“Trump Administration Must Pay SNAP Benefits During Shutdown, Court Rules”, The New York Times

By Tony Romm

Reporting from Washington

Front page, Nov. 1, 2025

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown, siding with local officials and nonprofits that had sought to spare millions of low-income Americans from losing benefits in a matter of days.

It was the second of two rulings in the span of about an hour that found the administration had acted unlawfully, after it had refused to tap an emergency reserve — enacted by Congress and totaling in the billions of dollars — to sustain the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

But it remained unclear if or when food stamps would actually reach the roughly 42 million people who rely on monthly federal help to purchase groceries. Taking to social media, President Trump said late Friday that his administration would release the funds only once it received “appropriate legal direction” from the court, as he warned that any food stamp benefits paid in November would “unfortunately be delayed.”

Nor was it certain the exact amounts that food stamp recipients would receive in November. The emergency funds alone are enough to provide only partial benefits, according to federal officials, raising the odds of another financial cliff for millions of low-income Americans unless Congress can quickly devise an end to the current stalemate.

The twin court defeats nonetheless amounted to a major rebuke of the White House. For days, Mr. Trump’s leading deputies had maintained that they could do little to save the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, despite the fact that they had access to emergency reserves — and had already moved around billions of dollars to sustain other functions of government while federal funding had lapsed.

A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the White House budget office did not respond to a request.

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Roughly one in eight Americans are enrolled in SNAP, which was set to run out of money beginning Saturday in a calamity that would have exacted a substantial economic toll on communities nationwide.

The SNAP benefits, which average around $187 a month per recipient, cost the federal government about $8 billion to provision each month, which lawmakers must regularly replenish as part of their yearly work to fund the government. But the program also maintains a reserve in case of emergencies or shortfalls, which many Democrats and Republicans had encouraged the Trump administration to tap during the current shutdown.

The Agriculture Department initially said it would use the money, which totals about $5 billion, if the government remained closed for an extended time. But the agency reversed its publicly stated policy in late October, saying that it could not legally drain the available reserves except in response to natural disasters. That created a November funding cliff for the program.

At a news conference Friday on Capitol Hill, Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, stood by the reversal, arguing that the emergency fund was “only allowed to flow if the underlying program is funded” by Congress.

Fearing the end of federal support, a handful of states had started scrounging in recent days to finance food stamps on their own, though many said that they could only support aid for a few days or weeks. Others states joined local officials and nonprofits in filing a series of lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing that the White House had a legal and moral obligation to provide the benefits.

In one of the cases, Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ordered on Friday that the Trump administration “must distribute the contingency money timely, or as soon as possible, for the Nov. 1 payments to be made.”

The ruling served as a rejection of the Trump administration’s repeated claims that legal, technical and budgetary hurdles had prevented them from reprogramming money for SNAP while the government remained closed. Instead, Judge McConnell ordered the administration to use its emergency funds to continue the program, and to explore tapping a second tranche of money at the Agriculture Department so that November benefits could be paid in full.

At one point during the hearing, Tyler Becker, a lawyer for the Justice Department, argued on Friday that the shutdown was “not an emergency,” even though roughly 42 million people were at risk of losing benefits imminently.

The comments met sharp resistance from lawyers representing cities and nonprofits, who charged in court filings that the White House had “needlessly plunged SNAP into crisis” by refusing to act while it still had time.

“Where there are appropriated funds available, benefits have to be furnished,” Michael Torcello, a lawyer representing the groups that sued, said during a hearing on Friday. “And in this case, appropriated funds are available.”

Shortly after the ruling, the Justice Department asked the court to clarify its instructions in writing, as they raised “operational difficulties” with resuming food stamp payments. Mr. Trump then took to social media, where he said he had “instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.”

“If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay,” added Mr. Trump, referring to his earlier actions to shift billions in funding to pay workers who normally would not have received checks during the shutdown.

The decision in Rhode Island came shortly after another federal court in Massachusetts handed an early victory to about two dozen states that similarly had sued to force the release of food stamp funding.

In that case, Judge Indira Talwani, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, found that the decision to halt SNAP benefits was “unlawful.” Siding with roughly two dozen states, she required the administration to explain by Monday how it would fund aid in November.

“Congress has put money in an emergency fund,” Judge Talwani said during a hearing in the case this week. “It’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency, when there’s no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits.”

Officials in Arizona, California, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada and other states, which had filed the lawsuit, warned at the hearing that the loss of SNAP benefits could prove dire not only for residents on the program, but merchants, food banks and others affected by a sudden interruption in federal funds.

“It is unacceptable that our federal government has put us in the position of having to fight to help feed our residents,” said Andrea Joy Campbell, the Democratic attorney general of Massachusetts, one of the states that had sued.

Like other local officials, the attorney general heralded the outcome Friday, but expressed a measure of concern that low-income families could “still feel the devastating impacts” of the lapse in food stamp funding, as they “wait for the court’s order to be implemented.”

Maya Shwayder contributed reporting from Boston.

Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.