Groups rip Trump over half-measure SNAP solution

(CN) — A batch of cities, churches, charities and nonprofits blasted the Trump administration on Tuesday over plans to only pay out 50% of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for the month of November, as the ongoing federal government shutdown stretches into its second month.

The groups claim the halved SNAP benefits violate an order from the court demanding that recipients receive their funds, which the Department of Agriculture was trying to halt amid the shutdown.

“Defendants’ choice to withhold full SNAP payments is not consistent with this order,” the groups say in a motion to enforce the temporary restraining order.

Last week, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the government to use a congressionally approved contingency fund to keep the program afloat for its roughly 42 million recipients. The plaintiffs claim the USDA is inexplicably refusing to touch that money, about $6 billion, despite it being set aside for this very scenario.

A department official told the court some $4.65 billion from that contingency fund will “be obligated to cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments” for the month of November.

That’s not enough, the suing groups claim. They say the department didn’t make a sufficient effort to fund the program fully, as they say the judge’s ruling required.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote in an order over the weekend that the government should outline a plan to fund more money if required, writing, “To alleviate the irreparable harm that the court found exists without timely payment of SNAP benefits, the government should, within its discretion, find the additional funds necessary (beyond the contingency funds) to fully fund the November SNAP payments.”

Without the full benefits, the groups say they’ll suffer “immediate and irreparable harm.”

“The court should grant a temporary restraining order and preliminary stay on the ground that defendants’ decision not to provide full SNAP benefits — even though they have funds available to do so and even though switching to partial payments at this late date will cause devastating delay — is arbitrary and capricious,” the groups claim.

Of the more than 40 million people who rely on SNAP to address food insecurity, children and seniors make up nearly 60% of recipients. More than 1 million recipients are veterans.

Had the Trump administration been successful in its attempt to freeze the benefits, it would have been the first time since SNAP’s inception that payments were paused.

But despite McConnell’s order, the government expects that even reduced benefits could be delayed by weeks to months. The groups claim this represents an “unnecessarily delayed timeline” that will harm local economies, health care systems and SNAP recipients themselves.

A Massachusetts airport cleaner said in a declaration Tuesday that he did not receive his SNAP benefits as scheduled on Nov. 1.

“As a result of the reduced benefits, I will be forced to limit my meals to twice a day instead of three times a day in order to stretch my limited resources,” he wrote.

Another SNAP recipient, a North Carolina costume store employee, said “cutting and/or delaying my SNAP benefits puts my kids’ health in jeopardy.”

The Trump administration’s SNAP reductions are also being looked at by a judge in Massachusetts federal court, where a coalition of 25 Democratic states and the District of Columbia similarly sued to demand their residents receive full benefits. They too won a court order requiring the government to dip into its contingency fund to bankroll SNAP this month.

For his part, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to thumb his nose at the court orders, writing the SNAP benefits won’t go out until the shutdown ends.

“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” he wrote.

The shutdown started on Oct. 1 after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to reach an agreement on health care provisions in the federal budget. With no end in sight, the current government freeze will surpass the longest shutdown in American history of 35 days — which occurred between 2018 and 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidency — on Wednesday.

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