Trump Officials Can’t Decide Whether To Comply With Court Order To Fund SNAP

Some Trump administration officials gave conflicting responses on Sunday about whether the White House plans to comply with a court order requiring them to fund the country’s biggest food aid program, as the government shutdown enters its second month.

The Department of Agriculture planned to withhold $8 billion in payments that are meant to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) running through this month, starting Saturday. The move threatens food access for the 42 million Americans who use the program.

The plan was blocked on Friday by two federal judges who gave the USDA until Monday to decide how it would pay for food benefits, shutting down the administration’s claim that it would be illegal to use a $5 billion contingency fund to help pay for SNAP benefits under the shutdown.

“We’ve been duct-taping and bubble-gumming WIC and SNAP, which are the vulnerable population’s food programs, now for more than a month,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said Sunday on Fox News. “The judge came down … and said that in fact we do need to use a smaller contingency fund. It won’t even cover about half of what November would cost.”

On Saturday, the court clarified that the government must make at least a partial payment by Wednesday. Rollins did not say whether the USDA would comply with the court order she disagrees with, but said the president ― who spent the weekend golfing and hosting a Gatsby-themed Halloween party ― is “wholly focused” on getting food benefits to Americans.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a somewhat different response on Sunday, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Trump administration will not appeal the court ruling, and that the president has expressed openness to hearing from the courts on how to fund SNAP.

“There’s a process that has to be followed, so we gotta figure out what the process is,” he said. The process is that the federal government must legally comply with the judges’ clear orders to use the contingency fund to pay for SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

“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,” Trump said on Truth Social.

SNAP benefits are meant to support low-income families. Households “generally must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line” to qualify for SNAP benefits, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. For a family of four, that would equate to just under $42,000 a year.

Rollins also doubled down on her recent comments calling SNAP “extremely corrupt,” accusing many recipients of taking advantage of the program. The secretary’s comments feed into decades of misinformation and racist stereotypes, including the Reagan-era “welfare queen” about low-income Black and brown Americans exploiting food stamps and other government assistance to avoid working.

The reality is that two-thirds of SNAP beneficiaries are children, elderly and disabled people, while most adult beneficiaries who can work hold at least one job, according to the National Urban League. But with the ongoing shutdown and delayed food stamps, many of those households won’t be able to buy groceries for their families.