President Trump is reportedly fuming that his threats, firings, and program cuts haven’t gotten Senate Democrats to cave to Republicans and end the shutdown.
Trump, 79, thought the shutdown would last ten days at most, believing that the unprecedented and illegal firings of federal workers by his “grim reaper‚” OMB head Russ Vought, would be enough to get Democrats to give up, sign the Republicans’ budget bill, and thus re-open the government.
“Trump, he’s had it with these people, because he knows they’re playing politics,” a source close to the White House told Politico. “Nobody thought it was going to last this long.”
In addition to sources whispering that Trump is frustrated, Trump is publicly whining about how he’s frustrated.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” he said of Democrats Friday. “They’ve never done a thing like this. They’ve become crazed lunatics. All they have to do is say, ‘Let’s go. Let’s open up our country.’ And everything snaps back into shape. So there’s something wrong with them… It’s their fault. Everything is their fault. It’s so easily solved.”
Democrats are asking that the budget include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Rather than negotiate on helping Americans with health care, Republicans have instead let thousands of federal workers go without pay, eviscerated the CDC, and signaled they’ll starve Americans if they have to.
SNAP, aka the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, helps poor Americans eat, and expired on November 1st. 42 million Americans depend on SNAP benefits, and Republicans have blocked bipartisan efforts to move some government money around to ensure impoverished Americans can still purchase food.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, 53, has signaled that Republicans are holding SNAP benefits hostage as a political ploy to get Democrats to vote for their budget, saying Thursday, “If you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games. If you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it.”
Half the country sued the government to keep SNAP running despite the shutdown, and on Friday, two US judges ruled the government must continue funding SNAP.
There is a contingency fund at the USDA that can fund SNAP in the event of an emergency, but until Friday’s ruling, it was the USDA and Secretary Brooke Rollins’ conclusion that the fund “is only allowed to flow if the underlying program is funded.”
Massachusetts US District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in her decision that the government “erred” in that conclusion.
As the judge’s decisions were issued, Trump was preparing for a glitzy, Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. Trump took to Truth Social during his shin-dig to complain he doesn’t know how to comply with the courts’ orders, and ordered White House lawyers to figure it out.
“Our Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two Courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do,” he wrote. “I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.”
The administration has been ordered to report to Judge Talwani by Monday on whether it will use the contingency fund to pay reduced SNAP benefits or if it will pay full benefits for the month by moving money from other programs.
The Daily Beast has reached out to The White House for comment.
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