Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Oct. 31, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The House speaker's office held the news conference on the 31st day of the government shutdown to discuss food stamp programs running out of funding. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ call for a close reexamination of the 42 million people who receive federal food aid has befuddled advocates and lawmakers, coming mere days after recipients began to see benefits that had been stalled during the government shutdown.

Details remain scant a week after Rollins during an interview on the right-wing Newsmax network first publicly broached the startling idea that every beneficiary would have to reapply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, often called food stamps.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, asked for an explanation, referenced existing requirements and suggested more changes in SNAP rules could be in store.

“Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends,” a USDA spokesperson wrote Wednesday. “Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it. Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of state data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with states.”

The 2008 law governing SNAP leaves states responsible for administration. Part of that role includes periodically making sure that the low-income people in the program meet the qualifications for inclusion, but the law allows states to determine how often that occurs.

“It’s not clear what she would be proposing that is different from what is already happening,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst for food assistance at the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

One interpretation of Rollins’ comments is that she would remove all 42 million individuals from SNAP’s rolls and ask them to resubmit applications. Bergh said that would lead to people losing money they need for groceries. About 40% of those enrolled in SNAP are children.

“If she’s suggesting that they’re going to somehow redo that process for more than 40 million people who already demonstrated their eligibility and who already have to periodically recertify their eligibility, that would be pretty duplicative and would likely create pretty significant paperwork backlogs that would cause people who are eligible to lose the food assistance that they need,” Bergh said.

Administration critics have suggested that, while the comments are unlikely to lead to policy changes, they introduce even more confusion for a program that was used as a political token during the record government shutdown that ended this month. 

Making people reapply would underscore the Trump administration’s opposition to the nearly $100 billion program, which accounts for 70% of federal nutrition assistance. USDA says the average SNAP household in fiscal 2023 received a monthly benefit of $332, or $177 a person based on the average SNAP household size of 1.9 people.

“Secretary Rollins and the Trump administration have cut food assistance for 42 million Americans multiple times this year,” U.S. House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig said in a Wednesday statement to States Newsroom. “Now, they’ve once again shown that they do not understand the program.”

What did Rollins say?

In the Nov. 13 interview on Newsmax, Rollins said SNAP was beset by widespread fraud, citing data that 29 mostly Republican-run states submitted to the department. Acquiring data from the 21 other states would give the department a way to wholly remake the program, she said.

“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data, what we’re going to find?” she said. “It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it. And that’s the next step here.”

In an interview Monday on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Rollins about the move to have recipients “reapply.”

“Business as usual is over,” Rollins answered in part. “The status quo is no more. We know that the SNAP program is rife with fraud.”

She added that guarding against fraud would help those the program is meant to serve.

The comments touched off widespread confusion about what specifically Rollins meant. 

Asked about the initiative during a Thursday press conference, Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, said she was unclear about how it would work and predicted that Rollins would take credit in the future for the existing low rate of fraud.

“We’re hearing off the record that, you know, maybe people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” she said. “In fact, I think they’re trying to take credit for the already very strict standards and the actual low fraud rate in the SNAP program … So we can find no real plan there. Not even sure there’s concepts of a plan there.”

In response to a States Newsroom request this week for details about the initiative, USDA provided the statement that did not answer how the department would proceed or under what authority, but said Rollins was seeking to reduce fraud in the program.

Spokespeople did not respond to follow-up questions, or a request to respond to Craig’s remarks Thursday.

Low fraud rate

Program experts say fraud is not a widespread problem for SNAP.

An April report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that retailers illegally trafficked about 1.6% of SNAP benefits from fiscal 2015 to 2017.

Fraud by households applying for SNAP, which appear to be the main target of Rollins’ proposal, is even lower. 

According to a USDA report, about 26,000 applications were referred for an administrative review or prosecution on suspicion of fraud. That number accounts for about 0.1% of the 22.7 million households enrolled in the program, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Long-standing data sources indicate that intentional fraud by participants is rare,” Bergh said.

At Thursday’s press conference, Craig called Rollins’ comments “bullsh*t” and “propaganda.”

“Secretary Rollins goes on TV and talks about all the fraud,” she said. “This most effective anti-hunger program in our history has a fraud rate of 1.6%. It’s actually one of the most effective, well-run programs in the country … The bullsh*t this administration is peddling is egregious.”

More targeted reforms

Even experts who advocate for reforms to SNAP say eligibility fraud is not a major issue.

Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said high-net-worth individuals can receive SNAP benefits, but aren’t committing fraud by doing so.

“Some of the issues with SNAP … aren’t because of fraud or abuse, but they are because of bad program rules,” said Boccia.

Boccia also cited an “incentive misalignment” inherent in the state-federal program. States have little incentive to control payments because the federal government funds the program, she said.

Forcing all beneficiaries to reapply would likely reduce the cost of the program by reducing the number of its beneficiaries, including by forcing out higher earners who may not consider the benefits they don’t actually need to be worth the onerous reapplication process, Boccia said. 

But it would also result in a percentage of low earners dropping off the program, as well as many who would be affected by the administrative backlog that would come with processing tens of millions of new applications, she said. 

Shutdown, the big beautiful bill, and confusion

Bergh said Rollins’ comments “add insult to injury” because they come after congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump signed a major tax cuts and spending law that is expected to shrink federal SNAP spending by $187 billion over 10 years. The law added work requirements for many SNAP recipients and shifted some costs to states.

That was followed by the six-week shutdown that saw a dizzying back-and-forth over whether November SNAP benefits would be paid.

“There has been huge amounts of chaos and confusion and disruption for both states and participants in recent weeks, largely due to the shutdown, but also because simultaneously, the administration has required states to implement many of the reconciliation bill’s SNAP cuts,” Bergh said.

Craig, in her statement, also said Rollins’ comments would hurt the people who need the program.

“I am astounded by the secretary’s careless disregard for the hungry seniors and children who can afford to eat because of this program,” she said.

Sara Naomi Bleich, a public health policy professor at Harvard University, said in a phone interview the confusion from Rollins’ comments compounded hardships produced by the Republican reconciliation law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Big picture with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is that there’s basically this tidal wave coming to families that have low income,” Bleich, who worked at USDA during the Obama and Biden administrations, said. “They’re going to lose Medicaid. They’re going to lose SNAP. There could be collateral impacts on the school meals. This is going to be a really hard time for families to navigate.”

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Tim Brown/Getty Images)

The Federal Aviation Administration early Monday lifted an order that airlines cut domestic flights to 40 major U.S. airports, as air traffic control staffing levels improve following the six-week government shutdown. 

The move came just before the busiest travel week of the year, though it was unclear how long it would take for airlines to resume normal operations. 

The FAA’s safety team recommended ending the restrictions after seeing only one staffing trigger affect travel Sunday, according to an agency press release. There were 81 staffing triggers on Nov. 8, a few days before the end of the longest shutdown in U.S. history. 

“I want to thank the FAA’s dedicated safety team for keeping our skies secure during the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history and the country’s patience for putting safety first,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in the release. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, controllers have returned to their posts and normal operations can resume.”

The government reopened after a 43-day shutdown on Nov. 12. 

Air traffic controllers were required to work without pay during the shutdown, leaving many to pursue second jobs and the workforce overstressed. The order to reduce flights, peaking at 6% at major airports, was meant to reduce that stress.

The banners at the tops of major U.S. airline websites warning of canceled flights disappeared by Monday morning.

One carrier, Southwest, replaced it with a message that its normal schedule would resume Monday. 

“Good news, the US government shutdown has ended,” the message read. “Our full schedule resumes on Nov 17. Book your next trip with confidence today.”

Planes line up on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport on Nov. 10, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The record 43-day government shutdown that ended Wednesday night scrambled air travel, interrupted food assistance and forced federal workers to go without a paycheck for weeks.

It also cost the U.S. economy about $15 billion per week, White House Council of Economic Advisers Director Kevin Hassett told reporters Thursday.  

As the government began to reopen Thursday, officials were working to untangle those issues and others.

But in some areas, the processes for getting things back to normal after such a lengthy shutdown will also take time. 

President Donald Trump on Wednesday night signed a package passed by Congress reopening the government, which closed on Oct. 1 after lawmakers failed to pass a stopgap spending bill.

Flights back on schedule by Thanksgiving?

The Federal Aviation Administration’s shutdown plan, announced last week by Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, was to reduce flights to 40 major airports by 10%. 

As of Thursday afternoon, the FAA had not lifted the order restricting flights. But the agency did stop ramping up the percentage of those affected. 

The FAA started by asking airlines to cancel 4% of flights Nov. 7. A Wednesday order halted the rate at 6%.

That was enough to cause major disruptions to travel, and it remained unclear Thursday how long it would take to resume normal operations. 

In a statement, Airlines for America, the trade group representing the nation’s commercial air carriers, welcomed the end of the shutdown but was vague about how much longer air travelers would see disruptions. The statement noted the upcoming holiday as a possible milestone. 

“When the FAA gives airlines clearance to return to full capacity, our crews will work quickly to ramp up operations especially with Thanksgiving holiday travel beginning next week,” the group’s statement said. 

The FAA and Transportation Department did not return messages seeking updates Thursday.

The reduction in flights was meant to ease pressure on air traffic controllers, who worked through the shutdown without pay. 

Many missed work as they pursued short-term jobs in other industries. Duffy said that left the controllers on the job overstressed and possibly prone to costly mistakes.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to reward other federal workers at airports, those employed by her department’s Transportation Security Administration, with $10,000 bonuses if they maintained high attendance records during the shutdown.

Noem handed out checks to TSA workers in Houston on Thursday and said more could come. 

Federal workers return, with back pay on the way

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers who had been furloughed returned to the office Thursday and those who had been working without pay will continue their duties knowing their next paycheck should be on time. 

All workers will receive back pay for the shutdown, in accordance with a 2019 law that states employees “shall be paid for such work, at the employee’s standard rate of pay, at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said the White House has urged agencies to get back pay to employees “expeditiously and accurately.”

Agencies will need to submit time and attendance files, and payroll processors can then issue checks. According to the spokesperson, agencies have different pay schedules and payroll processors, and “discrepancies in timing and pay periods are a result of that.”

