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CNN One Thing
You’ve been overwhelmed with headlines all week – what's worth a closer look? One Thing takes you beyond the headlines and helps make sense of what everyone is talking about. Host David Rind talks to experts, reporters on the front lines and the real people impacted by the news about what they've learned – and why it matters. New episodes every Wednesday and Sunday.
The Shutdown is Already Hurting Americans. It’s About to Get Worse.
CNN One Thing
Oct 29, 2025
Nearly 42 million Americans could lose critical food assistance this week because of the ongoing government shutdown. But it’s far from the only real-world impact people are starting to feel. So why are both sides of the aisle still refusing to budge? We hear what it might take to end the stalemate and why one SNAP recipient feels like a political pawn as she tries to put food on the table for her family.
Guest: Aaron Blake, CNN Senior Reporter
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Host: David Rind
Producer: Paola Ortiz
Showrunner: Felicia Patinkin
Editorial Support: Tami Luhby
Episode Transcript
David Rind
00:00:00
Welcome back to One Thing. I'm David Rind and the shutdown in Washington is about to hit dinner tables across the country.
Jessica
00:00:07
They understand snacks might be limited and that they really need to focus on cleaning their plate. But how do you explain it to small children that wanna eat?
David Rind
00:00:18
Stick with us. What do your kids like to eat?
Jessica
00:00:23
Um, well, um, they like apples, bananas, you know, we do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we eat things like chicken, um unfortunately with a special needs child, there comes the safe foods, you know, that aren't so healthy, such as chicken nuggets.
David Rind
00:00:40
This is Jessica. She lives in Batavia, Ohio. She asked we only use her first name because of fears of retaliation.
Jessica
00:00:47
'I'm a mom of three. I've been married for 14 years. My oldest is 12, and then I have a 10-year-old and a six-year old. My six- year-old, unfortunately, is physically disabled. It's rare, it's genetic, and we know of about five other children that have it, so we really don't know what her future is. So because of that, I stay at home and take care of her.
David Rind
00:01:13
So your husband works, you stay at home.
Jessica
00:01:17
'He's self-employed, so everything's hard right now because of the economy. He's doing his best to make ends meet and I'm trying to hold it down at home.
David Rind
00:01:25
'A full-time job in its own right, no doubt. I asked her about food earlier because Jessica is one of the nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to put food on the table. These food stamps are a crucial lifeline to many communities. In fact, according to USDA data, 24% of all American Indian and Alaska Native households get food from SNAP. Jessica and her family have been using the benefits for more than 10 years.
Jessica
00:01:56
We get about $1,000 a month, and it gets us through the month, and that's about it. With three growing children, you know, they eat a lot. One's almost a teenager, so, I mean, it's a lot to try to keep everybody fed and content.
David Rind
00:02:10
She was actually hoping this would be the year. She would get off the program and return to work, but her child's medical condition and the constant doctor's appointments that come with it have made that impossible. And then came the government shutdown.
John Berman
00:02:25
'This morning, with the government shut down, there's a lot of finger pointing going on. Democrats want to include an extension of Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the year. Republicans have refused to negotiate on subsidies unless Democrats first agree to a short-term resolution that would fund the government for seven weeks.
David Rind
00:02:41
'The standoff is nearing the one-month mark, and the impacts are piling up. Federal workers have been furloughed or fired. Air traffic controllers have missed paychecks. Some museums and national parks are closed. But starting Saturday, November 1, SNAP benefits will run out, meaning that money Jessica relies on to feed her family might not arrive.
Jessica
00:03:02
We're terrified. There are food pantries in the area, but everybody else is going to be going to those too. So we wonder how long those are even going to last. So we don't really have any clue, I guess. I mean, I could go back to work, but with that, my daughter's health could suffer because she has special needs and we go to a lot of appointments. She just had surgery in August. Um, so she's doing physical therapy three times a week as part of her recovery, that would have to go on the back burner and then she suffers.
David Rind
00:03:35
On the food specifically. So there's, you know, food pantries that are a possible option. Have you, are you stocking up at all? Is that even an option for you at this point?
