Close to one million Washington residents are only days away from losing their access to federally-funded food assistance.

As the current government shutdown becomes more protracted, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has posted a notice at its website indicating that federal food aid will cease to all recipients after Oct. 31.

The USDA notice comes in the wake of a statement from the Trump administration saying it has no intention of utilizing $5 billion in contingency funding to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) operational into November.

The SNAP program is relied upon for food assistance by about 1-in-8 U.S. residents, including almost 930,000 in Washington State (about 11.2% of its population) who comprise over 540,000 households.

The shutdown is now

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