The office estimates that workers will receive a “supercheck” for the pay period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1 on the following dates:

Nov. 15

• General Services Administration
• Office of Personnel Management

Nov. 16

• Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Defense

Nov. 17

• Departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• NASA
• National Science Foundation
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Social Security Administration

Nov. 19

• Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and Treasury
• Small Business Administration

Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement Wednesday that federal workers across all agencies “should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history.” 

“The anxiety has been devastating as they cut back on spending, ran up credit card debt, took out emergency loans, filed for unemployment, found temporary side jobs, stood in line for food assistance, skipped filling prescriptions and worried about the future. Federal employees should receive the six weeks of back pay they are owed immediately upon the reopening of the federal government,” said Greenwald. 

The union represents workers at 38 federal agencies and offices.

States Newsroom spoke to several furloughed federal workers who attended a special food distribution event during the shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees, one of multiple unions that sued the Trump administration over layoffs during the shutdown, said its members were used “as leverage to advance political priorities,” according to a statement issued Tuesday by the union’s national president, Everett Kelley.

The AFGE, which according to the union represents roughly 820,000 federal workers, did not immediately respond for comment Thursday.

The shutdown-ending deal reinstated jobs for fired federal employees and prohibits any reductions in force by the administration until Jan. 30.

Federal workers speak out

A statement released Thursday by a group of federal workers across agencies struck a different tone on the shutdown and praised the 40 senators and 209 representatives who voted against the temporary spending bill deal.

“The fight mattered. It changed the conversation. More members of the American public now understand that Trump is shredding the Constitution,” according to the statement issued by the Civil Servants Coalition.

The coalition also noted, “Even though the government is reopening, none of us will be able to fully deliver our agency’s missions. Our work has been exploited and dismantled since January through harmful policies and illegal purges of critical staff.”

The group emailed the statement as a PDF document to an unknown number of government workers and urged them to “channel that frustration toward action” by contacting their representatives.

SNAP saga concludes

The government reopening ended a drawn-out saga over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps 42 million people afford groceries. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states in a Thursday memo they “must take immediate steps to ensure households receive their full November allotments promptly.”

The guidance also noted that states should prepare for another shutdown as soon as next October by upgrading systems so that they could allow for partial payments. 

A key point of dispute between the administration and those seeking SNAP benefits was the lengthy time the administration said it would take to fund partial benefits. 

A Wednesday evening statement from a department spokesperson said full benefits would be disbursed in most states by Thursday night. 

Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said Thursday “states are all working hard to resume full benefits.”

 “But there will likely be logistical challenges, depending on a state’s system’s capabilities and whether the state had already issued partial benefits, that may impact how quickly a state is able to push out” benefits, she wrote. 

The program, which is funded by the federal government and administered by states, sends monthly payments on a rolling basis. 

That means that the day of the month each household receives its allotment varies. Households that usually receive benefits mid-month or later should see no interruption. 

But many of the program’s beneficiaries receive their payments earlier in the month, meaning that, depending on their state, they may have missed their November payments. 

Some states, including Democrat-run Wisconsin, Oregon and Michigan, began paying full benefits last week after a Rhode Island federal judge ordered the administration to release full November payments and the department issued guidance to states to do so.

The administration then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause enforcement of the Rhode Island judge’s order and reversed its guidance to states, telling them to “immediately undo” efforts to pay out full November benefits.

The Department of Justice dropped its Supreme Court case Thursday. 

“Because the underlying dispute here is now moot, the government withdraws its November 7 stay application in this Court,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote to the high court.

In the trial court, the administration cited the USDA guidance and said it would discuss the future of the litigation with the coalition of cities and nonprofit groups that brought the suit. 

Capital area tourist attractions reopen

Tourists in the nation’s capital have been shut out of the Smithsonian Institution’s 17 free museums and zoo for most of the federal shutdown.

The institution on Friday will open the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Air and Space Museum located at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, according to a message posted on the Smithsonian’s website.

All other museums and the National Zoo will open on a “rolling basis” by Nov. 17.

Multiple public-facing agencies, including the National Park Service and Internal Revenue Service, did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for reopening information.

National parks were closed or partially closed during the shutdown.

Several IRS services were reduced or altogether cut as the funding lapse dragged on. Those disruptions included limited IRS telephone customer service operations and the closure of in-person Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

A sign explaining delays in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown is displayed at a Sprouts grocery store in Bountiful, Utah, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)

The Trump administration will release full benefits for most participants in the nation’s major federal nutrition program within 24 hours of the reopening of the federal government, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said Wednesday. 

Many of the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to help afford groceries have faced uncertainty for weeks about their November benefits, which President Donald Trump and other top administration officials said could not be paid while the government was shut down. 

A USDA spokesperson answered an afternoon email from States Newsroom inquiring about when benefits would restart with a single sentence:

“Upon the government reopening, within 24 hours for most States,” the spokesperson wrote. 

Politico first reported the department’s 24-hour timeline.

While the federal government funds SNAP benefits, states are responsible for their administration, meaning an array of different processes across the country. 

The U.S. House was set to vote Wednesday evening to clear a bill to reopen the government after a record 43-day shutdown, after the Senate acted earlier this week. Trump is expected to sign it into law as early as Wednesday night. 

The enactment of the bill — and the subsequent renewal of federal payments — would resolve a dizzying weekslong saga over SNAP that placed the roughly 1 in 8 Americans who use the program in the middle of a political and legal battle playing out across every level of the federal judiciary. 

Since the shutdown began Oct. 1, the USDA has reversed its own position, the U.S. Supreme Court paused lower court orders and Trump himself expressed contradicting views.

In the most recent chapter, USDA said it would authorize states to pay 65% of benefits for November, and the Supreme Court paused until Thursday night lower court orders compelling full payments. 

The department had previously told a Rhode Island federal court it could take weeks or even months for beneficiaries to receive the partial allotments and the administration continued to fight rulings to immediately release full funding, even as the shutdown crept toward its conclusion.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court has extended through Thursday a pause on lower courts’ orders that the Trump administration authorize a full month of benefits for a food assistance program that 1 in 8 Americans use to buy groceries.

A brief, unsigned order published Tuesday evening also said the full court would decide on the administration’s request to block court orders that the U.S. Department of Agriculture release full November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

The case was presented to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said she would have dismissed the case and denied the request for an administrative stay. Jackson was appointed to the high court by President Joe Biden.

The order adds another wrinkle to a case that was already the object of a weekslong tug-of-war over how the program should operate during the government shutdown.

The shutdown could end before the stay expires. The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday to reopen the government, and the House is expected to pass it Wednesday. President Donald Trump has said he supports the measure and will likely sign it before the end of the day Thursday.

Trump and administration officials have maintained they were not authorized to release November SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

A Rhode Island federal judge ordered the USDA on Thursday to release full benefits for November. The department sent states a memo authorizing those payments Friday morning, then appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday evening to have the district court’s order overturned.

At the same time, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s order.

In the face of often contradicting administrative guidance and court orders, some states began processing full benefits for November, while others have yet to release them.

Workers and volunteers help distribute food boxes to those in need at a large-scale drive-through food distribution, in response to the federal government shutdown and SNAP/CalFresh food benefits delays, on Nov. 5, 2025 in City of Industry, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Payments for November for the nation’s main food assistance program have been delayed during the government shutdown, amid a confusing mess of contradicting guidance from the Trump administration and a flurry of court orders in two cases at every level of the federal judiciary.

The off-and-on freeze of benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that serves about 42 million people, was among the most consequential effects of the record-setting shutdown. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans use SNAP to help buy groceries.

Lawmakers, advocates and judges all repeatedly called for urgency to restore the program to keep Americans from going hungry. Yet the dizzying back-and-forth continued, often leaving both states and families at a loss.

While the shutdown is likely to end this week, the legal fight continues over the responsibilities of the federal government, which funds SNAP, and the states that administer the program.

Here’s a timeline of events over 42 days since Congress failed to appropriate new funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1:

Sept. 30, 2025: On the brink of the current shutdown, the Trump U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a plan for how its various programs will be affected. It says SNAP benefits will continue to flow from a $6 billion contingency fund during a shutdown.

“Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds,” the document reads in part.

States Newsroom discloses the document is later removed from USDA’s website.

Oct. 1: Congress fails to appropriate any money for discretionary government programs. The federal government shuts down. USDA pays October SNAP benefits.

Oct. 10: USDA sends a letter to states telling them not to pay SNAP benefits for November, a reversal from its Sept. 30 plan.

Oct. 24: USDA tells states in a memo that it will not pay November SNAP benefits, even though it held billions in a contingency fund.  

Oct. 28: Democratic states sue USDA in Massachusetts federal court, seeking to force the department to pay for November benefits.

Oct. 30: Nonprofits, religious groups and municipal governments bring a similar suit in Rhode Island federal court. 

Oct. 31: In an initial hearing in the Rhode Island case, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. says he is ordering USDA to continue SNAP benefits in November.

In the Massachusetts case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani rules that withholding November benefits is illegal, but gives the administration until Nov. 3 to respond.

Nov. 1: McConnell issues a written ruling laying out two options for USDA: pay full benefits for November by Nov. 3 or partial benefits by Nov. 5.

Some SNAP recipients begin to miss benefit payments. The program administers benefits on a rolling basis throughout each month, so more people are affected every day the department is not authorizing benefits.

Nov. 3: In a filing in McConnell’s court, USDA says it will pay about half of November benefits. But it says the administrative difficulties of calculating partial benefits could take weeks or even months.

Nov. 4, just after 11 a.m. Eastern: President Donald Trump posts to Truth Social that SNAP benefits will not be paid until Democrats agree to reopen the government. At the White House press briefing in the afternoon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt walks back that post and says Trump was referring to future benefits.

Nov. 5, late: In a memo to states, USDA corrects a table for the amount of partial benefits households should receive based on income, size of household and other factors. USDA says the table fulfills its duty under McConnell’s Nov. 1 order to pay partial benefits by this date. 

Nov. 6: McConnell orders the USDA to pay full November benefits by the next day. His earlier order was clear that partial benefits must be paid by Nov. 5, he said. Because recipients did not receive their benefits, the government missed that deadline, and it must pay for the whole month, he says. He also notes Trump’s Truth Social post appeared to defy the order.

States, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon, begin to authorize full November benefits. 

