Jennifer Ludden

The center also estimates the administration will not spend all of its contingency fund.

The Agriculture Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, some states say the formula for calculating partial payments is too labor-intensive, and getting them to people will take weeks.

Jennifer Lutton, NPR News, Washington.

A federal judge in Boston said the administration not only can but must use contingency funds to keep SNAP going.

She said it could also shift other money, but left it up to the administration to decide whether to do so.

The contingency funds fall short of SNAP's November budget, so the Trump administration may decide to issue only partial payments.

It has warned that would be logistically challenging and time-consuming.

The administration has until Monday to decide on a plan.

States and cities across the country are shifting their own money and stepping up food donations to help millions of low-income people get by despite this loss of food aid.

Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

The federal government usually sends SNAP funding to states well before the first of the month because it takes days to distribute it onto people's debit-like cards.

Now, there's an added complication.

The Agriculture Department's contingency money falls short of full SNAP funding for November.

The administration has said calculating partial payments would be a logistical nightmare that could take weeks.

States and cities across the country have been preparing for a lapse.

They're ramping up donations to food banks, offering protections if people fall behind on their bills, even shifting their own budgets to pay some amount of food aid to snap recipients temporarily.

Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

Last month, the head of HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity put out a long memo explaining why and how they are changing priorities.

Basically, and this is interesting, the memo accuses previous administrations of going beyond the law to protect not just individuals but groups of people.