Jessica
00:03:47
There's not a lot of time. We have three days left in the month. They kind of sprung it on us. So I'm gonna try to go to food pantries over the next couple of days, if I can fit it in to kind of build a base stock, you know, and figure it out from there.
David Rind
00:04:02
Like, have you thought at all about other parts of your family budget that you might have to dip into to cover food costs?
Jessica
00:04:10
I mean, everything's so tight. Bills may have to go the wayside. Car payments may have be missed. I mean really without that food assistance, you know, it really takes a chunk out of, you know our living expenses that we're not prepared for.
David Rind
00:04:27
How do you explain the situation to your kids? Does it come up? Like, how do you talk about this stuff?
Jessica
00:04:34
Um, we haven't yet. Um, my husband and I are still trying to figure out what to say to them. You know, I mean, they understand, you know, snacks might be limited and that they really need to focus on cleaning their plate, but how do you explain it? You know to small children that want to eat.
David Rind
00:04:54
Yeah, I mean, how does it feel to know that there is this kind of deadline looming in just a couple of days where your situation could change so drastically?
Jessica
00:05:04
It's scary. I'm not sleeping much.
David Rind
00:05:07
Well so anyone for the shutdown in washington at this point
Jessica
00:05:14
They're all at fault. This isn't a Republican Democrat issue. They're supposed to be our leaders. They're suppose to communicate with each other and work out problems. And they're not doing that. So they're really, they're all.
David Rind
00:05:27
So you don't look at one party over the other and say, oh, this, the way that they're handling this is not right. Um, it's just kind of a blanket frustration for you.
Jessica
00:05:38
No, it's all of them. Like I said, they need to learn how to work together and figure something out because I think sometimes they forget that there are real people and this affects people in real ways.
David Rind
00:05:49
Well, on the political front, though, I am curious, do you identify with one party over the other?
Jessica
00:05:55
Well, prior to 2016, I kind of considered myself in the middle and I try to listen to both sides, both issues, but since then I've leaned Democrat more than Republican.
David Rind
00:06:05
Well, the Democrats, their kind of insistence is that this is about affordable health care and that they're making a stand to get Republicans to the table to negotiate on these affordable care act subsidies and that it's worth some of this pain to get that win of affordable health care going forward. Do you agree with that?
Jessica
00:06:26
Um, no, I, I see that they think that it's the only avenue they have because they don't have the majority right now, but I don't think it's necessarily right to try to, you know, hold everything hostage to get one thing across. Is healthcare important? Yes. And that affects my family too.
David Rind
00:06:48
Yeah, it's very personal for you, especially with your child's situation.
Jessica
00:06:53
But look what it's doing. This is going on too long. There's always hope that maybe, just maybe, that they might come to some kind of agreement. I've seen that they've introduced a couple of bills to try to move SNAP forward, and hopefully they can at least agree on that for the short term. Other than that, it looks like I'm gonna be hitting pantries and whatnot when the kids are at school.
David Rind
00:07:14
You said you're not sleeping much these days. So what are you staying up thinking about? Like what's going through your head?
Jessica
00:07:20
Um, everything, how we're going to eat, you know, how we're gonna pay the bills because we have to eat. You know, I mean, because the grocery bill affects everything around us because there was no warning. So we didn't ever see this being taken away. I mean it's a government program that people depend on.
David Rind
00:07:39
You thought even if the government was going to shut down, they would find a way to fund the program, whether through, you know, emergency funds or something like that.
Jessica
00:07:46
They did, and I believe it was 2019, they did tap into that emergency fund and paid everybody a few days early so that they could do it. And this time they've come to the determination that it's not legal.
David Rind
00:08:06
If you could say one thing to a lawmaker from either party, what would you tell them?
Jessica
00:08:11
Put yourself in your constituent's shoes. It's not easy on this side, and we totally depend on your decisions in Congress.
David Rind
00:08:19
Do you feel like a political pawn? Like, do you think lawmakers actually care about what people like you are going through?