Nov. 7, 8:53 a.m. Eastern: The department appeals McConnell’s order the day before to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nov. 7, midday: Despite its morning appeal, the USDA issues guidance to states greenlighting full November benefits. A USDA spokesperson says the department must comply with McConnell’s order.

Consistent with the USDA guidance, more states begin to authorize full November benefits.

Nov. 7, evening: The Trump administration asks the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay of the 1st Circuit and district court orders that it provide full November benefits that day.

Nov. 7, just before 10 p.m. Eastern: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson orders an administrative stay while the 1st Circuit appeal is pending. The order temporarily halts the lower courts’ order to provide benefits.

Nov. 8, late: Following the Supreme Court stay, USDA sends states a letter demanding they “immediately undo” any moves to provide full SNAP benefits. The letter threatens to cancel other federal funding for states that don’t comply. 

Nov. 9, late night: A 1st Circuit panel affirms McConnell’s order. The trial judge was within his right to order USDA pay full November benefits, the three-judge panel says.

Nov. 10: The Trump administration continues its Supreme Court appeal, even as the shutdown nears its end and the 1st Circuit has ruled on the appeal.

Talwani issues a restraining order on the Nov. 8 letter asking states to “undo” November benefit payments. At a hearing, she says USDA has created the confusion and that states were acting in line with court orders and the department’s own guidance.

The U.S. Senate approves a bill to reopen the government and fund SNAP, sending the measure to the House. 

Later this week: The U.S. House is expected to clear the Senate bill; Trump is expected to sign it. The Supreme Court could rule on the administration’s request to freeze the lower court orders. 

It is not clear when full November benefits will flow to households.

Text by Jacob Fischler/timeline graphic by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom.

A 'We Accept (Food Stamps)' sign hangs in the window of a grocery store on Oct. 31, 2025 in Miami, Florida.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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.

President Donald Trump and top administration officials have resisted calls to fund November SNAP benefits during the shutdown that began Oct. 1. They argue that because Congress had not appropriated any money for the program for the fiscal year that began that date, USDA lacked the legal authority to make payments. 

That position was a reversal from the first Trump administration’s 2019 guidance and a shutdown plan the department published Sept. 30, then deleted, and has sparked several court challenges.

About 42 million people, about 1 in 8 Americans, use SNAP. Monday was the 41st day of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Trump attorney seeks high court pause

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.

The Saturday Morning Market, in St. Petersburg, Florida, on April 14, 2012. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA)

Following a late Friday emergency ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Trump administration has instructed states that authorized full November nutrition assistance benefits to return a portion, another unprecedented reversal for a program that helps 42 million people afford groceries.

A Saturday memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said states should fund 65% of benefits for users of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, often called food stamps. 

Those that had authorized full payments in line with earlier administration guidance should “immediately undo” that action, according to the memo.

“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” the memo said. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025. Please advise the appropriate FNS Regional Office representative of steps taken to correct any actions taken that do not comply with this memorandum.”

President Donald Trump and top administration officials have said they cannot pay full SNAP benefits during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and instead, under court orders, are using a contingency fund to make partial payments.

Shutdown chaos surrounds SNAP

Saturday’s guidance from Patrick A. Penn, the department’s deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, marked the latest turnaround in a chaotic few days for the agency, states that administer SNAP and the millions of Americans who depend on it to afford food.

Penn wrote that, in light of the Supreme Court’s order pausing lower court rulings that USDA must pay full November benefits, the administration was returning to its position that SNAP benefits should be funded at 65%. 

States — including Wisconsin and Kansas — that issued full benefits did so under a Friday memo, also signed by Penn, that said states should authorize full payments for SNAP, consistent with a Thursday ruling in federal court.

Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon govs express dismay

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, in a late Friday statement expressed disappointment with the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court and noted the state had authorized full payments earlier in the day for all eligible Kansans.

“These Kansans, most of them children, seniors or people with disabilities, were struggling to put food on their plates,” she said. “Why the President would petition the highest court to deny food to hungry children is beyond me. It does nothing to advance his political agenda. It does not hurt his perceived enemies. It only hurts our most vulnerable and our reputation around the globe.”

In a Sunday statement, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, flatly refused to try to claw back any authorized benefits. The state acted in compliance with a court order, he said.

“After we did so, the Trump Administration assured Wisconsin and other states that they were actively working to implement full SNAP benefits for November and would ‘complete the processes necessary to make funds available,’” he said. “They have failed to do so to date.”

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said her state will not comply.

“Oregon acted lawfully, given the federal court’s directive and the communications with the USDA, and my decision to ensure SNAP benefits went out quickly was in direct alignment with my food emergency declaration,” said Kotek, a Democrat. “I am disgusted that President Trump has the audacity to take taxpayers’ money away from them when they are in crisis. I have a question for the President: What would he prefer to spend the money on over groceries for people in need? This is ridiculous, immoral, and Oregon will fight this every step of the way.”

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear about what this is —  the Trump administration is demanding that food assistance be taken away from the households that have already received it. They would rather go door to door, taking away people’s food, than do the right thing and fully fund SNAP for November so that struggling veterans, seniors, and children can keep food on the table. It is incomprehensible, incompetent and inconsistent with our values as Americans.” 

Court action

The earlier order, from U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island, told the department to use sources outside the contingency fund to make full November payments by Friday. The order was appealed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, acting on behalf of the high court, granted the administration’s request for an emergency stay on Friday night, speeding up the process for what Jackson said would then be an “expeditious” decision by the appeals court but also changing things yet again.

No longer, for the moment, required by a court order to pay full November benefits, the administration instructed states in the Saturday memo to have the vendors that process payments to the electronic benefit transfer cards withhold part of the month’s allotment.

“States must not transmit full benefit issuance files to EBT processors,” Penn wrote. “Instead, States must continue to process and load the partial issuance files that reflect the 35 percent reduction of maximum allotments detailed in the November 5 guidance.”

Shutdown negotiations

SNAP funding has been a key issue during the shutdown. 

In a plan published Sept. 30, the USDA said it would continue to pay for the roughly $9 billion per month program through its contingency fund. The administration reversed itself 10 days later, telling states there would be no SNAP available for November.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate bill filed Sunday would end the shutdown. It includes provisions to fully fund SNAP, the contingency fund and the $23 billion children nutrition programs fund that may be a source of emergency funding for SNAP if the shutdown persists.

Kansas Reflector Editor in Chief Sherman Smith, Wisconsin Examiner Editor in Chief Ruth Conniff and Oregon Capital Chronicle Editor in Chief Julia Shumway  contributed to this report.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked Friday night a lower court’s order that the Trump administration pay for a full month of food benefits, hours after some states began loading nutrition assistance funds on payment cards held by the 42 million Americans who use the program.

In a two-page filing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted the government’s request to pause a Thursday order from Rhode Island Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell while a lower appeals court hears the case. 

His order Thursday compelled the U.S. Department of Agriculture to transfer funds from other programs to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for November. The Trump administration had said the ongoing government shutdown meant it could not pay November SNAP benefits.

“The applicants assert that, without intervention from this Court, they will have to ‘transfer an estimated $4 billion by tonight’ to fund SNAP benefits through November,” Jackson, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote. 

A stay is needed to reach an “expeditious resolution,” she wrote.

Jackson’s order froze SNAP payments to states that the USDA had appeared to authorize earlier Friday before the administration appealed to the high court.

It was unclear Friday night what effect that might have on individual recipients’ electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, cards. A press release earlier Friday from California Gov. Gavin Newsom said some Californians had begun to see full benefits on their cards, following an order from a lower court.

High court challenge 

In a Friday evening brief to the Supreme Court that followed a day of conflicting messages from the administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the high court should step in to protect the executive branch’s power from what he characterized as unprecedented overreach by McConnell.

By demanding that the USDA transfer money from a $23 billion fund for child nutrition programs to pay for November SNAP benefits, McConnell substituted his judgment for the agency’s, a violation of the constitutional separation-of-powers doctrine, Sauer argued. 

The department’s decision to pay for partial November benefits, by using the roughly $5 billion remaining in a contingency fund, rather than by paying about $9 billion for a full month of benefits, was its decision to make and not reviewable by courts, Sauer said.

“USDA reasonably determined that the best course was to combine partial SNAP payments with stable funding for Child Nutrition Programs—versus jeopardize the latter to guarantee full payments with the former,” Sauer wrote. “The district court would have done otherwise. But it had no legal basis to ‘substitute its own policy judgment for that of the agency.’”

Confusion in states 

The lower court order — as well a midday Friday letter from the USDA to state SNAP administrators — had also led to confusion among states who started to demand SNAP funds in a way Sauer compared to a bank run.

Several states announced full funding would be available and began sending money to beneficiaries.

Immediately after McConnell’s order was published, Wisconsin demanded “100% of SNAP benefits,” Sauer wrote. Even though the USDA system rejected the file, the private-sector processor of the payment “moved forward, resulting in Wisconsin currently overdrawing its letter of credit by $20 million,” he said.

Kansas made a similar move. And some California SNAP users received their full benefits, according to Sauer’s brief.

16 million children on SNAP

McConnell on Thursday had ruled the department’s decision to withhold SNAP benefits arbitrary and capricious — the standard for judicial review of an executive branch action. 

The $23 billion fund could spare the $4 billion needed to make November SNAP benefits whole and still maintain its intended purpose well beyond the month, so there was no need to maintain that fund at that level, he wrote.

Instead, the decision “predictably magnifies harm and undermines the very purpose of the program it administers,” McConnell wrote.

While federal agencies are due discretion from courts, such a “poor” use of decision-making power must be remedied, he said.

“Contrary to what the Defendants claim, 29 million children who participate in the Child Nutrition Program are not at risk of immediately going hungry in the event of a transfer,” he said. “Instead, SNAP recipients—16 million of whom are children—will go hungry if they do not receive their SNAP benefits this month.”

‘Starve Peter to feed Paul’

But Sauer responded that was not McConnell’s call to make. 

The trial judge’s ruling improperly assumed that Congress would eventually replenish the child nutrition program fund, but the USDA was within its right to take a more cautious approach toward protecting the child nutrition funding, said the solicitor general.

“It obviously was not unlawful for the agency to see things differently—and refuse to starve Peter to feed Paul, by gambling school lunches tomorrow in exchange for more SNAP money today,” he wrote. “Indeed, that sort of hard tradeoff is precisely the sort of decision that Congress committed to agency discretion and placed beyond the reach of judges.”

