republican or Republican-leaning women over 65 expressed similar doubts. In a show of hands, five out of the eight women in the GOP focus group indicated they were not confident that Social Security was something they could rely on. 

“They keep telling us, OK, in 2032, there’s no more money in Social Security,” said Amy M., 70, a Republican from Missouri, referring to a projected date in which some experts say President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful law” will cause sharp cuts to the program. “Congress can’t seem to get on the same page about anything,” she said, adding: “I don’t see them doing anything to shore it up and make sure that it’s there. I don’t believe we can count on it.” 

Patricia H., 66, a Republican from New Jersey, noted that while she and her family are financially comfortable, she is reluctant to spend money on things like vacations, just in case. 

“The way the political climate is, you just never know,” she said. 

This uncertainty expressed in these focus groups represents a big departure from long-standing polling on Social Security. Confidence in the future of the program tends to be relatively steady, although the most recent polling has shown a decline. Overall, seven percentage points fewer Americans are confident in the future of Social Security compared with five years ago according to AARP’s polling on the issue. 

Older people already receiving Social Security tend to have the highest confidence in the program. This was the case in a recent AARP poll marking the program’s 90th anniversary. About 65 percent of Americans over 65 said they were somewhat or very confident in Social Security’s future, compared with more pessimism from younger cohorts. About 25 percent of Americans ages 18 through 24 said they were somewhat or very confident in Social Security’s future, and only 20 percent of Americans ages 25 through 34 were somewhat or very confident.

“Once you start receiving the benefit, it really does shift perspective about how you feel about the program,” said Jenn Jones, vice president of Financial Security and Liveable Communities in Government Affairs at AARP. 

Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan, left-leaning think tank, noted the same trend. 

“Typically, as people get older, they become more confident in the future of Social Security – probably because they know more people who receive it and are close to receiving it themselves or start receiving it themselves,” she said. 

Romig said she was “really surprised” by the uncertainty expressed during the focus group and suggested that perhaps this change is a result of diminished confidence in institutions in general. She pointed to a recent report from the Urban Institute indicating a spike in early claims for Social Security benefits after cuts undertaken by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. 

“When people saw chaos at [the Social Security Administration] in how the program was being implemented, they wanted to take the money and run,” Romig said. 

The decision will have a long-term impact on the financial wellbeing of those who claimed the benefit earlier. People who claim Social Security at age 62 instead of age 67, for example, receive 30 percent less in monthly benefits for the rest of their lives. 

Attitudes toward Social Security also tend to be linked to confidence in the economy at large. 

“As costs have risen, you are starting to see a little bit more concern about [Social Security’s] future show up in the data from the same cohort who rely on it heavily for their financial security. With rising costs, with inflation, Social Security doesn’t go as far because things are more expensive, and so you see a lot more sort of anxiety among especially the older cohorts around sort of changes,” Jones said. 

Older women are more vulnerable to these shifts because they receive lower Social Security payments, on average, than men.  

“Typically, women enter their retirement years with less financial security. They’ve been able to save less. This goes back to the pay gap — Women earning around 80 cents on the dollar men get,” she said. 

Another contributor? Women are more likely to be the ones who step up and take on caregiving responsibilities. 

“More often than not, women are the ones who have to step away from the workforce to care for loved ones. That’s not to say that they don’t return, but in those intervening moments, they have lost both income for their day-to-day and income that would have gone to taxes for Social Security,” Jones said. 

As a result, older women may feel the financial pinch and by extension, uncertainty about Social Security’s future, more than men. 

So what will happen to Social Security in the next few years? Both Romig and Jones said they think it is unlikely anything will change for people already receiving their benefits. 

“There’s a pretty strong bipartisan consensus that you just don’t go after people who are already receiving benefits or are close to it,” said Romig. 

However, they stress that the anxiety older Americans, particularly older women feel makes sense. 

“Confidence in all kinds of institutions, has been diminishing over some time, but especially this year, I think confidence in the government to deliver has really taken a huge hit,” Romig said, pointing to chaos caused by federal government layoffs and appointees who are hostile to the departments they have been tapped to lead. 

Sixty-five years ago this fall, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey made history for doing something that might seem remarkably ordinary: she served as the proverbial red tape of the federal bureaucracy. She challenged a drug’s safety claims and repeatedly refused to approve its sale in the United States — a decision that saved lives and prevented widespread harm.

Amid thousands of layoffs in the federal government and an ongoing shutdown, the contributions of civil servants like Kelsey are a reminder of the power of one person.

Kelsey was a new medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration in September 1960 when she received an application to market a sedative drug for pregnant people with morning sickness. The sedative was called Kevadon, but the generic drug was known as thalidomide.

Kelsey, who had multiple degrees and had been trained as a doctor, was skeptical of thalidomide’s safety. At the time, the FDA had a 60-day window to either approve or reject a drug, or it would automatically go to market. Kelsey, who could not prove the drug was dangerous at the time but also knew there wasn’t information shared about its safety, made repeated requests for scientifically reliable evidence from the pharmaceutical company — a process that effectively reset the 60-day window under the guise that the application was incomplete. 

“Here was a drug that looked like it should be no problem, but at the same time there was just a feeling that there was something in the data or the absence of data that was a cause of concern,” Kelsey said in an interview years later, according to the Lost Women of Science podcast that featured her story. The pharmaceutical firm, the William S. Merrell Company, grew increasingly frustrated with her.

But the side effects of thalidomide began to surface in Europe and other countries. As Kelsey stonewalled at the FDA, reports were emerging about children whose severe birth deformities were linked to the drug. (This also did not fully prevent harm in the United States, where several hundred pregnant people took thalidomide through samples that had been distributed to doctors’ offices.)

Kelsey actions inspired new regulatory legislation for drugs, including more requirements that a pharmaceutical company ensure a drug is safe and effective. She was awarded the nation’s highest federal civilian service award — only the second woman at the time to get the recognition.

“Her exceptional judgment in evaluating a new drug for safety for human use has prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities in the United States,” President John F. Kennedy said in 1962 during a ceremony at the White House.

Kelsey later led efforts at the FDA to better test and regulate new drugs. Her work over a 45-year career with the agency included rewriting regulations and ensuring the scientific integrity of data. She retired in 2005 and died in 2015 at 101.

“She’s the embodiment of someone who took her responsibilities seriously and [impacted] not just Americans, but people worldwide through the regulatory structure that emerged from her,” Leslie Ball, Kelsey’s successor, told a publication under the University of Chicago Medicine.

Yet Kelsey’s actions were nearly stymied by her gender. In the 1930s, when she went by her maiden name, she wrote a letter to the head of the pharmacology department at the University of Chicago about a research assistant opening.

She was offered a research assistantship and scholarship at the university’s PhD program, which would lead to a master’s degree in pharmacology. But the initial acceptance letter addressed her as “Dear Mr. Oldham.” In an autobiographical reflection available on the FDA website, Kelsey wondered if the spelling of her first name had confused her future boss.

“I knew that men were the preferred commodity in those days. Should I write and explain that Frances with an “e” is female and with an ‘i’ is male?” she said through a series of interviews.

Her pharmacology professor at McGill University, where she had received a bachelor of science degree and a master’s, told her, “Don’t be ridiculous. Accept the job, sign your name, put Miss in brackets afterwards, and go!”

“That is what I did,” Kelsey said, “and, to this day, I do not know if my name had been Elizabeth or Mary Jane, whether I would have gotten that first big step up. My professor at Chicago to his dying day would never admit one way or the other.”

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