Jessica
00:08:28
Absolutely not. They've never had to live it. If they have, it's been a very long time.
David Rind
00:08:34
'Well, Jessica, thank you so much for taking the time and wishing you and your family luck going forward. Thank you. On Tuesday, a coalition of 25 Democratic-run states sued the Trump administration over SNAP benefits. They want a federal judge to force the USDA to tap into an emergency fund to pay out benefits for November. The administration argues it does not have the power to tap in to that pot of money because the government is shut down. I'm gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, I'm going to talk to CNN senior reporter, Aaron Blake, about why, when it comes to the political blame game, We've never seen a shutdown quite like this. Stick around. Okay, Aaron, so we just heard from a SNAP recipient who told me that she's gonna spend the next couple of days scouring food pantries because she's worried about not having enough money for groceries come November 1st. Very personal and immediate stakes of the shutdown, but what do we know about what else could be coming that could shape how this standoff plays out?
Aaron Blake
00:09:45
'Yeah, I think it's clear that we're getting to a point now where things are getting more personal and the personal impacts of these things are starting to register more. A few dates that I have my eyes on are on Tuesday, we saw air traffic controllers miss their first full paychecks for the first time during the shutdown. This was of course a significant moment in the 2018-2019 shutdown. We've seen these air traffic controller. Under significant strain already early in the Trump administration. On Friday is the day that we are expecting military members to be paid. It's possible this could be the first time that they miss a full paycheck, although that could be pushed out to November 15th, according to the administration. And then a big day is Saturday. This is when a number of different deadlines will converge. We see open enrollment open for the Obamacare marketplaces. So this is the moment when people might start to see those very large premium increases take effect. And this is at the heart of the whole thing.
David Rind
00:10:50
And this is at the heart of the Democrats' arguments that people are gonna start seeing higher premiums starting Saturday.
Aaron Blake
00:10:56
Right. This is the big ask that Democrats are making. And so this is kind of the moment in which that becomes much more real to people. And so I think that could be a turning point. The same day we also see food stamps could be jeopardized for 42 million people. Some other days, we're talking next week. On Tuesday, we have a couple of elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Virginia is generally a state that's very concerned about federal workforce because there are a lot of federal workers. In Virginia, it hasn't been a big focus of that campaign, but perhaps the results, if they swing one way or another, could provide some impetus one way, or the other. Next Wednesday is the day that this becomes the longest shutdown in American history. The record there is 35 days. And then later in November, we see a couple other key deadlines. One is November 21st, which is the date that the house past CR initially drew things out to. So that could force the house to come back and try and pass something else, which is, you know, they've been reluctant to even come back to work in the house and pass anything. That's how you know it, Sean.
David Rind
00:12:01
That's how you know a shutdown has gone long way to continue.
Aaron Blake
00:12:03
When the continuing resolution runs out. Exactly, yeah, yeah. At that point, I think it'll really set in just how intractable this has become. And then later in the month, of course, we have holiday travel beginning around Thanksgiving. And so, to the extent this has caused problems with air traffic controllers and other transportation, that's when that really starts to hit home for people because their own travel plans start to get disrupted and we start to see real snarling of our. Of our system in this country.
David Rind
00:12:34
'Yeah, yeah. And then holiday shopping season. So there's just a lot of possible pain points coming up in the next couple of weeks. So in light of all that, why is neither side budging? Well, I think it's a-
Aaron Blake
00:12:45
couple things. One is that to this point, we have kind of forestalled a lot of these pain points. We've seen, for instance, military pay, get covered by moving some money around. We're starting to see some talk about a kind of a patch for food stamps that even Republicans in the Senate are talking about. So they've kind of pushed these things off enough as much as they can. And they haven't become as real for people, but you can only do that. For so long. And then the other thing that I think is really important here is, when we had shutdowns in the past, the politics of them really broke down pretty quickly. And that's that the side that was asking for something out of the shutdown, which in the most recent cases has generally been Republicans asking for things like a border wall, defunding Obamacare, it became very clear pretty quickly that they were losing that political argument. The people didn't like the shutdown. They didn't think it was worth it. That's not been the case this time. We actually see polls that show more Americans generally blame Republicans rather than Democrats who are the ones who are asking for something. And so that's created a situation where both sides have kind of this plausible belief that they can win this shutdown.
