The Trump Administration will be partially reinstating the federal food assistance program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the order of two federal judges this past Monday, Nov. 3.
Half of the states in the country, including the District of Columbia, filed lawsuits in wake of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) announcement on their website in late October, stating simply, “the well has run dry,” as a result of the government shutdown. This would have been the first time in the program’s history that it would not receive the money needed to operate, despite having weathered previous shutdowns. Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani and Rhode Island U.S. District Judge John McConnell delivered rulings within minutes of each other on Friday, Oct. 31. Judge Talwani called the suspension of SNAP benefits, “unlawful,” and was the one to give the administration the deadline of Monday, Nov. 3, to detail a plan on how it will be funding the food assistance program. In his oral ruling, Judge McConnell said, “It is beyond argument that irreparable harm will begin, if it hasn’t already occurred, in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding food for their families,” directing the USDA to allocate money to the program immediately.Â
SNAP is the largest federal program responsible for providing monthly monetary food assistance to low-income households. Recipients are given reloadable debit cards that they are able to use to buy essential grocery items. According to the USDA, as of the 2025 fiscal year over 42 million people, about one in every eight U.S. residents, rely on SNAP benefits, 39% of which are children. A family of four on average receives $715 a month, which is just under $6 a day per person, but the exact amount for each recipient depends on income and household size. The program is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net, and costs about $8 billion monthly.Â
The USDA has an emergency fund of $5.5 billion, which the Trump administration claimed they were not legally allowed to allocate to the SNAP program. However, Judge McConnell ordered for the release of the backup funds, claiming, “There is no doubt that the $6 billion in contingency funds are appropriated funds that are without a doubt necessary to carry out the program’s operation.” Judge Talwani wrote that the administration, “erred in concluding,” that USDA is not able to tap into the contingency reserved during a lapse of federal funding. Essentially, it was decided that the suspension was arbitrary and capricious, referring to a standard of judicial review used to determine if actions, often by government agencies, are made without a rational basis or consideration of laws or facts. The suspension violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the agency misinterpreted their authority.
The administration has said that there is only $4.65 billion available in the USDA’s contingency fund to pay for SNAP benefits, enough for about half the usual coverage, and using it would leave no additional funds for December if Congress does not pass the budget by then. It is currently unclear how much money SNAP recipients will receive or how quickly they will be able to use their debit cards to buy food, though the administration says there will be lengthy delays of anywhere between a few weeks to several months. Some state governments have assured their residents that they will be using their own funds to cover costs, in spite of the federal government warning that it will not reimburse the states for doing so.
Millions of Americans are now facing food insecurity just before the Thanksgiving holiday. Anti-hunger activists say the difficult truth is food banks and pantries do not have the means to be able to replace SNAP. In an interview with MSNBC, The Food Depot’s Executive Director Jill Dixon, says that relying on food banks is not a sustainable plan, “For every meal that a food bank provides, the SNAP program provides nine. There’s no way we can meet that gap. There’s no way we can replace every single one of those meals. [Food banks] were not built to do this.”Â
Governor Kathy Hochul of New York declared a state of emergency this past Thursday, Oct. 30, and has directed over $100 million in state funds for emergency food assistance for the roughly 3 million New Yorkers who will now be unable to access their SNAP benefits. The city receives over $400 million in SNAP payments every month, and “No single organization nor the food assistance network absorb that,” says Zac Hall, the Senior Vice President of the Food Bank of New York City, the city’s largest hunger relief organization. Despite the city’s food pantries also receiving an extra $15 million to help with the influx of people, SNAP covers more meals in one month than the Food Bank does in one year. What’s unfolding isn’t simply administrative failure, it’s structural violence built into a system that treats hunger as an acceptable consequence for political gridlock.  Â