With the nation’s primary anti-hunger program on the verge of running out of money, a group of 23 Democratic attorneys general sued the Agriculture Department on Tuesday to force it to make billions of dollars in contingency funds available to help feed the most vulnerable individuals and families.

SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program commonly known as food stamps, needs $9.2 billion to pay benefits in November. The Trump administration has said there’s no money for next month because of the government shutdown, which started Oct. 1 and doesn’t appear close to ending.

USDA has $5.5 billion on hand in contingency funds for the program, enough to cover more than half of the month’s costs, but it cannot pay them, a senior administration official told The Washington Post on Mo

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