Judges call on Trump team to use emergency funds for SNAP food stamps hours before families face ‘terror’
A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump to unleash emergency funding for a critical food assistance program on the brink of running out of money to help feed millions of Americans.
Another federal judge has ruled that the government is likely illegally blocking emergency funding, hours before those funds are expected to be cut off.
In a ruling from the bench Friday, Rhode Island District Judge Jack McConnell said “there is no doubt, and it is beyond argument, that irreparable harm will continue to occur” if the government stops funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports nearly 42 million Americans and their families.
Families are already experiencing “terror” at the prospect that they will lose access to benefits on Saturday without urgent congressional action or the Trump administration’s intervention, he said during a virtual court hearing.
Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani, meanwhile, is giving the Trump administration until Monday to decide if it will release those emergency funds to keep SNAP afloat. But she said the government’s suspension of the program is likely unlawful.
“We’re not going to make everyone drop dead,” she said during a hearing in the case Thursday.
A lawsuit from Democratic leaders from 25 states argues that the Department of Agriculture is legally required to continue funding the program as long as there are contingency funds to support it. The states say the administration is sitting on at least $5 billion to keep SNAP partially afloat.
A separate lawsuit brought by nonprofit organizations and faith-based groups in Rhode Island has similarly argued that the administration was illegally pulling the plug on SNAP by resisting those contingency funds.
“Right now, Congress has put money in an emergency fund for an emergency, and it’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency when there’s no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits,” Talwani said in the case brought by Democratic-led states Thursday.
The USDA’s emergency plan outlined in a September memo said the agency could tap into a multiyear contingency to continue supporting SNAP in the event funding came to a screeching halt.
But the document was removed from the USDA website, and a follow-up memo now claims USDA’s contingency funding was “not legally available to cover regular benefits.”
“Millions of Americans are about to go hungry because the federal government has chosen to withhold food assistance it is legally obligated to provide,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is among 23 attorneys general and three governors suing the Trump administration to keep SNAP running, said in a statement this week.
In court filings, the Department of Justice argues keeping SNAP running would “deplete” emergency funds in a “blatant violation” of federal law that prohibits the government from spending money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.
USDA claims that those funds were earmarked for natural disasters and other emergencies, not in the event of an impasse in Congress over a funding bill to reopen the government.
