Judge Orders Trump Administration to Fully Fund SNAP Benefits This Month

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to fund food stamps in full for roughly 42 million low-income Americans, after admonishing the government for delaying aid under the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the shutdown.

The order, issued by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, marked his second legal rebuke of the administration for actions that threatened to leave millions of Americans at risk of financial hardship.

Reading his directive from the bench after a short but tense hearing, Judge McConnell sharply criticized the administration for ignoring his original order last week to quickly restart payments for SNAP, or food stamps. He attributed the delay, in part, to an attempt by President Trump and his aides to disrupt the program “for political reasons.”

At one point, Judge McConnell pointed to comments by Mr. Trump, who had threatened this week to halt all food stamp payments until the end of the shutdown. While the White House later tried to walk back those remarks, the judge still saw the president’s ultimatum as evidence he had failed to comply with court instructions.

“This should never happen in America,” the judge said, as he warned that millions of poor families could go hungry in the absence of reliable federal aid. He gave the government until Friday to make the SNAP payments.

Spokespeople for the White House, the Agriculture Department and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ruling, for now, marked a victory for cities, religious groups and nonprofits, which had sued the Trump administration in a bid to sustain the food stamp program. It provides aid to about one in eight Americans — but it stood to shutter entirely in November after the White House refused to fund benefits.

By its own admission, the Agriculture Department had ample funds to continue the program. But it took the intervention of two federal courts, including an order by Judge McConnell, before Mr. Trump’s deputies moved to restart food stamp payments.

Shortly after the judge’s first directive, the Trump administration announced it would provide partial payments under SNAP this month. But many local officials quickly objected to what they saw as a set of punitive and needlessly complex rules, warning that the work to implement them could delay food stamp payments for weeks.

Many families stood to receive nothing this month because of the way that the Agriculture Department had required states to calculate benefits. While the agency admitted late Wednesday that it had made a mistake, and updated its policies, the change only further bogged down the food stamp program.

That prompted local leaders to return to court this week, seeking to force the government to tap additional leftover funds so that it could pay SNAP benefits in full and without delay. Kristin Bateman, a lawyer representing cities and nonprofits that had sued, accused the administration of trying to “leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage.”

Roughly two dozen states have also sued the Trump administration in a bid to force the release of SNAP benefits. On Thursday, they told a federal court in Massachusetts that the government’s actions would “lead to unnecessary, and in some cases, substantial, delays” — and they asked a judge to require the Agriculture Department to fund benefits fully.