While the USDA had not denied that it was able to move money to different priorities after Congress had appropriated it, the government did not have to do so, Sauer said.

Allowing McConnell’s ruling to stand would invite a stampede to litigation, the government maintained.

“If allowed to stand, this decision will metastasize and sow further shutdown chaos,” Sauer said. “Every beneficiary of a federal program could run into court, point to an agency’s general discretion to prioritize funding, and claim that failing to prioritize their chosen program was arbitrary and capricious.”

Trump social media post

Sauer also said McConnell read too much into Trump’s social media post this week that threatened to withhold SNAP funding for the duration of the shutdowns.

McConnell cited in his order the post, in which Trump said SNAP benefits would “be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” showed the true purpose of the USDA move was political leverage.

Sauer said that was improper.

“The court below had no basis to transfer of billions of dollars from school lunches to its preferred program based on its tendentious view of ‘the administration’s true motivations.’”

In a statement, Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group that is leading the litigation to force SNAP payments, said the group would continue to work to “secure benefits for the American people”

“The Trump-Vance administration continues to attempt — over and over — to take food out of the hands of families, seniors, workers, and children,” Perryman said. “And every time they tried, the courts told them what the law already makes clear: they cannot. American families should not be used as political props in a shutdown that this White House manufactured.”

Canceled flights are displayed on an arrivals board at San Francisco International Airport on Nov. 7, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The first flights affected by a new Federal Aviation Administration directive led to widespread delays and cancellations Friday.

The FAA will ramp up to a 10% reduction in flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports by Nov. 14, starting with a 4% reduction Friday. 

More than 1,000 flights had been canceled by 5 p.m. Eastern  Friday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com, compared with just more than 200 on Thursday. 

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced the plan Wednesday. The reductions would help ease the strain on air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1. 

Duffy said controllers were taking second jobs to make ends meet and were experiencing fatigue and stress, leading to safety concerns. 

Shutdown delays in D.C., Chicago, Atlanta and more

Seven airports on the list of 40 had ground delays Friday, with staffing shortages at 18 air traffic control towers triggering delays at others, according to an FAA advisory. 

Departures at Washington Reagan National Airport, just outside the nation’s capital in Northern Virginia, were averaging a four-hour delay Friday afternoon, according to FAA data. 

The airport led the nation with 73 cancellations Friday, according to FlightAware. Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Denver International and Dallas/Fort Worth airports were also in the top five for cancellations.

Duffy visited Washington Reagan National earlier in the day to check in with travelers and brief reporters. He said he couldn’t give an exact figure on the number of affected flights, but said he hoped the reduction in flights would help controllers miss less work.

“I don’t want to see the disruption,” he said. “I don’t want to see the delays. Now, there could be a benefit if I can get the controllers to come back to work.”

Duffy recommended Friday that travelers continue to book flights now, rather than waiting for the shutdown to end. He said in an ABC News interview that waiting to book a flight could put fliers in the position of paying higher prices.

Regional carriers 

Nate Vallier, a partner at Alaska Travel Desk, a travel agency, said in a Friday press release the cancellations appeared to mostly hit smaller regional carriers. 

“We’re seeing a lot of randomness in the cancellations, as a way to spread the pain per se,”  Vallier said. “But the majority of canceled flights so far are with regional jets, such as those flown by SkyWest, Horizon, and American Eagle’s Envoy Divisions.” 

Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks contributed to this report.

People sit in front of windows looking out on the tarmac at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch)

The 40 airports set to see a 10% reduction in flights during the government shutdown nearly matched the list of the nation’s busiest airports, according to a preliminary list seen by States Newsroom, potentially leading to thousands of flight cancellations across the country.

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would mean 3,300 canceled flights per day, according to Airports Council International-North America, the trade group for airports.

The Federal Aviation Administration had not released an official list of airports by early Thursday afternoon, but three sources familiar with the matter provided tables listing the proposed airports.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that the FAA would cut air traffic at 40 major airports starting Friday to help alleviate stress for air traffic controllers who have been working without pay since the federal government shut down on Oct 1.

The airports on the preliminary list are: 

• Anchorage, Alaska
• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Chicago Midway
• Chicago O’Hare
• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
• Dallas/Forth Worth International
• Dallas Love Field
• Denver
• Detroit
• Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, Florida
• Honolulu
• Houston George Bush Intercontinental
• Houston W.P. Hobby
• Indianapolis
• Las Vegas
• Louisville, Kentucky
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Minneapolis/St. Paul
• Memphis, Tennessee
• Newark, New Jersey
• New York LaGuardia International
• New York John F. Kennedy International
• Orlando, Florida
• Oakland, California
• Ontario, California
• Portland, Oregon
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Salt Lake City
• Seattle/Tacoma
• Teterboro, New Jersey
• Tampa, Florida
• Washington, D.C. Reagan National and Dulles International, both in Northern Virginia

Busy Nashville, Raleigh-Durham not on list

While there is significant overlap of the list with the nation’s busiest airports, there are some exceptions. 

The busiest passenger airport not included was in Nashville, Tennessee, the 28th-busiest airport in the country in 2024, according to Airports Council International-North America.

Austin, Texas; St. Louis; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Sacramento, California; New Orleans; Kansas City; and San Jose, California, were also among the 40 busiest airports that will not see reductions Friday.

Memphis, Anchorage and Louisville rank outside the top 40 for passenger traffic, but are the top three for cargo movement.

Oakland and Indianapolis ranked just outside the top 40 for passenger travel. Teterboro’s airport did not rank in the group’s top 50 busiest.

$327 million in daily economic output lost 

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would decrease economic output at airports by about $327 million daily, according to the council.

Because the reductions are to the nation’s busiest airports that serve as hubs for the major airlines, they will also affect airports that aren’t on the list but depend on flights to and from those hubs.

The group’s president and CEO, Kevin M. Burke, said in a statement that the group and its members had adapted to quickly changing conditions during the shutdown, but that they were “reaching a breaking point.”

“The current trajectory is unsustainable,” Burke said. “With the busy holiday season on the horizon, Congress and the administration must come together now to reopen the federal government with a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution, pay federal employees, and restore operational certainty for the millions of air travelers who take to the skies every day.”

Prioritizing safety

At a press conference Wednesday, Duffy said the decision was made to keep flying safe. He urged overworked air traffic controllers not to work second jobs, but was “not naive” that many would have to in order to pay their bills.

He said the agency’s decision was made to prevent any accidents that could result from overworked controllers, while assuring the flying public that commercial air travel remained extremely safe.

President Donald Trump was less explicit during an Oval Office appearance Thursday. 

“Fair question,” he said when asked by a reporter if flying remained safe. “Sean Duffy announced they’re cutting in certain areas 10%, and they want to make sure it’s 100% safe. That’s why they’re doing it.”

Dems call for shutdown end

Some Democratic lawmakers, who have blocked a bill to temporarily reopen the government at fiscal 2025 levels in an effort to force Republicans to negotiate an extension to tax credits for insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, renewed those calls in light of the FAA’s decision.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport sees a daily average of 60,000 passengers on 750 flights.

She called on Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to negotiate with her party on the expiring health insurance tax credits to reopen the government “so we don’t see the impacts like the ones at MSP.”

“The only path forward is through negotiating, so air traffic in the skies above Minnesota and the country can keep operating safely and at full capacity and our government can finally open up again,” she said.

House Transportation and Infrastructure ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington state called the Duffy move “drastic and unprecedented” and requested the FAA share data that went into the decision. 

He also called for an end to the shutdown to allow air traffic controllers to be paid.

“Shutting down parts of our National Airspace System is a dramatic and unprecedented step that demands more transparency,” he said. “The FAA must immediately share any safety risk assessment and related data that this decision is predicated on with Congress. If we want to resolve issues in the NAS, let us fix health care, open government and pay transportation and aviation safety workers.”

A sign in a convenience store along Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Oct. 28, 2025, advertises that it accepts SNAP benefits. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to pay roughly $9 billion for a full month of nutrition assistance benefits by the next day.

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, said the administration blew its chance to choose to pay only partial benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, when it failed to release funds by a Wednesday deadline.

He said a social media post by President Donald Trump showed the president sought to use hunger for political leverage during the government shutdown, which stretched into day 37 on Thursday.

Earlier, in a Friday oral order that he expanded in a Saturday written order, McConnell had said the government must either pay full benefits by Monday or partial benefits from a contingency fund by Wednesday. 

The government did neither, he said Thursday.

The administration had argued it was impossible to pay the benefits, which go to 42 million Americans, within a few days, saying that the USDA had never calculated partial benefits and that coordinating new payments for SNAP, a federally funded program administered by the states, was difficult. 

The administration quickly appealed the ruling to the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

“Today is a major victory for 42 million people in America. The court could not be more clear – the Trump-Vance administration must stop playing politics with people’s lives by delaying SNAP payments they are obligated to issue,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, co-counsel for the coalition challenging the administration.

‘USDA cannot now cry’

But McConnell said the department created the problem, in part by failing to prepare for it far earlier. USDA was obligated to spend from a contingency fund to ensure SNAP benefits flowed into November uninterrupted, he said. 

“USDA did not do so,” he said. “Even when Nov. 1 came, USDA refused to use the congressionally mandated contingency funds. USDA cannot now cry that it cannot get timely payments to beneficiaries for weeks or months because states are not prepared to make partial payments.

“USDA arbitrarily and capriciously created this problem by ignoring the congressionally mandated contingency funds and failing to timely notify the states.”

McConnell also pointed to Trump’s post on Truth Social on Tuesday that indicated he would not authorize payments consistent with the judge’s order until Democrats agreed to his terms to end the government shutdown.

“The day before the compliance was ordered, the president stated his intent to defy the court order when he said, ‘SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens,’” McConnell said Thursday.

Child nutrition funding suggested

The USDA had said it would pay only partial November benefits from a contingency fund holding about $4.5 billion, rather than tap into other money at its disposal, including a $23 billion fund for child nutrition programs.

The coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the administration to pay SNAP benefits for November has argued the court should force USDA to pay full benefits for November. 

In addition to the missed Wednesday deadline, the move violated a fundamental administrative law requiring federal agencies not to make arbitrary and capricious decisions, Kristin Bateman of the Democracy Forward Foundation, which is representing the groups, said Thursday.

