On Thursday, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to resume USDA financial support of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Again.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to fund food stamps in full for roughly 42 million low-income Americans, after admonishing the government for delaying aid under the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the shutdown.
The order, issued by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, marked his second legal rebuke of the administration for actions that threatened to leave millions of Americans at risk of financial hardship.
Reading his directive from the bench after a short but tense hearing, Judge McConnell sharply criticized the administration for ignoring his original order last week to quickly restart payments for SNAP, or food stamps. He attributed the delay, in part, to an attempt by President Trump and his aides to disrupt the program “for political reasons.”
The SNAP program funding stopped on November 1st, one month after the federal government shutdown went into effect.
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The judge made some sharp comments, some aimed directly at the president.
“This should never happen in America,” the judge said, as he warned that millions of poor families could go hungry in the absence of reliable federal aid. He gave the government until Friday to make the SNAP payments.
Spokespeople for the White House, the Agriculture Department and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ruling, for now, marked a victory for cities, religious groups and nonprofits, which had sued the Trump administration in a bid to sustain the food stamp program. It provides aid to about one in eight Americans — but it stood to shutter entirely in November after the White House refused to fund benefits.
This is the second such order. On October 31st, the day before the government shutdown went into effect, two different judges ordered the USDA to fund the SNAP program using discretionary funds, which the administration claimed they could not legally do. RedState's Susie Moore, on that date, had the details:
Federal judges, in two separate cases on Friday, ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to issue SNAP benefits as the benefits are set to run out on Saturday, given the lapse in appropriations.
The administration has argued that the use of contingency funds to fund SNAP benefits is illegal. In a memorandum in opposition to the original orders, USDA states in part:
In their proposed order, Plaintiffs appear to ask the Court to order USDA to unsuspend allotments and let the system run with full benefits amounts (i.e., deposit full amounts on beneficiaries’ SNAP cards) no matter the absence of funds for such benefits. But that is no option at all. That would be a blatant violation of the Antideficiency Act, a criminal statute that forbids the United States from making such an obligation without an appropriation.
The White House has already filed an appeal to the latest order on Thursday (November 6th) to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
This is a developing story. We will continue to update you as events warrant.
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