Two federal judges have ruled that SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) payments that assist low-income people to pay for food must continue despite the government shutdown. The program assists 42 million people, about one in eight of the population.

John McConnell, a US district judge in Providence, issued a temporary restraining order in the Rhode Island case at the behest of those plaintiffs. They had argued that the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap benefits due to kick in on Saturday was unlawful.
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In the Massachusetts case, the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partly pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.

The Trump administration maintains that the SNAP money will run out by November 1 unless Congress reconvenes and passes new appropriations.

The administration warned that a court order requiring it to use emergency reserves to fund Snap would be “operationally fraught”, arguing it could take weeks to deliver benefits and might leave families with less than half their normal monthly allotment. In court filings, officials noted that such a partial payment “has never been made – and for good reason”.

The argument appears to contradict the department’s lapsed-funding plan, released in late September, which stated that Congress’s “evident” intent was for Snap operations to continue during a government shutdown and pointed to “multi-year contingency funds” that could be tapped in the event the closures dragged on. The plan has been removed from the department’s website.
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The administration’s refusal to intervene underscored a broader strategy during the shutdown, now the second-longest in US history. Throughout the impasse, Trump has selectively reprogrammed federal funds to protect priorities central to his political agenda – such as paying troops and law enforcement officers, including those involved in immigration enforcement – while allowing other programs like Snap to starve.

Trump and the Republicans are using these benefits as a weapon to try and coerce Democrats to agree to their conditions for re-opening the government, which include ending some of the health insurance subsidies under Obamacare that will cause premiums to shoot up.

For example, some enrollees who live in New Jersey will see their out-of-pocket premiums rise more than 175 percent. In Colorado, it’s 101 percent. In Maryland, one of the states that is adding money to reduce the impact of the hikes, it’s 30 percent.
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Without the enhanced subsidies, ACA customers will pay a lot more out of pocket.

KFF estimates that customers on HealthCare.gov and in state-run exchanges will see their monthly out-of-pocket premium payments increase by 114 percent on average. In some states that figure is higher.

Trump and Republicans have no qualms about hurting one set of people in need in order to hurt another set of people in need, as long as the needs of the oligarchy are met. For them, people who need any form of government assistance are parasites who can be used as hostages or bargaining chips to further their ideological goals.

The plaintiffs in the civil case being heard in Rhode Island are represented by the liberal legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The group argued that the federal government’s decision to suspend the nutritional benefits was wrong and unlawful, as the USDA still had funds available to fulfill its obligation to fund the Snap program.

Such available funding includes $5.25bn in contingency funds that Congress has previously provided for the USDA to use when “necessary to carry out program operations”, the plaintiffs said.

Aside from the contingency funds, the plaintiffs argued that a separate fund with about $23bn in it could also be utilized to avoid what would be an unprecedented suspension of Snap benefits.

In the Massachusetts case, the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partly pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.

Note that SNAP funding costs about $9 billion per month. Given that Trump is willing to give the Argentine government $40 billion just as a reward for voting for Milei’s party in the mid-term elections, it is a bit rich for him and Republicans to claim that they are too cash-strapped to help people in need here.