The child nutrition program would not need its billions of dollars until June, she said, meaning that transferring funds for SNAP would only actually hurt the child nutrition program if the shutdown persists until then.

“A decision on such a highly unlikely set of events is not reasoned decision-making,” Bateman said. “It’s particularly unreasonable because the defendants have not explained why they would choose to let 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, go hungry now in order to guard against the extreme outside chance that come June, there won’t be enough money to fund child nutrition programs.”

McConnell agreed that invoking the child nutrition fund was “entirely pretextual,” which was demonstrated in part by Trump’s post and other statements by administration officials.

“The defendants’ stated desire to conserve funding for the child nutrition programs is entirely pretextual, given the numerous statements made in recent weeks by the president and his administration officials who admit to withholding full SNAP benefits for political reasons,” he said.

McConnell also noted that the case should be resolved as soon as possible to help provide food to hungry people or “needless suffering will occur.”

‘A state problem’

Tyler Becker, who argued on behalf of the USDA, said the department had done its part by making available to states a table showing how they should allocate partial November benefits for households of differing circumstances.

SNAP is a complex program, requiring coordination between the federal government and all 50 states, each of which has a different system for distributing benefits.

“The government did make the payments, is making the payments to the states,” he said. “That’s all the government does in the SNAP program.”

He added that the government had shown earlier in the case some of the administrative difficulties of paying partial benefits.

In a separate case in Massachusetts federal court, some states said they could process the benefits immediately, while others cannot.

“This is a state problem,” he said.

But McConnell cut him off shortly after, saying the federal government was responsible for ensuring people got their SNAP benefits.

“The problem that the government identified needed to be resolved one way or the other by Wednesday,” he said. “And if it wasn’t resolved by Wednesday, then you had to make the full payments, because that’s the only way we could get money to people immediately and alleviate the irreparable harm, whether you could or couldn’t do anything about that.”

In a Sept. 30 contingency plan about how to proceed during a government shutdown, the USDA itself said it would pay for continuing benefits through the contingency fund, which at the time held $6 billion. The administration later reversed that plan and said it could not tap the contingency fund.

In the Massachusetts case, which was brought by 25 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, the states argued Thursday that confusion stemming from a miscalculation the USDA made in determining November partial benefits was a reason to force the administration to pay for a full month.

USDA corrects miscalculation

The hearing followed a late Wednesday night filing from the USDA correcting an error it made in calculating the amounts beneficiaries would receive under its plan for partial payments. 

The department said it will reduce the largest monthly food assistance payments by about 35% in November, down from a 50% cut the department initially estimated.

USDA miscalculated how to adjust benefit payments for SNAP to account for a lack of full funding during the government shutdown, a department official said in a filing to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island. 

The formula the government initially used and sent to states Tuesday would have resulted in about a 50% cut to the maximum monthly benefits, and left some households without benefits. 

SNAP pays benefits on a sliding scale depending on the size of a household, the household’s income and other expenses such as housing. By cutting the maximum benefit by one-half, the department would have spent about $3 billion from a SNAP contingency fund instead of the full $4.65 billion in the fund, which is what the court ordered it to spend.

The mixup created confusion for state administrators, the states in the Massachusetts litigation said.

“The fact they have been asked to suddenly shift on a dime yet again as a result of these entirely new tables, causing further chaos and delay, underscores that USDA’s approach here is untenable and unlawful,” the states wrote in a Thursday brief.

The error was first reported to McConnell by the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the government to pay SNAP benefits this month. 

Think tank discovers discrepancy 

An analysis submitted by Sharon Parrott, a former White House budget officer who now leads the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, showed that the table the department submitted to the court and sent to states on Tuesday would fall short of the court’s order to spend the entire contingency fund.

The groups said the department’s error was another reason the court should compel the government to transfer funds to pay out full benefits for November.

“Defendants’ approach means that only around $3 billion—out of the $4.65 billion Defendants have said is available—will be spent on SNAP benefits in November, leaving more than $1.5 billion in contingency funds unspent,” they wrote in a Wednesday brief. “Defendants opted for partial (and delayed) SNAP payments, but even then, did not manage to do that correctly.”

The department said in its filing later Wednesday that it independently discovered its miscalculation and worked to fix it before Parrott’s declaration hit the court docket.

“Defendants realized this error and worked to issue new guidance and tables as soon as it was discovered, not in response to Plaintiffs’ notice filed earlier this evening,” USDA’s brief said.

A plane prepares to land at Newark Liberty International Airport. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday the Federal Aviation Administration would restrict air travel in 40 “high-traffic” areas of the country to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who have been working without a paycheck since Oct. 1. 

The cutbacks will start Friday, Duffy said at an afternoon press conference. 

He and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said they would share more details, including which airports would be affected, Thursday. 

The officials emphasized the measure was proactive to prevent a safety failure, and they said air travel remained extremely safe.

“We’re noticing that there’s additional pressure that’s building in the system,” Duffy said. “Our priority is to make sure that you’re safe.”

Duffy did not specify the locations that will see a reduction in air traffic, but said the decisions were based on data of the locations where such pressure is increasing.

While the administration has so far avoided large-scale travel problems during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1, Duffy and Bedford said they were seeing strain on the air traffic controllers. 

Air traffic controllers are considered exempt federal employees, meaning they must work, but are not paid, during the shutdown. Some are taking second jobs to make ends meet, leading to fatigue, Duffy said. 

Duffy said the restrictions would likely lead to more cancellations, which he said he was “concerned about,” but decided to prioritize safety.

“We had a gut check of, what is our job?” he said. “Is it to make sure there’s minimal delays or minimal cancellations, or is our job to make sure we make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe? That is our job, is safety.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom looks on during an election night gathering at the California Democrats' headquarters on Nov. 4, 2025 in Sacramento. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democrats’ sweep of the biggest races in Tuesday’s off-year elections, including a California ballot measure to redraw that state’s congressional lines to give the party up to five more seats in the U.S. House, gave the party new confidence heading into the midterm elections next year.

Democrats proclaimed the performances of Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani showed voters’ rejection of President Donald Trump. 

“The election results were not vague,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday. “They were not unclear. They were a lightning bolt: Trump, America doesn’t like what you’re doing. Change course.”

Republicans won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress one year ago, leaving Democrats without a clear leader or agenda at the national level. 

Tuesday’s results helped clarify for the party that a focus on economic issues was a winning message that Democrats could carry into the midterms.

Those messengers included Sherrill and Spanberger on the one end of the party’s ideological spectrum, and the Democratic Socialist Mamdani on the other. All three shared a campaign message centered on addressing the cost of living.

More remaps 

Effective campaigning may not be the only path Democrats are expected to take as they seek to regain power at the federal level. A wing of the party led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing other Democratic governors to redraw congressional lines to be more favorable to them.

The new California map is likely to be tied up in courts, at least in the short term. California Republicans sued in federal court Wednesday morning to block it. 

Republicans, meanwhile, sought to downplay the importance of elections in largely Democratic areas while attempting to make Mamdani the new face of Democrats nationally.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday there were “no surprises” in the previous day’s elections. 

“What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue,” the Louisiana Republican said. “We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results — off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come.” 

The wins in Tuesday’s elections galvanized congressional Democrats to restart negotiations to end the government shutdown on their terms, with Democratic leaders of the House and Senate sending Trump a three-sentence letter “to demand” a meeting to negotiate an end to the longest government shutdown in history.

Control of Congress

Democrats said Wednesday the results showed they were within striking distance of regaining majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Democrats would have to net four seats in the House and the Senate to win control of a respective chamber.

Schumer said Tuesday’s results showed that was possible in the Senate.

“The election showed that Democrats’ control of the Senate is much closer than the people and the prognosticators realize,” Schumer said. “The more Republicans double down on raising costs and bowing down to Trump, the more their Senate majority is at risk.”

Vice President JD Vance was dismissive of Democratic gains Wednesday, saying on social media it was “idiotic to overreact to a couple elections in blue states” and praising Republican organizing efforts.

But Democratic campaign officials said Wednesday that analysis belied wins lower on the ballot, including flipping 13 Virginia House of Delegates seats, half of which Republicans held for decades, and statewide wins for low-profile offices in the key swing states of Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin responded to Vance’s claim during a press call.

“That’s bullsh—,” he said. “We won all over the country in red counties and purple counties and in blue counties. The reality is, is this was a huge rejection of the Trump extremism and an embrace of the hopeful, positive message that Democrats are offering up.”

Martin and other Democrats praised Tuesday’s winners for relentlessly focusing on economic issues, and said Democratic candidates in 2026 would keep that focus.

Redistricting arms race

Newsom, the chief backer of the referendum to temporarily revoke power from the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, told other Democratic governors to take similar measures to enhance the party’s chances of winning a U.S. House majority.

“We need Virginia … we need Maryland … we need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado — we need to see other states meet this moment head-on as well,” Newsom said in a fundraising email Wednesday.

Martin characterized the passage of the California referendum, known as Proposition 50, as a reaction to Republican states’ moves to redraw their lines. 

“What happened in Prop 50 was the counterpunch to level the playing field,” Martin said. 

He indicated Democratic states would be happy to leave congressional districts as they are, but said the party would not hesitate to respond to GOP gerrymanders.

“Now, they want to keep doing it? Guess what: This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party,” Martin said. “We will meet you in every single state that you decide to try to steal more seats. We’re going to meet you in other states. We are not going to play with one hand behind our back. We’re not going to roll over. We are going to meet you, fire with fire.” 

Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the U.S. House Republican campaign organization, predicted in a statement that efforts to redraw congressional districts would not allow Democrats to win a majority in that chamber. 

“No matter how Democrats redraw the lines to satisfy Gavin Newsom’s power grab, they can’t redraw their record of failure, and that’s why they will fail to take the House majority,” Hudson said. “Even under this new map, Republicans have clear opportunities to flip seats because Californians are fed up with Democrat chaos. We will continue to compete and win because our candidates are stronger, our message is resonating, and Californians are tired of being ignored.”

Trump zeroes in on filibuster 

At a Wednesday breakfast with GOP senators, Trump had another idea for solidifying GOP power, saying the Senate needs to abolish the filibuster in order to end the shutdown and enact GOP policy while the party is still in the majority. 

