Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office is pushing for $7.3 million in state-provided emergency spending to continue funding a food assistance program for low-income families endangered by the ongoing federal government shutdown. 

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides vouchers for nutritional foods to low-income pregnant women and mothers of children younger than 5. State data shows that as of June 2025, more than 55,000 Nevadans, including 31,000 children, received WIC benefits.

Services to these Nevadans have been imperiled amid the federal government shutdown, which is set to enter its third week and has no clear end in sight. The WIC program relies on annual congressional appropriations to load recipients’ benefit cards, which are used to buy healthy fruits, vegetables, meats and more. With the government shut down, the benefit cards cannot be replenished with new funds.

To keep the assistance available, the state’s Office of Emergency Management submitted a request on Oct. 8 for $7.3 million in funding for Nevada’s WIC program. The money will be drawn from the state’s Disaster Relief Account, which disburses funds to state and local agencies in emergencies and had $14.5 million available as of Aug. 14, according to the Governor’s Finance Office. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH) told The Indy on Monday that the funding request was a “proactive step” to ensure that WIC benefits are available to participants statewide “through Thanksgiving, if needed.” 

A memo from the Governor’s Finance Office indicated that the money will likely be reimbursed by the federal government once the shutdown ends.

The funding request first went to the Board of Examiners, composed of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state, who approved it unanimously on Tuesday. On Thursday, the request will go to the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee — which disburses money and approves state payments when the Legislature is out of session. 

The attempt to secure more state funding for WIC comes after the Trump administration announced last week that it was drawing from unspent tariff revenues to release $300 million to WIC programs across the country. 

Lombardo spokeswoman Elizabeth Ray said that Nevada received $3.1 million toward WIC services from this pot. Last year, Nevada received more than $57 million from the federal government for WIC benefits. 

A DPBH spokesperson told The Nevada Independent last month that the state had enough money to cover food benefits for WIC recipients until Oct. 10.

In a statement to The Indy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture blamed Democrats for the shutdown and said the agency “will utilize tariff revenue to fund WIC for the foreseeable future.” Tariffs, which have been broadly expanded under the Trump administration, are taxes collected by the federal government when U.S. companies import certain goods from foreign countries.

The agency has not yet announced future rounds of funding for state WIC programs. If more federal money does become available, then the state-provided emergency funding will not be necessary, the governor’s office said. 

The statewide WIC program has experienced no pauses in service since the shutdown began. But the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, the nonprofit consortium for Nevada’s 28 tribal governments, temporarily paused its WIC program on Oct. 7, ceasing services for tribal and non-tribal families at its WIC offices in Reno, Elko and Las Vegas. 

Two days later, on Oct. 9, the tribal council announced that its WIC services restarted using the new tariff revenues. The council did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Indy about how much money was released to the organization, but it is enough to keep the WIC services running until Oct. 31. 

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is funded differently than WIC, and benefits for the 1 in 6 Nevadans who receive SNAP will not be disrupted until at least the end of October.

To learn more about how the shutdown is affecting critical services across Nevada, read The Nevada Independent’s breakdown here.

This story was updated on 10/14/2025 at 2:49 p.m. to clarify what will happen if more federal funding for WIC becomes available and at 4:45 p.m. to include comment from the Department of Public and Behavioral Health.