SNAP aid uncertain amid court rulings, politics

Los Angeles residents line up for food aid as SNAP benefits run out of funds

(Image credit: Mark Abramson / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

What happened

Funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits ran out Saturday as the government shutdown entered its fifth week and President Donald Trump declined to tap contingency funding. Two federal judges on Friday ordered the administration to pay out the SNAP benefits, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN on Sunday the funds “could be” approved for the 42 million beneficiaries by Wednesday, as ordered by U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island.

Who said what

With SNAP benefits “suddenly cut off,” The Associated Press said, “people across the country formed long lines for free meals and groceries at food pantries and drive-through giveaways” over the weekend. Mayors and governors “in both red states and blue states” joined a “desperate dash” to “feed their most vulnerable residents as the Trump administration battles orders” to release the “backup funds,” The Washington Post said.

“The best way for SNAP benefits to get paid” is “for five Democrats to cross the aisle and reopen the government,” Bessent told CNN. Democrats have signaled support for legislation that would fund SNAP but want Republicans to negotiate on expiring health care subsidies before ending the deadlock. Republicans “can’t move on anything without a Trump signoff,” Sen Mark Warner (D-Va.) told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. Trump said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” he would not be “extorted by the Democrats,” and “if they don’t vote” to reopen the government, “it’s their problem.”

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The SNAP saga has “laid bare the shutdown strategy at the White House,” where Trump has “frequently bent the rules of budget, primarily to reap political benefits or exact retribution,” while shielding “only some Americans from the harms of a fiscal standoff that he has made no effort to resolve,” Tony Romm said in a New York Times analysis. Even with the judges ordering the administration to tap the “billions of dollars at its disposal” to fund SNAP, “much remains unclear about whether or when poor families may receive their scheduled benefits.”

What next?

Judge McConnell on Saturday told the Trump administration to either pay full SNAP benefits by today or pay partial benefits later, though “under no circumstances shall the partial payments be made later than Wednesday.” That’s when the shutdown would become the longest in U.S. history, after tying the 2018-19 record of 35 days on Tuesday.

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.