Senate rules require at least 60 senators to advance a bill past the filibuster. Republicans’ narrow 53-seat majority has created obstacles in moving forward their agenda — including the House-passed stopgap spending bill to keep the government open that’s now failed more than a dozen times. 

“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that’s terminate the filibuster,” Trump said at the breakfast. “It’s the only way you can do it, and if you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape — we won’t pass any legislation.” 

He added: “We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it’ll be impossible to beat us.” 

In a social media post Tuesday night, Trump said pollsters attributed Republicans’ election losses to his name not being on the ballot along with the ongoing shutdown.

Trump wrote in a separate post earlier Tuesday that “the Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!).” 

GOP senators tepid

However, Trump’s push to do away with the filibuster has garnered little enthusiasm from GOP senators, including Majority Leader John Thune. 

The South Dakota Republican reiterated on Wednesday that “there are not the votes there,” telling reporters that “the main thing we need to be focused on right now, in my view, is get the government opened up again.” 

But some GOP senators appear to be on board with the idea, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who said he expressed his support for eliminating the filibuster during the breakfast.

“President Trump made a very convincing case,” Johnson told reporters. “We know the minute Democrats get (a) majority in the Senate, they’re going to get rid of the filibuster.” 

“We better beat them to the punch and act while we can pass legislation for the benefit of the American public,” he added.  

Sen. Jim Justice said that though he’s not in favor of getting rid of the filibuster, he wants to support Trump and would like the shutdown to end. 

“I mean, because you got a lot of people that are really hurting, that’s all there is to it, and if it’s the only option to stop this nonsense, then I would support,” the West Virginia Republican said. 

Sen. John Kennedy remained firm in his position, telling reporters that “the role of the senator is not just to advance good ideas, the role of the senator is to kill bad ideas, and when you’re in the minority — we’re not now, but we could be someday — it’s important to have a filibuster.” 

The Louisiana Republican noted that “we killed a lot of (former) President Biden’s goofy ideas through a filibuster, and someday the shoe will be on the other foot, and that’s why I’ve always supported the filibuster.” 

Republicans lash Democrats to Mamdani

Speaker Johnson and fellow House Republican leaders also sought to tie Mamdani to the Democratic Party. 

Johnson said Mamdani “is truly a committed Marxist, and the results of that race tell you everything you need to know about where the Democrats in their party are headed,” adding that “from the backbench to their leadership, Democrats have fallen in line behind the socialist candidates.” 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana echoed that “when the city of New York elected Zohran Mamdani, he became the new leader of the Democrat(ic) Party.” 

Scalise said that while the Democratic Party “had no problem making the shift to socialism — which they embraced wholeheartedly, led by Hakeem Jeffries and others here — America, mainstream Americans, Blue Dog Democrats across America, have not embraced socialism.” 

House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan said “over the past year, Democrats have wandered around with no plan, no vision and no leader, but today, they finally found their leader — the radical communist mayor(-elect) of New York City, a self-proclaimed communist who wants Americans to pay for global health care.” 

She added: “Well, you wanted it. You got it: A communist who wants the government to own grocery stores and a communist who wants the government to tell you what to do with your hard-earned money.” 

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report 

President George W. Bush, right, and the late Vice President Dick Cheney in the Oval Office on Jan. 24, 2002. (Photo from National Archives)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect and chief practitioner of neoconservative foreign policy who was an influential figure among a generation of Republicans, died Monday.

Cheney died at 84 of complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family published by several news outlets.

Cheney’s decades in Washington included stints as White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford; as Wyoming’s U.S. House member from 1979 to 1989; and as secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. 

Cheney then served as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009.

Cheney was best known for pursuing an aggressive foreign policy to protect American interests, including as a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That war, in which nearly 5,000 U.S. servicemembers and untold Iraqis died over eight years, without showing that the ruling Saddam Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction or had any ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, turned public opinion against neoconservatives.

Cheney kept a relatively low profile after leaving office, other than to endorse his daughter Liz Cheney for the U.S. House seat he once held. He underwent a heart transplant in 2012 after a fifth heart attack.

Cheney rift with Trump

President Donald Trump, in his first campaign for the White House, criticized the Iraq War and the George W. Bush administration, creating a rift within the GOP in which Trump ultimately prevailed.

Trump’s feud with the Cheneys later intensified while Liz Cheney held the U.S. House seat from Wyoming. 

After voting for Trump twice, Liz Cheney consistently strongly criticized Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and later served as vice chair of the House committee investigating that matter.

The younger Cheney’s involvement with that probe resulted in her ouster from House Republican leadership and, eventually, her House seat itself.

In 2022, Dick Cheney, who had mostly retired from public life, appeared in an ad for his daughter’s reelection campaign. 

Wearing a large cowboy hat and speaking directly to camera, he called Trump a coward who “tried to steal the last election, using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters have rejected him.”

“He lost his election, and he lost big,” Cheney said. “I know it. He knows it. Deep down, I think most Republicans know it.”

In the 2024 election, both Liz and Dick Cheney endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris against Trump.

Trump did not release an official statement on Cheney’s death Tuesday. 

At a White House press briefing Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “aware” of Cheney’s passing and White House flags had been lowered to half-staff, in accordance with law. 

She did not answer questions about Trump’s involvement in funeral arrangements or if he’d spoken to Cheney family members.

Praise for Cheney’s patriotism

Most other high-ranking officials across party lines in the nation’s capital sent well-wishes to the Cheney family and recognized the former vice president as an influential figure.

“Dick was a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges,” George W. Bush wrote in a statement. “I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best. He held to his convictions and prioritized the freedom and security of the American people. For those two terms in office, and throughout his remarkable career, Dick Cheney’s service always reflected credit on the country he loved.”

President Joe Biden praised Cheney’s devotion to public service and his family.

“Guided by a strong set of conservative values, Dick Cheney devoted his life to public service,” he wrote on X. “While we didn’t agree on much, he believed, as I do, that family is the beginning, middle, and end.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also praised Cheney’s willingness to oppose Trump.

“Dick Cheney was a patriotic American who loved his country,” she wrote. “While we strongly disagreed on most policy issues, his patriotism was clear when he returned to the House Floor to commemorate the first anniversary of January 6th. We all saw then how proud Vice President Cheney was to see his daughter, Liz, follow in her father’s footsteps to serve in the House with courage and integrity.”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune commended Cheney in a Tuesday floor speech, saying he “played a key role in shaping policy in many of the most consequential issues of his day.” 

“Dick Cheney was a lifelong public servant who believed very deeply in our country and brought his considerable knowledge and intelligence to its service,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, paid tribute to Cheney’s public service at the start of his daily press conference.

“Scripture is very clear: We give honor where honor is due,” Johnson said. “As you know, Dick Cheney served as vice president, he served as a secretary of Defense. He served as a congressman, of course, in Wyoming, and as the youngest chief of staff to any president in the history of the country. And so the honor is certainly due to him.”

Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican who is the longest-serving member of Wyoming’s congressional delegation, said in a social media post the state “mourns the passing of Vice President Dick Cheney.”

“Dick’s career has few peers in American life,” Barrasso wrote. “His unflinching leadership shaped many of the biggest moments in domestic and U.S. foreign policy for decades. Dick will be remembered as a towering figure who helped guide the course of history in Wyoming, the United States, and around the world.”

Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.

A store displays a sign accepting Electronic Benefits Transfer, or EBT, cards for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program purchases for groceries on Oct. 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump backtracked Tuesday on a pledge by his administration in court filings to partially fund November food assistance during the government shutdown, posting on social media that benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said later Tuesday that Trump was referring to future uses of a food assistance contingency fund and that the administration was complying with the court order, though that description did not match Trump’s post.

Trump’s declaration appeared to have little effect on the federal court case over food aid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture wrote in a court filing late Tuesday it would continue with a plan to provide partial November payments. 

The benefits usually are provided to some 42 million Americans and, at the moment, are shut off pending the partial payments. 

Before Trump’s post Tuesday, a coalition of cities and nonprofits suing the USDA said the delayed partial payments were not enough.

The coalition that filed suit, led by the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, just prior to Trump’s social media post Tuesday asked a Rhode Island federal court to compel the government to pay full benefits. 

The USDA’s promise Monday that it would provide partial payments to households who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, from a roughly $4.5 billion contingency fund, was an insufficient response to a court order, the groups said.

USDA officials said Monday they could not complete partial payments for November benefits by Chief District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr.’s deadline of Wednesday, and warned it could take several months for beneficiaries to receive the funding because of the administrative difficulties of recalculating and processing partial benefits.

The groups suing said Tuesday that if paying partial benefits created such delays, McConnell should force the government to pay full benefits instead.

“If Defendants cannot comply with the Court’s command to expeditiously resolve the hurdles to making ‘timely’ partial payments, then that is a problem of their own making,” the groups wrote. 

“They chose—unlawfully and contrary to past agency precedent and guidance—to withhold all funding for SNAP,” they continued. “That this unlawful decision may have made it impossible for them to clear the administrative hurdles now is no excuse. They still have a straightforward path to meeting the directives in the Court’s order.”

The department could legally and relatively easily tap into a separate child nutrition program account that holds $23 billion, the groups said. That would more than cover the $9 billion needed for a month of SNAP benefits, they said. 

McConnell ordered the government to respond to the challengers’ motion, and set a hearing on the issue for Thursday afternoon. 

Trump changes course

Within an hour of the groups’ filing, Trump, who had said he was eager to restore SNAP benefits, responded on social media with his defiant message that he would only release any SNAP funding once Democrats in Congress agreed to end the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Trump had said Friday he told government lawyers to seek clarification on how the government could legally send out benefits during the shutdown, adding he did not want Americans to go hungry.

“If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding,” he wrote Oct. 31, following an oral order by McConnell.

McConnell issued a written order the next day that benefits be provided either in full by Monday or partially by Wednesday. 

The USDA responded Monday that it would provide partial benefits from the contingency fund that held about half of a month’s worth of benefits, but that the process could take weeks or even months for states to recalibrate the amount each beneficiary would receive and to process those payments.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins echoed that commitment just before the challengers submitted their motion to compel full payments.

“This morning, @USDA sent SNAP guidance to States,” Rollins wrote on X. “My team stands by to offer immediate technical assistance. This will be a cumbersome process, including revised eligibility systems, State notification procedures, and ultimately, delayed benefits for weeks, but we will help States navigate those challenges.”

