Food banks’ demand surges ahead of first Thanksgiving without pandemic aid

Since the federal government slashed pandemic-era food assistance in March, Tahjae Pitt has been skimping on laundry. “I’ve got three bags of dirty clothes because I had to spend money on groceries,” said Pitt, 26, a single mother in Southeast D.C. “I had to make sure my son had food.” Cutting the assistance, which had bolstered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, affected over a million households like Pitt’s in the D.C. area, according to a report from the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.