The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — more commonly known as SNAP, or food stamps — is a key benefits program that serves more than 40 million people across the country. Now, the shutdown is threatening to temporarily suspend benefits, raising concerns over where millions of people who rely on the program will turn to for food.

Millions of Americans rely on federal assistance for access to nutritious food. Here's who's impacted as funds dry up in the government shutdown.

The federal government will not send out November SNAP benefits if the shutdown continues into the weekend. While some states are scrambling to fund some form of

"Now we'll have to prioritize which bills we can pay and which can wait," said one mother of two about a looming freeze in food aid.

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) warned that it no longer has the funding to deliver November food benefits. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell co-led a coalition of 22 other attorneys general and three governors in suing the Trump administration over the funding lapse, saying the funds do exist in a contingency fund.

“Show me a nation that cannot feed itself, and I’ll show you a nation in chaos,” former Senate Agriculture Committee chair Pat Roberts said in 2015. With Democrats and Republicans at a standstill with negotiations over the federal budget, communities nation-wide can’t count on the government to step in and help.

More than two dozen Democratic states are suing the Agriculture Department after the Trump administration said it would not use emergency funds to pay SNAP benefits during the shutdown.