Amina Whynn’s monthly grocery shopping has a rhythm. She typically spends the $500 she receives from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at Sam’s Club on staples like meat, rice, canned goods and bread, as well as snacks for her three daughters.

When that food runs out after about 2 1/2 weeks, the Southwest Baltimore resident usually has about $200 from disability benefits left to spend. She switches her shopping to the nearby Tiger Supermarket, and meals become something simple, like sandwiches or hot dogs. Those weeks, her daughters don’t get as many snacks.

Feeding three growing kids is expensive, especially with rising food prices, and Whynn has to budget carefully to make sure there are enough groceries to last until her benefits renew each month.

“As a mother,” the 30-year-old said, “you’ve just got to figure it out.”

Figuring it out is going to be far more difficult this month if the federal government declines to pay SNAP benefits. Two federal judges ruled Friday that the Trump administration had to pay the benefits, but it’s as yet unclear if the White House will obey the courts, or if they will appeal the rulings. As it stands now, SNAP is set to expire Saturday, Nov. 1, and millions of Americans will be left with less money to feed their families.

There are approximately 680,000 Marylanders who rely on SNAP, of which nearly 40% are children.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, both issued executive orders to use city and state funds to temporarily fund SNAP benefits for residents while things are sorted out at the federal level. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore opted not to do that this week, instead directing $10 million toward food pantries as relief.

“I said we’d take care of our people — and I meant it,” Moore wrote on social media Thursday, captioning a video announcing the state contribution.

SNAP benefits for the state cost about $133 million a month.

At the same time that SNAP benefits are set to expire for Maryland’s poorest residents, thousands of federal workers across the state are set to miss their third consecutive paycheck because of the government shutdown.

Local nonprofits are feeling the strain.

“We do not have the resources to fund our meal programs at the demand level that we anticipate seeing,” said Amy Collier, the director of community services for Catholic Charities.

Frankly, Collier said, it’s hard to imagine what the demand could be. Catholic Charities operates three food pantries and has three facilities that serve hot meals. None of them have enough resources on hand to serve everyone who will suddenly be left without their usual benefits. Catholic Charities, like many other organizations, is soliciting donations.

“We haven’t seen a government shutdown this long and the loss of SNAP benefits coincide in this way,” Collier said. “I don’t think we have a road map for this.”

Jacque Gutman, who runs the Feeding the Flock pantry on Harford Road, said she’s also concerned about her supply. Over the summer, the nonprofit started limiting its boxes of food to people within five ZIP codes surrounding the Baltimore area.

Unlike many other pantries, her supply comes from local grocery stores — Weis, Whole Foods, Grocery Outlet and Trader Joe’s — as part of a retail recovery program. The donated items are supposed to be nearing their sell-by date, but Gutman said markets have been holding on to the groceries longer than usual amid rising prices, leaving less for the pantry.

“We’re very close to running out of food,” she said Thursday, adding that lines outside the pantry formed as early as 3:30 a.m. earlier in the week.

In Whynn’s Southwest Baltimore neighborhood, where more than one in three residents receives food stamps, a church around the corner from her house hosts a semiregular food giveaway.

She planned to go to the last one, she said, but opted not to when she saw people lined up for four hours before it began. She figured that by the time she got inside, there would be no food left.

And the strain isn’t confined to Baltimore: Food pantries everywhere are seeing unprecedented demand.

In Chris Owens’ three years coordinating for Small Things Pantry, her team had never run out of food. But on Oct. 24, after word spread of food aid lapsing in November, that changed.

A surge of furloughed federal workers and people who were panicked over the loss of SNAP benefits lined up outside Takoma Park’s Seventh Day Adventist Church, leaving no leftovers for their Saturday pop-up market.

Eleutoria Flores, 91, of Takoma Park, sometimes relies on Small Things Pantry for help feeding her family. Since retiring as a caregiver, her $1,000 monthly pension hasn’t been enough to support her health care, senior housing, food and utilities or assist with bills for other family members.

Her 26-year-old grandson, Gabriel, who declined to share his last name out of fear he’d be targeted for criticizing the government, said Flores didn’t know her roughly $200 SNAP deposits could stop until he explained it to her this week.

“Now she has a concern about losing her pension, even though they’re saying it wouldn’t happen,” he said. “We don’t know.”

Gabriel and his mother already take Flores, who is diabetic and cannot drive, to local pantries sometimes twice a week, depending on how much food she needs. Gabriel is worried that if Flores loses the stipend and he has to take more time away from college to help her and pay her bills, that his grades will suffer and he could lose his scholarship.

Gabriel is afraid to contact Maryland politicians directly because he is unable to vote, though he has a green card and is a legal permanent resident. Still, he wondered how lawmakers were planning to tackle the issues his family is facing.

“Can you see if they’re working for us?” he said. “It’ll be great to get their point of view to see if they’re at least trying.”

Politicians on both sides say they’re working to resolve the shutdown, with each side blaming the other. Republican members of Congress say they’ve voted to continue funding the government and that Democrats won’t come to the table. Democrats say they are trying to protect people who use government health care exchanges from facing sky-high insurance premiums.

Even those caught in the middle aren’t sure who to blame. Whynn, the Baltimore mother of three, said she is inclined to blame President Donald Trump. But she’s also upset with her own party for not showing enough resolve.

“I’m a Democrat, but what are they fighting for?” Whynn said, adding that she was “a little mad.”

Determining who’s at fault is easy work compared to explaining to three young girls why they might have less to eat next month.

On Wednesday, her two youngest daughters, A’mia, 7, and A’keena, 3, were playing in the living room following their after-school snack of a bag of chips and a Kool-Aid juice pouch. With boisterous girls who are prone to big displays of emotion, Whynn had to work extra hard to soothe them this afternoon.

They were still hungry, and dinner was not for a few more hours. They wanted another snack. But Whynn had to remind them of their new reality.

Remember, she told them, “we’re stretching our food.”

Banner reporter Jessica Gallagher contributed to this story.