Spokespeople for the USDA did not return messages seeking an explanation for the course change Tuesday morning.

At the White House press briefing Tuesday afternoon, Leavitt said she had just spoken with Trump and sought to clarify his statement.

“We are digging into a contingency fund,” she said. “The president doesn’t want to tap into this fund in the future and that’s what he was referring to.” 

Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group representing the groups challenging the administration, said in a Tuesday post to social media that Trump’s post was “immoral” and that the group would make use of it.

“See you in court,” Perryman said.

Shutdown lingers

The dispute over SNAP benefits stems from the lapse in government funding that began when Congress failed to appropriate money for federal programs by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

The USDA said in a plan published just ahead of the shutdown — and since deleted — that it would use the contingency fund, which then held $6 billion, to cover SNAP benefits if needed.

But the department reversed itself within weeks, telling states in an Oct. 10 letter that benefits would not be paid in November if the government remained shut down on the first of the month.

Members of each party have blamed the other for the lack of SNAP benefits. 

Democrats have demanded the administration reshuffle funds to cover the program, as it has with other federal funding during the shutdown, while Republicans have called on Democrats to approve a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government at fiscal 2025 spending levels.

Democrats in Congress have blocked Republicans’ “clean” continuing resolution to reopen the government in a bid to force negotiations on expiring tax credits for people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

As of Tuesday, the parties showed little sign of softening their positions.

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

A sign in a convenience store along Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, advertises that it accepts SNAP benefits. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay about half of November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, though benefits could take months to flow to recipients, the department said Monday in a brief to a federal court in Rhode Island.

A four-page report from the USDA answered U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.’s order that President Donald Trump’s administration pay at least a portion of benefits to the 42 million people who receive assistance through the program by the end of Wednesday, despite the government shutdown.

The USDA action does not address what would happen if the shutdown stretches beyond November.

Leading Democrats in Congress blasted the administration’s decision to pay only part of the month’s benefits, saying Trump was willfully denying food assistance to needy Americans.  “Providing partial benefits is not enough, is not compliant with the law, and it’s particularly cruel of Trump with the Thanksgiving season around the corner,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. 

McConnell on Saturday laid out two options for the administration: pay for partial benefits by the end of Wednesday through a contingency fund which currently has about $4.65 billion available, or pay for a full month of benefits by tapping other reserve sources such as the child nutrition program by the end of Monday. 

USDA opted to use the contingency fund, giving the department until the end of Wednesday to pay out benefits. 

But a declaration from Patrick A. Penn, USDA’s deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, said the administrative hurdles in calculating and delivering a half-month’s portion of benefits could take “anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”

The department was complying with McConnell’s order by starting the process of resuming payments Monday, according to the status report signed by U.S. Justice Department officials.

USDA “will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today by generating the table required for States to calculate the benefits available for each eligible household in that State,” they said. “USDA will therefore have made the necessary funds available and have authorized the States to begin disbursements once the table is issued.”

Delayed SNAP benefits in shutdown

McConnell’s order acknowledged that calculating reduced benefits would take the government some time, which he explained was why he gave USDA until Wednesday if the department chose that path.

But Penn said Monday that was not nearly enough time, in part due to some states’ outdated systems for processing benefits.

The federal government would provide states with updated tables for benefits at the partial funding level by Monday, he said. States will then need to send updated files to the vendors that process benefits and add them to beneficiaries’ debit-like EBT cards to be spent on groceries.

Monday marked the 34th day of the federal government shutdown, which began Oct. 1 when Congress failed to appropriate money for federal programs or pass a stopgap spending bill. 

The U.S. Senate was expected to hold another procedural vote to move forward the House-passed GOP stopgap bill that would fund the government at fiscal 2025 levels until Nov. 21. 

Democrats have voted against that measure in a bid to force negotiations on expiring tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

On Tuesday, the funding lapse will tie for the longest shutdown in history, which took place between 2018 and 2019. 

Contingency fund dispute

Leading up to the end of October, the administration had warned it could not pay SNAP benefits for this month amid the shutdown, saying it was legally forbidden from using the contingency fund that was supposed to be for natural disasters and similar emergencies.

But two federal judges ruled Oct. 31 that USDA not only could use the fund, but was obligated to in order to keep SNAP benefits flowing.

Saturday marked the first lapse in benefit payments in the modern history of the program that dates to part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty agenda.

Lawmakers, advocates and SNAP experts said users of the program would see a delay in November benefits as the administration worked to restart it.

The administration’s insistence it could not use its contingency fund, originally appropriated by Congress at $6 billion, was a reversal from a Sept. 30 USDA plan on how to operate in a shutdown, which explicitly called for use of the fund to keep issuing benefits.

A month of SNAP benefits costs the federal government about $9 billion.

While USDA would not use the contingency fund to pay for regular benefits, it did spend about $750 million of the original $6 billion for other uses in October, according to a Monday declaration to the court by Penn.

The department spent about $450 million for state administrative expenses and $300 million for block grants to Puerto Rico and American Samoa, Penn wrote.

The department would again allocate $450 million for administrative expenses in November, and $150 million for the block grants to territories, he added.

That left $4.65 billion available for November benefits, Penn wrote. 

No use of child nutrition funds

Penn also explained USDA’s decision not to use a fund for a child nutrition program to cover shortfall for SNAP benefits.

The administration wanted to keep that fund fully stocked, he said.

“Child Nutrition Program funds are not a contingency fund for SNAP,” he said. “Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances.” 

The child nutrition program funds school meals, summer meals for children and summer EBT benefits for low-income families with children. The school lunch program alone serves about 29 million children per day, Penn said.

Democrats call USDA plan ‘not acceptable’

Democrats expressed dismay that the administration opted not to fully fund November benefits.

“Just now paying the bare minimum to partially fund SNAP is not enough, and it is not acceptable,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state wrote in a social media post Monday.

“Trump should immediately work to fully fund benefits under the law,” added Murray, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations panel, said “this was entirely avoidable,” noting that Trump “chose to hold hungry children, seniors, and veterans hostage in a selfish and cruel attempt to gain political advantage.” 

“Now, only partial benefits will be sent out late, and families will go hungry, while this administration continues to host lavish parties for their billionaire donors and political allies,” the Connecticut Democrat said.

She added that “we are in this situation because of a lack of political will on the part of the Trump administration” and urged USDA “to put politics aside and use the money they have available to ensure families do not go hungry.”

Speaker Johnson defends Trump

At a press conference Monday, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson continued to defend Trump’s handling of the SNAP payments.

The president is “desperate for SNAP benefits to flow to the American citizens who desperately rely upon it,” Johnson said.

The Louisiana Republican echoed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ Friday claim that sought to justify her agency’s refusal to tap into the contingency fund to pay for SNAP. 

“The way we always understood it was: The contingency fund could not be used legally if the underlying fund was suspended,” Johnson said. 

He blamed congressional Democrats for voting against the stopgap spending bill and noted that two judges, McConnell and Indira Talwani in Massachusetts federal court, who separately ordered payments resume, were appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

Talwani ruled Friday that the USDA plan to pause SNAP was illegal — but gave the Trump administration until Monday to respond to her finding before she decides on a motion to force the benefits be paid despite the ongoing government shutdown.

Johnson also acknowledged the complex logistics of releasing the money to states. 

“So, it’s not as easy as hitting go send on a computer — you gotta go through and recalculate partial payments to the 42 million recipients of the program,” Johnson said. “That puts a huge burden on states and on the feds to try to figure that out in short order.”

Boxes of sugary cereal fill a store's shelves on April 16, 2025, in Miami, Florida.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Boston ruled Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plan to pause a food assistance program for 42 million people was illegal — but gave the Trump administration until Monday to respond to her finding before she decides on a motion to force the benefits be paid despite the ongoing government shutdown.

At nearly the same time Friday, a Rhode Island federal judge in a similar case brought by cities and nonprofit groups ordered USDA to continue payments and granted a request for a temporary restraining order.

However, experts and a key member of Congress said that some SNAP recipients still may see delays in their benefits because changes in administration from the federal government to states to vendors take time. 

There was also no immediate word from USDA on how it will implement the judicial orders, while the administration sought guidance from the courts.

In a social media post late Friday, President Donald Trump said administration lawyers believed the funds could not legally be paid and that he needed clarification about how to legally distribute SNAP benefits.

In Massachusetts, in a Friday afternoon order, District Court of Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani said she would continue to take “under advisement” a coalition of Democratic states’ request to force the release of funds from a contingency account holding about $6 billion.

Her ruling came a day before a cutoff of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits to low-income households.

Because Congress is locked in a stalemate over a stopgap spending bill and did not appropriate money for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, administration officials say the program cannot provide federal funds beginning Saturday. In states, SNAP benefits are loaded onto cards on varying dates, but the cutoff would be effective for November benefits.

Talwani, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, called the administration’s conclusion it can’t provide SNAP funding “erroneous,” and said the reserve fund was sufficient for SNAP benefits to flow to states and the vendors that add money to debit-like cards issued to the program’s beneficiaries that are used to purchase groceries. 

The law creating the program mandated that benefits continue, she said.

“Defendants are statutorily mandated to use the previously appropriated SNAP contingency reserve when necessary and also have discretion to use other previously appropriated funds,” Talwani wrote.

Talwani ordered the administration to say by Monday whether it would provide at least partial benefits for November.

Trump seeks clarification

Trump on social media said that he would be happy to see the funding go out and blamed Democrats for the monthlong shutdown.

“I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible,” Trump wrote. “It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed through the monthly payment date and, even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out.”

The government filed a brief in the Rhode Island case asking the judge in that case to clarify how his order could legally be carried out.

Earlier Friday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was noncommittal when asked if the department would comply with an order to resume benefits, according to CNN.

Spokespeople for the Department of Justice, which is representing the administration in the case, did not return messages seeking comment Friday.

The 25 states that sued were Massachusetts, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, Wisconsin Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The District of Columbia also sued. 

Contingency fund can’t flow in shutdown, USDA chief says

At a press conference with U.S. House Republicans earlier Friday, Rollins said it was “a lie” that the contingency fund could be used to provide benefits.

“There is a contingency fund at USDA, but that contingency fund, by the way, doesn’t even cover, I think, half of the $9.2 billion that would be required for November SNAP,” she said. “But it is only allowed to flow if the underlying program is funded. It’s called a contingency fund, and by law, a contingency fund can only flow when the underlying fund is flowing.”

