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.
McConnell ordered the administration to use emergency funds — which amount to more than $5 billion — to keep SNAP running during the federal government shutdown, at least partially, and to identify other potential federal funds to support the program, absent any new funding from Congress.
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.
A separate lawsuit brought by nonprofit organizations and faith-based groups in Rhode Island 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.
The USDA, echoing a recent wave of partisan attacks on government websites, is explicitly blaming congressional Democrats for the shutdown and the suspension of SNAP funding.
“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” according to the latest notice on its website. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”
Judge Talwani wasn’t buying the government’s argument.
“It does seem to me really clear what Congress was trying to do,” she said Thursday. “What Congress was trying to do is protect the American people. … You need to figure out how to stretch that emergency money for now.”
She ordered USDA to keep the money flowing, not find excuses for why the agency claims it cannot.
“That’s lawyering,” she said. “I want agency action, not lawyering.”
SNAP funds, which are distributed by the federal government to states each month, support the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which serves millions of households, with a vast majority of recipients being children and seniors.
Recipients receive roughly $188 per person per month, or about $6 per day, which is administered on prepaid cards that can be used for grocery store staples.
The program provides roughly nine meals for every one meal provided by a food pantry, according to anti-hunger advocates.
If that money isn’t delivered, it would mark the first time in SNAP’s 60-year history that the federal government had let it lapse.
Standing outside the White House Thursday, Vice President JD Vance accused congressional Democrats of holding SNAP “hostage” in the shutdown battle.
“They’re going to say … ‘we’re going to deny people SNAP benefits unless you give us exactly what you want.’ That’s how a child behaves,” he said. “That is not how a responsible governing party behaves in the United States of America.”
The administration — which has claimed to find funds to pay troops and keep nutrition assistance programs afloat — has sought to make the shutdown as “painless as possible” but has reached a legal dead end when it comes to SNAP, according to Vance.
“The truth is, there’s no legal mechanism to do it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday.
“There’s no such legal avenue to get SNAP funding now. It doesn’t exist,” he said. “The president has lamented this. … The simplest way to end the pain … is for the Democrats to do the obvious and right thing and vote for the nonpartisan finding measure so we can turn everything on. Then we can get back here and debate these extraneous issues.”
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins appeared to concede that the potential expiration of SNAP for millions of Americans was, at least in part, indicative of a wider government failure.
“My message to America is first, the fact that your government is failing you right now,” she told reporters Friday. “That poverty is not red or blue, it is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Doesn’t matter who you voted for or even if you voted. That if you are in a position where you can’t feed your family, and you’re relying on that $187 dollars a month for an average family in the SNAP program, that we have failed you.”
Trump, hours later, falsely claimed that SNAP is “largely Democrats.”
“I want to help everybody. I want to help Democrats and the Republicans. But when you’re talking about SNAP, if you look it’s largely Democrats, they’re hurting their own people,” he said Friday.
