Rebecca Blackwell/AP
President Trump’s vehement refusal to make full SNAP benefits available to the nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the food aid program scored a temporary win at the Supreme Court, after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily allowed the federal government to continue withholding $4 billion in SNAP funding.
Friday’s late-night order came hours after the Trump administration rushed to the Supreme Court to block a lower court’s order requiring it to use emergency funds to pay out SNAP aid while the government remains shut down. In it, US District Judge John McConnell accused the government of defying a previous order to make at least partial payments and required that the government complete full payments by Friday night. McConnell pointed to Trump’s own words on social media earlier this week, which, if interpreted by their plain meaning, signaled the president’s intention to defy multiple court orders to make the SNAP benefits available to low-income families. The administration then turned to a federal appeals court to ask it to undo McConnell’s order.
Jackson’s temporary stay, then, merely gives the appeals court time to rule on that request. Critically, it did not rule on the legality of the Trump administration’s efforts to resist payments, which ramped up over the last week after SNAP lapsed on payments for the first time in its 61-year history. The lapse came as the Trump administration argued that it is barred from using emergency funding to make the payments because of the government shutdown, even though previous administrations in similar impasses have done so.
Two federal judges, both of whom admonished the administration for needlessly plunging SNAP into crisis, rejected that argument. And what quickly followed was a full-throated crusade by Trump to continue withholding funding and thereby using hungry Americans as a political weapon in a government shutdown. In the meantime, the lapse in SNAP has sparked a surge in demand nationally to food banks, with lines growing and some pantries being unable to keep up with demand.
The appeals court now has 48 hours to weigh in. Meanwhile, deep uncertainty for SNAP beneficiaries—39 percent of whom are children—continues.
