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| Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images |
'People have gone without for too long,' the judge said Thursday.
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the nation's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food aid program by Friday, rejecting the administration's effort to only partially fund the benefits program for some 42 million low-income Americans.
"People have gone without for too long," U.S. District Judge Jack McConnell said in court Thursday.
He scolded the Trump administration for failing to comply with the order he issued last week, which required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the SNAP benefits programs before its funds were slated to lapse on Nov. 1, marking the first time in the program's 60-year history that its payments were halted.
The judge also said Trump officials failed to address a known funding distribution problem that could cause SNAP payments to be delayed for weeks or months in some states. He ordered the USDA to tap other contingency funds as needed.
"It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here," McConnell said Thursday.
Trump administration officials said in a court filing this week that they would pay just 65% of the roughly $9 billion owed to fund the SNAP program for November, prompting the judge to update his order and give the administration just 24 hours to comply. --->READ MORE HERE
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund SNAP benefits for November.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Donald Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8 — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.
The order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would leave some recipients getting nothing for this month.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown. --->READ MORE HERE
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