A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Department of Agriculture is required to disperse SNAP funding, today the Trump administration says that it will partially assume the payments of SNAP in the month of November using contingency funds.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, said last month that benefits in the month of November would not be paid due to the federal government shutdown. This statement set off a scramble by state governments, food banks and the 1 in 8 Americans who depend on this aid to ensure access to groceries.
Today, the Trump administration said that it will partially fund SNAP, after it was ruled that they are required to keep the program running. The administration claims that it would use the entirety of its contingency funds, totaling $4.65 billion, which could cover approximately half of each eligible household’s benefits for the month. Though it remains unclear exactly how the funds will be distributed or when beneficiaries might see this value back on their debit card for groceries. The process of loading the cards themselves is a process that involves steps from both state and federal government agencies and may take up to two weeks, depending on the state.
The administration said that they considered utilizing Section 32 funds from the Department of Agriculture to provide full SNAP benefits, but ultimately decided against it, stating that those funds “must remain available to protect full operation of Child Nutrition Programs throughout the fiscal year”, declaring that these funds are allocated for the maintenance of a separate program.
The Department of Agriculture said, “Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances,”.
Democracy Forward, the group representing the plaintiffs in this case, claims they are “considering all legal options” to try to facilitate full SNAP payments. The President and CEO of Democracy Forward, Skye Perryman, notes, “It shouldn’t take a court order to force our President to provide essential nutrition that Congress has made clear needs to be provided.”
On Friday U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to make a full SNAP payment by the end of the day Monday or a partial payment by Wednesday, with the understanding that a full payment would require sources of funding beyond existing contingency reserves.
“There is no question that the congressionally approved contingency funds must be used now because of the shutdown; in fact, the President during his first term issued guidance indicating that these contingency funds are available if SNAP funds lapse due to a government shutdown,” McConnell wrote in his order, pointing to a 2019 inquiry in an email written by a SNAP administrator.
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