Judge orders Trump to fully fund SNAP after defying court order: ‘This should never happen in America’
A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to fully fund a critical food assistance program by Friday after finding that the government failed to address any administrative issues that have prevented states from quickly sending out partial benefits to millions of Americans.
Last week, the administration was ordered to use emergency funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program running and “expeditiously resolve” any clerical issues that could delay that money from getting to nearly 43 million Americans who rely on the program for grocery staples.
But Trump “stated his intent to defy the court order” by claiming that SNAP payments would only be sent out when the shutdown ends, and the administration “did not do anything” to address any administrative issues they knew would pose a problem, according to Rhode Island District Judge Jack McConnell.
As a result, “people will go hungry, food pantries will be overburdened and needless suffering will occur,” with SNAP funding lapsing for the first time in the nation’s history, McConnell said during a virtual court hearing Thursday. “This should never happen in America.”
The government now has until Friday to fully support SNAP and ensure that the money is swiftly routed to states to disperse to beneficiaries. Shortly after the ruling, lawyers for the Trump administration filed an appeal.
The Department of Agriculture “created this problem,” McConnell said.
“They knew there would be a long delay for partial SNAP payments,” he said, pointing to the government’s court filing stating that it could take weeks or months for states to get up and running.
Waiting another day is “simply unacceptable,” according to McConnell.
On Thursday evening, vice-president JD Vance branded it an “absurd ruling” when he and Trump were asked about it at a White House dinner with Central Asian leaders.
“You have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of the Democrat government shutdown…what we’d like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government of course, then we can fund SNAP,” Vance told reporters.
“We can also do a lot of other good things for the American people, but in the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the President how he has to triage the situation.”
Before two federal judges intervened, the administration intended to freeze funding for the program entirely during the government shutdown, claiming that it did not have legal authority to tap into billions of dollars in emergency funds. On a notice on its website last month, USDA claimed that the “well has run dry” and that “there will be no benefits issued November 1.”
Judges disagreed and urged the government to quickly dispense the money to states to prevent millions of Americans from going hungry.
Last week, McConnell ordered the administration to tap into emergency funds — which totaled more than $5 billion — to keep SNAP running during the government shutdown, at least partially, and to identify other potential federal funds to support the program, absent any new funding from Congress.