The judges authoring Friday’s court orders disagreed with Rollins’ argument, which was also at odds with a shutdown plan her own department published on Sept. 30 before quietly deleting it sometime in October. The plan called for SNAP benefits to continue during a shutdown because the contingency fund existed.

“Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds,” the Sept. 30 plan said.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said benefit payments “will likely be delayed by several days or more” and blamed the situation on the administration’s refusal to spend from the contingency fund.

“The administration has chosen to hold hungry families hostage in their partisan political games,” she said in a statement. “It is cruel. It is shameful. And as federal judges in two states have now affirmed, it is illegal.”

Rhode Island case

In Rhode Island, where the judge granted a temporary restraining order, the advocacy group Democracy Forward, which was among those bringing the suit, praised the move.

“A federal court today granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful effort to halt the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the ongoing government shutdown,” the group said. “The decision ensures that millions of children, seniors, veterans, and families will continue to receive essential food assistance while the case proceeds.”

The judge in that case, John James McConnell Jr., said the administration’s actions violated a key federal administrative law against arbitrary and capricious executive action and federal spending laws “by disregarding Congress’s direction that SNAP must continue operating,” Democracy Forward said.

McConnell also was appointed by Obama.

Delays in benefits likely

Friday’s orders will likely not stop some SNAP benefits from at least being delayed, according to Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director for state-federal affairs at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Even if the Trump administration immediately complied with McConnell’s order that benefits must be released, the process of moving money from the U.S. Treasury to states to vendors to beneficiaries takes time.

“Under the best of circumstances… it’s not a switch that can be flipped on once USDA decides to release funds,” Kallins, whose organization coordinates and advocates for bipartisan state lawmakers in every state, said.

States generally release SNAP funds to beneficiaries on a staggered basis, meaning that different beneficiaries receive their allotments on different days of the month. 

With the situation unresolved a day before the new benefits month begins, some are certain to see at least delays in benefits, Kallins said.

“For people who get their allotments in the beginning of the month, there’s definitely going to… be a delay here,” she said.

Additionally, if USDA were to release money only from the contingency fund, it could take states time to determine how to distribute prorated benefits.

Congress no closer to resolution

On Capitol Hill, the parties appeared no closer Friday to reaching an agreement as the government shutdown stretched into its second month.

House Republicans continued to blame Democrats for the standstill, urging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to get his caucus behind the House-passed GOP measure to reopen the government at last fiscal year’s spending levels.

“Republicans have done our part to end the Democrat shutdown, and now it’s time for Democrats to do theirs,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday morning. 

“The path forward is simple — please, please, every American who is concerned about this, every American that is feeling the harm, you should call the Senate Democrats and tell them to stop the nonsense, echo the voices of the unions, of the airlines, of hardworking people everywhere, and tell them to stop doing this and open the government.”

Democrats have voted against the GOP measure, saying congressional Republicans must negotiate an extension of tax subsidies for those who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

Those subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year, leaving millions to see their premiums skyrocket when they get premium notices beginning Saturday.

President Donald Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump sought to remove his status as the only felon to be elected president by appealing his conviction on 34 New York state charges just before midnight Tuesday, arguing, in part, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling giving the president broad immunity invalidated the conviction.

In a 96-page appeal nearly 18 months after his state court conviction that he falsified business records by disguising hush money payments over an alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels as legitimate legal payments, Trump’s attorneys recited a list of complaints over his prosecution.  

Among those complaints were that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, targeted the then-former president, and that the presiding Democratic judge created at least the appearance of partiality, the appeal said.

“This is the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history,” the lengthy brief began. “After years of fruitless investigation into decade-old, baseless allegations — and under immense political pressure to criminally charge President Donald J. Trump for something — New York’s district attorney manufactured felony charges against a once-former and now-sitting President of the United States.”

Bragg’s office declined to comment on the appeal Tuesday. 

Hush money

The case centered on payments Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, made to Daniels in the run up to the 2016 election. Trump wanted to keep her from telling the tabloid National Enquirer about a tryst she said she had with the married Trump years earlier. 

After Trump won the White House, his private business reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels, according to the 2023 indictment.

Federal prosecutors had explored whether the payment to Daniels could have violated campaign finance laws. Cohen paid Daniels to keep her from publicizing her account during Trump’s 2016 race against Hillary Clinton. 

They ultimately declined to bring charges.

Trump’s appeal this week said New York prosecutors impermissibly depended on campaign finance violations to charge him with felony business record falsification. 

To be charged as a felony, the business records must be falsified in service of another crime, but Trump argued Monday those allegations could not have been charged because federal law preempts state law.

The New York law also requires prosecutors to show the defendant had “intent to defraud” to win a conviction for falsifying business records. Bragg and his team did not do that at trial, Trump’s attorneys said.

SCOTUS immunity ruling

Trump’s attorneys also said the trial court admitted evidence that should have been protected by presidential immunity, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that established broad protections for sitting presidents.

The Supreme Court opinion said the president was not only protected from criminal charges based on official actions, but that any official action could not be used as evidence to prove an allegation that centered on an unofficial act.

The prosecution did include some official acts Trump took while in office, his lawyers said.

Prosecutors examined Hope Hicks, a former Trump White House communications director, Trump’s statements on social media, communications with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — which Trump denies took place — and the president’s general work habits while in office. 

Those examples should all be considered official actions that are immune from being used in a criminal case, Trump’s attorneys wrote.

Lack of recusal broached

Trump’s attorneys also argued Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, should have recused himself.

Merchan donated a total of $25 to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and to a political action committee called “Stop Republicans.” 

The nominal contributions violated a “clear bar on sitting judges making political contributions,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

His daughter also worked for a political organization that opposed Trump in 2020, the brief noted.

Trump had asked Merchan to recuse himself during the trial phase, but the judge declined. Trump’s attorneys said Monday that was a “clear ground for reversal” of the conviction.

“In the face of all these undisputed and damaging facts, Justice Merchan’s refusal to recuse created, at the very least, ‘the appearance of bias,’” they wrote.

Elected felon 

Whatever problems arose from Trump’s prosecution in New York, it had the political effect of elevating his stagnant comeback campaign.

At the nadir of his popularity following his 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, several credible challengers entered the Republican presidential field for the 2024 cycle and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led in some early polls.

But four criminal prosecutions, of which the New York hush money case was the first, had the effect of galvanizing Republicans and other voters who believed the former president was the victim of a political prosecution, and he easily won the GOP nomination. 

The prosecutions played out amid the 2024 campaign, and a New York jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts on May 30, making him the first former president to be convicted of a felony.

He won that November’s election and became the first felon to be elected president. 

He successfully delayed sentencing until after the 2024 election. Merchan imposed a sentence of unconditional discharge on Jan. 10, 2025, allowing Trump to avoid prison time. 

Bananas and cereals at a grocery store in Fairfax, Virginia, on March 3, 2011. (USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.)

A coalition of Democratic state officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday, asking a federal judge to force the release of food assistance funds for 42 million people that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has said cannot be paid during the ongoing government shutdown.

Attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors launched the suit days before benefits are expected to be cut off for low-income Americans enrolled in the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, on Nov. 1. 

Despite holding $6 billion in a reserve fund, USDA said last week it would not process November SNAP benefits without fiscal 2026 funding approved by Congress.

The USDA’s refusal to provide November benefits runs contrary to precedent from other recent shutdowns, and even the department’s own Sept. 30 contingency plan that said the contingency fund would be used to continue benefits through the shutdown. 

The administration has also shuffled some other money to provide funding for certain programs, but not SNAP.

The Democratic officials said those factors made the decision arbitrary and capricious, a violation of federal administrative law, and asked a federal court in Massachusetts to order the USDA’s move unlawful and block the administration from putting it in place.

“It is an abuse of discretion for Defendants to decline to use available appropriations, including the SNAP contingency reserve, to fund benefits for the mandatory SNAP entitlement program,” they wrote.

SNAP benefits typically cost the federal government about $9 billion per month, meaning the contingency fund could cover about two-thirds of November’s benefits.

The department could cover a full month by dipping into another USDA nutrition assistance program that holds about $23 billion, the state officials said. Part of that fund was used to cover a shortfall in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children earlier this month.

The attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin brought the suit, along with Democratic Govs. Laura Kelly of Kansas, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

Shutdown politics

In an emailed statement, a USDA spokesperson did not address the lawsuit, which came from state officials, and instead blamed the shutdown on U.S. Senate Democrats.

“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats,” the spokesperson wrote. “Continue to hold out for the Far-Left wing of the party or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive timely WIC and SNAP allotments.”

SNAP, which the federal government funds and states administer, is one of the high-profile programs affected by the government shutdown that began Oct. 1 when Congress failed to appropriate funds for the fiscal year that began that date.

Congressional Republicans have tried to pass a stopgap measure to reopen the government, but Democrats have successfully blocked that bill as they demand Congress address the expiration of health care premiums for coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

In a Tuesday afternoon letter, 19 Republican attorneys general called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to support the Republican stopgap to prevent an interruption to SNAP benefits.

The letter, led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, called SNAP “one of the simplest and most effective ways to prevent hunger in America.”

“You have the power to prevent a crisis that is entirely avoidable,” the letter said. “A clean resolution is not a political concession; it is the responsible thing to do. … Refusing to do so now is not leadership; it’s leverage at the expense of the most vulnerable.

In addition to Yost, the letter was signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.   

Benefits delayed already in some states

Because of processing times required to add money to SNAP recipients’ electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, cards, benefits for November may already be delayed in some states.

The suit says California’s EBT vendor, the private company contracted to load monthly benefits onto individuals’ EBT cards, requires about a week to process those transfers.

“So, in order to ensure recipients received their November 2025 benefits on time, California would have had to send its issuance files to its vendor by October 23, 2025,” the suit said. “Each day after October 23 that California does not send its issuance files to its vendor will result in November benefits being delayed another day.”

Additionally, because most states use one of two EBT vendors, there’s a strong possibility the vendors will be overwhelmed by the workload “from all their client-states at essentially the same time” once benefits are unfrozen, the state officials said. 

So even if USDA immediately released funding, there would be a lag before they appeared on EBT cards, they said.