Democrats take advantage of the Trump administration

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration’s legal efforts to fight the need to fully fund food stamps for millions of vulnerable Americans are creating an opportunity 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 a decision to weaponize hunger, to deny SNAP benefits to millions of people, despite the fact that two lower courts, both the district court and the court of appeals, made clear that those SNAP benefits had 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 that Americans starve. HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU,” repeated California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, on X.

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A judge had given the administration until Friday to make the payments. But the administration asked an appeals court to stay any order requiring it to spend more money than was available in a contingency fund and instead move forward with partial SNAP payments planned for the month.

The legal dispute comes after the administration and Republicans endured a painful Election Day last week. Democrats won commanding victories on every ballot and in ballot measures across the country amid signs that voters’ economic woes are top of mind — a warning sign for the president and his party ahead of next year’s all-important midterm elections.

But his efforts around food stamps could complicate that.

Blame game and solutions

Both parties have sought to blame each other for the shutdown as its impact has spread beyond Washington, D.C., including a growing crisis at the country’s airports.

An News-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October, as the shutdown stretched into its third week, found that about 6 in 10 Americans said Trump and Republicans in Congress bore “a lot” or “a lot” 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 justification for appealing the SNAP orders to the Supreme Court or whether it was concerned about the optics of fighting full payment of the payments.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in an appearance on News, again blamed Democrats for refusing to vote to reopen the government and argued that funding had to come from Congress.

“We can’t just create money from the sky,” he 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 laid off and gone more than a month without pay, the president has gone to great lengths to ensure that those he favors receive their pay.

That includes members of the military after Trump ordered 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 agents, with funds from the sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump signed this summer.

And FBI Director Kash Patel has said that FBI special agents are still paid, although other bureau workers are not. The administration has not said where that money comes from.

SNAP under attack

Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about SNAP, and he and the White House have offered conflicting messages about what would happen to the program during the shutdown.

In a social media post Tuesday, Trump announced that the administration would not pay any SNAP benefits until the shutdown ended, and suggested that some of those receiving benefits don’t really need them.

Hours later, however, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration would pay partial SNAP benefits using contingency funds “that are supposed to be for emergencies, catastrophes and wars.”

But when asked Thursday about a judge ordering the administration to make the full payment, the president ordered Vice President JD Vance, who was sitting next to him, to respond.

Vance called the ruling “absurd” because, he said, “there is a federal judge effectively telling us what to do in the middle of a Democratic government shutdown.”

“In the middle of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he should classify the situation,” he said.

Trump added that he believes the country “has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars, they can be anything. We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away.”

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Legal disputes

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 due to the shutdown.

But two judges separately ordered the government to keep the money, ruling last week that the administration couldn’t skip the November 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, a judge ruled that they could not and would need to find the money to fully fund the program by November.

The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal. In its court filings Friday, the administration argued that the judge had usurped both legislative and executive authority. When a higher court refused to overturn Friday’s payment deadline, the Trump administration quickly turned to the Supreme Court.

In 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 decides whether a longer pause should be issued. Jackson, a frequent dissenter of a series of recent decisions in favor of the administration, is the judge assigned to oversee the appeals from Rhode Island, where the case originated.

The legal dispute has left millions of Americans who rely on food aid in a confusing limbo. People in some states have reported receiving all of their benefits by November, while others could wait until at least next week.

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Colvin reported from New York and Whitehurst from Washington.