Despite his administration saying it would comply with court orders, President Donald Trump is threatening to withhold SNAP benefits. He said the government would fund the food assistance program only when “the Radical Left Democrats open up government.”
The president’s threat comes after the administration agreed on Monday to two court orders requiring the government to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The administration said it would partially fund the program using emergency funds previously approved by Congress.
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Trump’s post on Truth Social seems to defy the two court orders. The White House has yet to comment on the president’s post.
In his post, Trump claimed the number of SNAP beneficiaries increased under former President Joe Biden, saying he “haphazardly” gave out benefits to anyone who asked instead of those who actually needed them. He did not elaborate on that accusation.
What did the administration previously say?
On Monday, the administration said it would use the nearly $5 billion in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s contingency funds to partially fund the program for November. The administration did not say who would receive benefits in November or how much they would disperse per person.
The court orders, issued in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, required the administration to fully fund the program. The judges said USDA officials would need to decide whether to tap into $17 billion in tariff revenue to pay for the rest of November’s benefits.
Lawyers who filed the cases against the administration stated that partial funding would be insufficient. They argued that recipients would receive only about half of the benefits they typically receive if the government funded it partially.
What happens next?
Before Trump posted, nonprofits had refiled in federal court, hoping to get a better answer from the courts and possibly force the Trump administration to pay benefits quickly and in full.
The groups claimed the court had not anticipated that millions of people could be left without food assistance for several weeks. Consequently, they requested that the judge order the administration to “release the unlawfully withheld funding, in its entirety, for November SNAP benefits.”
A federal court has scheduled a hearing on Thursday for those groups. The hearing was scheduled before Trump threatened to deny the benefits entirely.
