Trump admin says so

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has found creative ways to cover military pay during the current government shutdown, but says it can’t do the same for federal food benefits.

Justice Department lawyers said a federal court this week that even though there are tons of money, could for food assistance, it would be too risky to do so to get the November benefits.

Responding to a lawsuit from Democratic-led states demanding continued Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, the Justice Department said doing so with emergency funds “would be legally dubious and virtually disastrous.”

The government has been shut down since the beginning of the month as Democrats demand that Republicans agree to an extension of expiring tax credits that help more than 20 million Americans afford health insurance.

During the last shutdown, in 2019, the Trump administration made additional effort to distribute SNAP benefits as the funding stalemate entered its second month. In a surprising reversal, the Trump administration now says its hands are tied. As a result, next month, more than 20 million households representing 42 million people will lose SNAP benefits at an average of about $350 per household.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the nutrition program, has insisted it cannot pay benefits despite the presence of $5.25 billion in a contingency fund, enough to cover a portion of the roughly $8 billion allocation that would begin distribution on Saturday.

The USDA “maintains the long-term emergency fund for disasters that may arise, rather than spending them all at once in partial payments and hoping that no emergencies will require their use for years to come,” administration lawyers told a federal court in Massachusetts, where Democrats filed their lawsuit.

The administration also said it would be “extremely difficult” to send out partial benefits, something it said had never been done before.

“Any attempt to calculate and implement a nationwide reduction would long delay this round of benefits, any round of benefits that restores recipients to their full November amount, and a future round of benefits that reverts to the standard calculation,” the Trump administration said in its filing Wednesday night.

The White House told Axios this week that it tapped three different accounts to cover the $5.3 million needed for military paychecks due Friday. A budget expert has argued that the administration’s previous moves to cover soldiers’ salaries were not strictly legal. The added effort to find money for service members comes as Trump sends in the National Guard to quell dubious crime emergencies in cities across the country, and as the Pentagon prepares a new “quick reaction force” for future domestic deployments.

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The upcoming cutoff in SNAP benefits could be the most severe impact yet of the government shutdown, which appears likely to become the longest ever, and Republicans in Congress are convinced that Democrats are entirely to blame for refusing to vote on their funding bill.

“As millions of Americans are bracing for more pain and hardship this morning,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday, “Democrats, incredibly, are showing no sign that they want to end their shutdown.”

News themezone asked Johnson why the Trump administration shouldn’t do what it did during Trump’s first term, when it paid out SNAP benefits several weeks early in case the shutdown was extended into a second month.

“Well, the president, his administration, has done exactly what he did in the first term, and that is do everything he can to make sure that the damage is mitigated,” Johnson said, incorrectly.

Regarding early benefits in 2019, the Justice Department noted in its brief that the Government Accountability Office said early dispersal was illegal, but also described it as a successful tactic that is simply no longer available.

“In January 2019, although there were insufficient long-term emergency funds available, USDA was able to structure the ‘early issuance’ of benefits and the lapse ended before any funding shortfall would require withdrawing the long-term emergency fund,” the administration’s lawyers said.

David Super, an administrative law expert at Georgetown University Law School, questioned the administration’s decision not to tap into its contingency fund.

“The USDA said it would prefer to keep money in reserve to help victims of future natural disasters,” Super told News themezone in an email. “That’s a strange preference when holding back SNAP contingency stockpiles means 42 million real people will face immediate food crises.”

In response to the looming food cliff, Democrats have increased the number of press conferences they are holding this week and introduced standalone bills to keep SNAP money flowing, only to see Republicans block or ignore the legislation.

Johnson said that opening the government slowly, for example by funding the USDA to distribute food benefits, would weaken Republicans’ influence over Democrats.

“Doing just part of this will reduce the pressure on them to do it all, to do their basic job, which is reopening the government,” Johnson said. he told CNN.

One Republican lawmaker, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), has introduced his own SNAP bill, but it appears unlikely that GOP leaders will allow it to be voted on in the Senate. Hawley said he did not support the administration sending SNAP benefits any other way.

“Honestly, I don’t know legally if they can or not. They think they can’t,” Hawley told News themezone. “But the bottom line is that even if you could, I don’t think you would have enough at your disposal to fully fund SNAP.”

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.