Trump administration asks appeals court to immediately halt SNAP funding ruling

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to issue an emergency stay of a judge’s ruling Thursday ordering the administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. for today.

Justice Department lawyers argue that the district court’s ruling makes a “mockery of the separation of powers.”

“This unprecedented court order makes a mockery of the separation of powers. The courts have neither the power to appropriate nor the power to spend. The courts are charged with enforcing the law, but the law is explicit that SNAP benefits are subject to available allocations,” the Justice Department said in its filing.

The circuit court ordered the nonprofits and local governments that filed the original lawsuit to respond by noon.

The Trump administration requested that the appeals court issue a ruling by 4 p.m. ET today.

The question is whether a federal judge can force the government to use $4 billion from Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935 to fund November SNAP benefits.

The Trump administration argues that those funds are needed to support child nutrition programs, known as WIC, and that using that money to pay for SNAP would essentially “starve Peter to feed Paul.”

“In fact, if each beneficiary of a mandatory spending program could go to court and force the agency to transfer funds from elsewhere, the result would be an unworkable and conflicting plethora of injunctive measures that would reduce the federal treasury to a gigantic game of deception,” they argued in their presentation.

During a tense court hearing yesterday, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. expressed skepticism about that argument, noting that WIC has enough money to operate until May, while SNAP has already run out of money. He accused the Trump administration of “withholding SNAP benefits for political reasons.”

Last week McConnell ordered the government use emergency funds pay SNAP in time for Nov. 1 payments to be made, but the administration committed to only partial financing the program, saying they had to save the additional funds for child nutrition programs.

McConnell, in his ruling Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP for the month of November by Friday. He directly rebuked President Donald Trump for declaring “his intention to defy” a court order when Trump said earlier this week that SNAP will not be funded until the government reopens its ongoing activities. government shutdown.

In its court filing Friday, the Trump administration said Trump was “simply stating a fact” and was not using SNAP as leverage.

“The district court also accused the president of bad faith for declaring that full SNAP benefits would not resume until the government reopens. But that was just a fact finding: the allocation has expired and it is up to Congress to resolve this crisis,” the filing said.

The government has asked the circuit court to allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which operates SNAP, to continue partial payment of SNAP and “not force the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program without certainty of its replenishment.”

McConnell himself denied a request from the government to suspend his own decision, saying: “The request for a stay of this decision, whether a stay or an administrative stay, is denied. People have been without money for too long. Not making payments to them for even one more day is simply unacceptable.”

“People have been without money for too long, not paying them even one more day is simply unacceptable,” the judge said.