Sen. Mark Warner:
00:14:01
Let's see how the week plays out. But no, I can think he wanted to fight.
Aaron Blake
00:14:04
When we had shutdowns in the past, the conventional wisdom became, well, people just don't want to see shutdowns used as leverage. Right. I think the more accurate way to look at that may be people don't want shutdowns used as leverage for things that they don't necessarily want.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
00:14:20
I think this is a righteous fight for health care affordability for all Americans. And frankly, I just cannot believe that the Republicans in Congress are not even willing to talk about a possible solution.
Aaron Blake
00:14:38
The defunding Obamacare wasn't something people necessarily wanted. The border wall was less popular. The Obamicare subsidies are something that about seven and ten Americans generally want if you look at the polls. And so it's understandable that this has provided more leverage for Democrats than it generally does in a shutdown situation like this. And I think that's led to this being prolonged.
David Rind
00:14:59
Like they're asking for something that Americans largely like. So they're on board with it.
Aaron Blake
00:15:04
What a concept, right? You try to use something that people really want for leverage and it actually works a little bit better. So I think that's the situation that we're in right now.
David Rind
00:15:12
All right. So my last question is one I know you can't exactly answer. How does this end? On October 6th, you wrote a piece for CNN called, How Could the Government Shutdown End? Here are four scenarios. Do any of those scenarios still apply as we sit here on October 28th?
Aaron Blake
00:15:29
I think a couple of the scenarios really are the most likely here. One is that we see Democrats ultimately decide that they've made their point and it's time to bring things to a close. I think you could see around the November 1st deadline when people start seeing those premium increases, maybe Democrats decide, hey, you know, look, we've spent this entire month emphasizing that Republicans are the ones who have stood in the way of renewing subsidies. We've made that point. Now it's time to reopen the government and put pressure in other ways. The other way I think this could ultimately break down is we see some kind of a concession, not a full concession. It's not Republicans saying, okay, fine, we'll give you those Obamacare subsidies. You won. But it would be something along the lines of, we are going to guarantee a vote on this.
John Thune
00:16:21
Told them. I said, and I said we are willing to have a conversation, I said if you need a vote, we can we can guarantee you get a vote by a date certain.
Aaron Blake
00:16:28
We've already seen Senate Majority Leader John Thune basically float this concession, which is a pretty significant thing.
John Thune
00:16:34
We are all about getting health insurance down, making it affordable to more people. Premiums shouldn't be going up by that amount.
Aaron Blake
00:16:41
And so I think those are the two outcomes that probably loom the largest. One is a small concession and one is Democrats throwing in the towel because they feel like they've made their their their case in this. And they've kind of emphasized an issue that they feel is very important.
David Rind
00:16:55
It would be a major question if any kind of concessions like that would be enough for the Democrat base, whether it's just enough to prove a point or to actually get something tangible out of it.
Aaron Blake
00:17:05
Yeah, that's a really good question because we have seen Democrats who have really soured on their own party start to rally a little bit to their cause. If you look at how Democrats view the party in the polls, their favorable rating has gone up. And so you're right, what happens if Democrats don't get something firm from this shutdown and they look like they caved again? Is that going to kind of undercut the whole exercise? And it's possible. There are there are things that are pushing this into an even more prolonged state and we just don't know how it's going to end
David Rind
00:17:41
Well, Aaron, thanks for trying to sort it out with me. I appreciate it.
Aaron Blake
00:17:45
Yep, we'll keep an eye on it for sure.
David Rind
00:17:49
'That's it for us today, just a reminder, CNN has wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Melissa, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic as it bears down on the Caribbean. Just head over to cnn.com slash watch for the very latest at cnn dot com slash watch. We'll be back here on Sunday. Make sure you follow the show so it pops up in your feed then. I'll talk to you later.
