WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Trump administration’s legal efforts to fight having to fully fund food stamps for millions of vulnerable Americans is creating an opening for Democrats eager to use the longest government shutdown in U.S. history to paint the president as callous and out of touch.
“Donald Trump and his administration have made the decision to weaponize hunger, to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of people, notwithstanding the fact that two lower courts, both the district court and the court of appeals, made clear that those SNAP benefits needed to be paid immediately,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN Saturday, calling the actions “shameful.”
“Donald Trump is literally fighting in court to ensure Americans starve. HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU,” echoed California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, on X.
The comments come after the Supreme Court late Friday granted the administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order requiring it to fully fund SNAP payments amid the shutdown. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program serves about 1 in 8 Americans, mostly those with lower incomes.
A judge had given the administration until Friday to make the payments. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and to move forward with planned partial SNAP payments for the month instead.
The legal wrangling comes after the administration and Republicans endured a bruising Election Day last week. Democrats scored commanding wins up and down the ballot and on ballot measures across the country amid signs that voters’ economic woes are top of mind — a warning sign for the president and his party heading into next year’s higher-stakes midterm elections.
In response, the White House is planning to adjust its messaging strategy to focus on affordability to try to win over voters who are worried about the high cost of living with plans to emphasize new tax breaks and show progress on fighting inflation.
But its efforts around food stamps could complicate that.
Blame game and workarounds
Both parties have tried to blame the other for the shutdown as its impact has spread beyond Washington, D.C., including a growing crisis at the nation’s airports.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October, as the shutdown stretched into its third week, found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans said Trump and Republicans in Congress bore “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown, while 54% said the same about Democrats in Congress. At least three-quarters said both sides deserved at least a “moderate” share of blame.
The White House did not respond to questions Saturday about its rationale for appealing the SNAP orders to the Supreme Court or whether it was concerned about the optics of fighting against making the full payments.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, appearing on Fox News, again blamed Democrats for refusing to vote to reopen the government and made the case that funding had to come from Congress.
“We can’t just create money out of the sky,” she said. “You can’t just create money to fund a program that Congress refuses to fund.”
While hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed and gone over a month without paychecks, the president has gone out of his way to ensure those he favors have been paid.
That includes members of the military after Trump directed the Pentagon to use “all available funds” to pay U.S. troops.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said her department had found a way to pay the U.S. Coast Guard and law enforcement officers within the department, including border patrol agents and immigration officers with funds from the sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Trump signed this summer.
And FBI director Kash Patel has said that FBI special agents are still being paid — though other bureau workers are not. The administration has not said where that money is coming from.
SNAP under attack
Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about SNAP, and he and the White House have offered conflicting messages on what would happen to the program during the shutdown.
In a social media post Tuesday, Trump announced that the administration would not pay out any SNAP benefits until the shutdown was over, and suggested that some who receive benefits are not really in need.
Hours later, however, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration would pay out partial SNAP benefits using contingency funding “that is supposed to be for emergencies, catastrophes, for war.”
But when asked Thursday about a judge ordering the administration to make the full payment, the president directed Vice President JD Vance, who was sitting next to him, to answer.
Vance called the ruling “absurd,” because, he said, “you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democrat government shutdown.””
“In the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation,” he said.
Trump added that he believes the country “has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars, could be anything. We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away.”
Legal wrangling
The administration has faced lawsuits from Democratic-leaning states, nonprofits and cities since shortly after announcing that SNAP benefits would not be available in November because of the shutdown.
But two judges separately ordered the government to keep the money following, ruling last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely. In both cases, the judges ordered the government to use an emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to make the payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.
After the administration announced it would cover only 65% of the maximum monthly benefit, one judge ruled that they could not and would need to find the money to fully fund the program for November.
The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal. In its court filings Friday, the administration contended that the judge had usurped both legislative and executive authority. When a higher court refused to nullify the Friday payment deadline, the Trump administration turned quickly to the Supreme Court.
Through an order signed by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the high court agreed to keep the full-payment order on hold until 48 hours after the appeals court rules on whether to issue a more lasting pause. Jackson, a frequent dissenter from a series of recent decisions in favor of the administration, is the justice assigned to oversee appeals from Rhode Island, where the case originated.
The legal wrangling has left millions of Americans who depend on food aid in confusing limbo. People in some states have reported receiving their full benefits for November, while others could be waiting until at least next week.
Colvin reported from New York and Whitehurst from Washington.