{"id":343381,"date":"2025-10-30T15:09:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/343381\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T15:09:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:09:22","slug":"judge-considers-forcing-the-trump-administration-to-keep-funding-snap-food-aid-during-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/343381\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge considers forcing the Trump administration to keep funding SNAP food aid during shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge in Boston on Thursday will consider a motion that would require the Trump administration to continue funding the SNAP food aid program despite the government shutdown. <\/a><\/p>\n

The hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama, comes two days before the U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because it said it can\u2019t continue funding it due to the shutdown.<\/p>\n

The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation\u2019s social safety net. Word in October that it would be a Nov. 1 casualty of the shutdown sent states<\/a>, food banks<\/a> and SNAP recipients scrambling to figure out how to secure food. Some states said they would spend their funds to keep versions of the program going.<\/p>\n

The program costs around $8 billion per month.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Judge to consider demand to force the government to keep funding SNAP food aid despite the shutdown\n <\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he objects to a request by Democrats who are pushing for a temporary fix to the food aid issue. ((Food aid for Americans could expire at the end of the week due to the government shutdown.))<\/p>\n

The administration said it wasn\u2019t allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said that money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. The Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, who challenged the administration\u2019s plan argued that not only could that money be used, it must be. They also said a separate fund with around $23 billion could be tapped.<\/p>\n

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that failing to maintain the SNAP funding was illegal, arbitrary and capricious, and would irreparably harm them. They also said cutting off the benefits would \u201ccause deterioration of public health and well-being\u201d of recipients, and that those costs would be borne by the states.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Stay up to date with the latest news from AP.\n <\/p>\n


\n Follow on
\n \"WhatsApp\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the suspension of SNAP benefits, the nutritional needs of millions of school aged children in Plaintiff States will not be met,\u201d plaintiffs wrote. \u201cHungry children have a harder time paying attention, behaving, and learning in school. States will have to devote additional state resources, including healthcare expenditures and additional educational resources, to address these challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plaintiffs also argued that more than 100,000 merchants in their states that rely on SNAP recipients would be harmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, on information and belief, many of these retailers will have purchased a greater amount of food and inventory to match the holiday demand,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWithout SNAP funds, SNAP recipients will not be able to frequent retailers, causing a significant loss in revenue, increased food waste, and a negative impact on Plaintiff States\u2019 economies overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the federal government argued that the plaintiffs want the SNAP benefits to be dispersed in full, which would be \u201ca blatant violation of the Antideficiency Act, a criminal statute that forbids the United States from making such an obligation without an appropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven assuming USDA had discretion to reallocate these funds, the question of how to allocate limited funds among multiple crucial safety-net programs, when there are insufficient funds, is one that the agency is empowered to make \u2014 not a federal court, and certainly not Plaintiffs,\u201d the government wrote.<\/p>\n

They also argued that there isn\u2019t enough available funding to cover November funding and that the court could force the USDA to shift funding dedicated to SNAP from child nutrition programs, which would raise \u201ccalamitous concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, there was no option to simply fund the SNAP program fully without an appropriation,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.<\/p>\n

To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four\u2019s net income can\u2019t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge in Boston on Thursday will consider a motion that would require the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":343382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[11744,2731,84,69,4528,57,2055,330,49089,210,65236,2739,50,80,16580,121682,61,67,370,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-343381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-district-of-columbia","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-foreign-aid","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-and-politics","16":"tag-government-programs","17":"tag-government-shutdown","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-indira-talwani","20":"tag-massachusetts","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-u-s-department-of-agriculture","24":"tag-u-s-government-shutdown","25":"tag-u-s-news","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-government","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115463753846189821","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}