Trump administration to issue only partial SNAP payments in November due to government shutdown

The Donald Trump administration announced Monday that it will continue funding, albeit only partially, the food stamp program relied on by 42 million Americans to buy food.

The federally funded program, which provides food for roughly one in eight Americans, was set to run out of money on November 1 due to the government shutdown, which is now three days away from becoming the longest in U.S. history. However, on Friday, two judges ruled that the administration must tap emergency funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) running through November.

In response to one of the court orders, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP, said it will use the program’s contingency fund to pay November benefits. That fund, however, contains only about $5 billion, while fully funding SNAP nationwide requires roughly $8 billion per month. As a result, recipients will receive reduced benefits.

The administration said it will provide guidance to states, which distribute the funds locally, on how to calculate partial benefits per household. Exactly how much recipients will receive — or when they will see the money on their benefit cards — is still unclear. “For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes states must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months,” Patrick Penn, head of SNAP, wrote in a sworn statement Monday. November payments have already been delayed for millions of recipients.

The Department of Agriculture confirmed at the end of October that SNAP would run out of funds starting November 1 due to the government shutdown, and that any state trying to fund the program on its own would not be reimbursed by Washington. In response, more than 20 Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration to compel it to tap emergency funds and avoid a halt to the country’s largest food aid program. A second lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island by eight cities along with community and business groups, sought the same objective.

In response to the second case, Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island ruled Friday that the government was required to continue SNAP payments despite the shutdown, and that it should use the money it had set aside in contingency funds to do so. The Trump administration argued that the contingency funds were meant for natural disasters and could not be used for food assistance.

Judge McConnell disagreed, as did Massachusetts federal judge Indira Talwani, in response to the lawsuit from the two dozen Democratic states. Both judges instructed the government to use the contingency funds to finance the program, at least partially. They gave the White House the option of using additional funds to fully fund SNAP, as the plaintiffs demanded, and set a Monday deadline to decide. On Monday, the administration declined to use any money beyond SNAP’s emergency reserve.

The Trump administration has blamed the Democratic Party for the potential SNAP suspension and, now, for the delays recipients will see in their benefits, citing the Democrats’ refusal to reopen the government, which began on October 1 and is set to become the longest shutdown in history. “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.,” President Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday.

Now in its sixth week, the government shutdown shows no signs of ending. If it continues into December, SNAP benefits could be suspended entirely once the emergency fund is exhausted this month — something that has never happened in the more than 60-year history of the program.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition