President Trump threatened on Tuesday to deny food stamps for roughly 42 million low-income Americans until the end of the government shutdown, even though a federal court ordered the administration to continue the aid payments into the month.
In a post on social media, Mr. Trump charged that benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”
The president’s comments carried great political, legal and economic significance and raised concern that the administration might be violating a judge’s order requiring the government to keep funding SNAP payments.
The administration’s lawyers told two separate courts a day earlier that it would make partial payments to the roughly one in eight poor Americans who receive aid under SNAP. That alone had proved insufficient for cities and nonprofits, which had initially sued in a bid to release the funds. They returned to court earlier Tuesday to try to secure swift and full aid for millions of recipients.
“This is immoral. See you in court,” Skye L. Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, a legal organization representing one of the lawsuits that has repeatedly challenged the Trump administration, said in a post on social media.
The White House declined to elaborate on Mr. Trump’s plans and whether he intended to violate a court order.
In the original order, published on Saturday, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island essentially gave the Trump administration a choice. He said it could provide full SNAP payments by Monday or partial benefits by Wednesday, while finding that the government had a legal obligation to sustain the program if the funds were available.
The Trump administration chose the latter approach, financed using about $5 billion set aside for SNAP in an emergency reserve previously established by Congress. The Agriculture Department could have tapped an ample store of additional funds to provide full benefits to those enrolled in food stamps, but the agency declined to do so.
As a result, families stood to receive about half as much in nutrition benefits this month than they would have normally — and, potentially, only after weeks or months of delay. Officials at the Agriculture Department had acknowledged these limitations in court filings, even as the administration refused to make other funds available for SNAP.
By Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared to threaten to halt food stamps entirely. He said on social media that the benefits were managed “haphazardly” and attacked Democrats. The comments rekindled his previous threat to punish the party and cut its favored programs during the shutdown.
Even before the president posted on social media, local leaders and nonprofits had filed anew in federal court in the hopes of securing a clearer order from Judge McConnell, one that would force the Trump administration to pay benefits rapidly and in full.
“Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger,” they wrote in their filing, prepared by lawyers from groups including Democracy Forward.
They said that the court “did not contemplate that millions would be deprived of basic nutritional assistance for weeks” while the government readied its partial benefits. They asked the judge to force the Trump administration to “release the unlawfully withheld funding, in its entirety, for November SNAP benefits.”
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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