Shutdown Battle Ebbs, but Trump Won’t Give Up Trying to Withhold Full SNAP Benefits

 Written by Jacob Fischler-and Republished from the Penn Capital-Star under creative commons license Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The Trump administration continued Monday to press the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn lower court decisions requiring the federal government pay for full benefits for a major food program, even as Congress appeared to approach an end to the record-breaking government shutdown.

Late Sunday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Rhode Island federal judge’s order that the U.S. Department of Agriculture pay full November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

On Monday morning, the top federal litigator told the Supreme Court the administration was continuing its appeal.

Later Monday, a Massachusetts federal judge kept in place an order canceling a USDA memo to states over the weekend asking them to “undo” full November benefits, while chastising the administration for sowing confusion. The memo had left states unsure how to proceed, and some refused to obey it.

In an afternoon brief following his morning notice to the high court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer largely repeated the argument he made in an initial appeal to the high court Nov. 7.

Sauer said courts could not command the USDA to “raid” a fund for child nutrition programs that holds about $23 billion, so as to fund a roughly $4 billion shortfall for SNAP in the short term.

He added Monday that the lower courts’ orders threaten to derail a deal in the Senate to reopen the government, expected to be completed this week.

“Literally at the eleventh hour, those orders inject the federal courts into the political branches’ closing efforts to end this shutdown,” Sauer wrote. “But the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority. The only way to end this crisis—which the Executive is adamant to end—is for Congress to reopen the government.”

Sauer’s brief came after Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ordered the government to say how it would proceed in light of the 1st Circuit order late Sunday and gave the coalition of nonprofit groups and municipal government that brought the original suit until 8 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday to respond.

Massachusetts federal judge slams USDA

At an afternoon hearing in Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denounced USDA’s Saturday night demand that states return authorized funding and maintained a temporary restraining order blocking it from going into effect.

The Saturday night memo called on states to “immediately undo” actions to send benefits to people who use SNAP.

But the states had been complying with a midday Nov. 7 memo from the same department official that instructed them to process full benefits in accordance with the Rhode Island order, Talwani said.

“What you have right now is confusion of the agency’s own making,” Talwani said.

Keith Becker, who represented the administration in the hearing, said that guidance was meant to keep states from distributing benefits while the Supreme Court stay, issued late Nov. 7, was in place.

Minnesota authorized benefits after the Supreme Court order, he said.

Talwani said he had provided no evidence of that.

Becker also said Wisconsin, Oregon and Michigan sent out benefits between the time of the Rhode Island order and the Nov. 7 guidance telling states to issue benefits, but Talwani said they were complying with the Rhode Island court order.

The Saturday letter to states was inappropriate, she added.

“It seems to me that the states acted fairly reasonably to follow your Nov. 7 guideline,” she said. “Even if there is a mistake here, the notion that the next move, on Saturday night, is a blustering order, that they’re all going to be sued, and this thing and that thing — we’re trying to get … benefits to people who need food.”

She also said the administration appeared to be using Americans who use SNAP as political leverage, noting that even as the shutdown appears near its end, the administration was refusing to transfer reserve money from a fund that had enough to stay solvent into the spring.

“You’ve chosen not to pay your benefits at this point, and it’s hard to see how it’s not just being used as a leverage point,” she said. “I understand that there’s nice language about saying it’s for child nutrition, but it doesn’t really ring true right now.”

Appeals court ruling

Federal courts have issued a flurry of rulings on the matter since groups, cities and Democratic states sued to force Trump to release November benefits late last month.

The late Sunday ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit, which upheld a Thursday order from U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. that the government forfeited its option to issue partial November benefits when it missed a Nov. 5 deadline McConnell had set.

USDA had argued that making partial SNAP payments, which it had never done before, would be difficult. But it made no plans to prepare those partial benefits nearly a month into the shutdown, Judge Julie Rikelman wrote in the panel’s opinion.

“The record here shows that the government sat on its hands for nearly a month, unprepared to make partial payments, while people who rely on SNAP received no benefits a week into November and counting,” Rikelman wrote. “In light of these unique facts, we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in requiring full payment of November SNAP benefits.”

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Monday night on a bill to end the shutdown. The measure is likely to pass after advancing in a key procedural vote Sunday, but the House would still need to clear it and Trump would have to sign it before the government will reopen. House members have been told to begin returning to Washington.

Sauer noted in his Monday letter that if the bill were to become law, the case would become moot.

Dems blast court fight

Congressional Democrats have been unsparing in their criticism of Trump’s efforts to keep from paying November benefits.

U.S. House ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota said administration officials “simply do not care about America’s hungry children, veterans, seniors or people with disabilities.”

“Instead of helping hungry seniors and children, President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins spent weeks illegally withholding food assistance from hungry Americans,” Craig said. “Now, they are again asking the Supreme Court to stop states from feeding hungry residents. The Trump administration would rather preserve its own sense of power than preserve the lives and wellbeing of hungry Americans.”

Republicans have blamed Democrats for the lack of benefits payments, which they say could have been avoided if enough Senate Democrats voted with Republicans for a bill that would have temporarily reopened the government at current spending levels.

California Democrat Adam Schiff “voted against funding SNAP 15 times,” the Senate GOP X account wrote in response to a tweet from Schiff. “If he wants to fund SNAP, he should join the eight other Democrats who have voted to reopen the government instead.”

All but three Senate Democrats voted against the measure in 14 consecutive votes. Most continued to oppose the 15th vote Sunday, but seven Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted with Republicans on the bill to reopen the government that also included three full-year spending bills and reinstated fired federal workers.

Those votes gave Republicans the margin needed to bypass the Senate’s filibuster rule.