Judge sets deadline for Trump administration to release full SNAP benefits

Volunteers during a food drive in front of the US Department of Agriculture on the National Mall during the 30th day of the federal government shutdown. Photo / Getty Images

A federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November’s food assistance benefits by the end of the week. It comes after the partial funding disbursed by the Agriculture Department earlier this week had yet to reach those who qualify for the benefits.

“The court was clear that the administration had to either make the full payment by this past Monday, or it must ‘expeditiously resolve the administrative and clerical burdens it described in its papers’, but under no circumstances shall the partial payments be made later than Wednesday, November 5, 2025,” Judge Jack McConnell said in his oral ruling. “The record is clear that the administration did neither.”

McConnell said USDA “cannot now cry that it cannot get timely payments to beneficiary for weeks or months because states are not prepared to make partial payments. USDA arbitrarily and capriciously created this problem”.

USDA said that it would release enough funds to pay for a half-month’s worth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for November, days after McConnell and a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the department to release the money to avoid forcing almost 42 million Americans into food insecurity. Payments for SNAP lapsed on November 1 because of the government shutdown. The programme regularly costs the federal government about US$9 billion ($15b) a month, but only about US$4b ($7b) was made available to make partial payments.

A judge ordered full November SNAP payments by Friday after USDA’s partial plan faltered. Photo / Getty Images

States warned that they could not quickly disburse the federal payments because of administrative and clerical issues in calculating how much each beneficiary would receive as a partial payment. States and experts said the benefits could have been sent to beneficiaries more quickly had the government issued full payment for the benefits.

In a previous court filing, USDA said it would not tap a US$23b ($40b) fund for school lunch and child nutrition programmes known as Section 32 funding. Democrats in Congress and anti-hunger advocates have called for the Trump administration to tap those funds to fill in the SNAP shortfall and let lawmakers patch the hole in child nutrition funding later. In the brief, USDA said that programme was separate from SNAP in terms of legal authority, appropriations accounts and operations.

Instead, USDA tapped into only a US$5.5b ($9b) contingency fund to partially pay for the benefit. In his initial order, McConnell said the administration should consider tapping into as many backup funds as possible to ensure that Americans did not go without their benefits. McConnell ordered the administration to tap into those Section 32 funds – in combination with the $5.5b contingency fund – to pay for the full month’s worth of benefits.

McConnell told USDA that its argument that using Section 32 funds would hurt school lunch and child nutrition programs is “contrary to the evidence and implausible.” The judge argued that states need only about US$4b ($7b) from that fund to fully pay for November SNAP benefits – leaving about $19b in the Section 32 fund to fully cover child nutrition programmes through at least May. McConnell added that it is “implausible that such a transfer would be a permanent loss,” given that Congress, with bipartisan support, has always funded the child nutrition programmes.

“More importantly, without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” McConnell said. “This should never happen in America.”

Representatives for USDA and the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Before the judge issued his ruling, USDA lawyer Tyler Becker argued that the administration had done its part by releasing partial funds to the states. While SNAP benefits are fully paid by the federal government, states administer the programme to their residents.

McConnell made the ruling during a virtual hearing with lawyers for both the USDA and the coalition of cities, non profits, unions and small businesses that brought the lawsuit against the federal government in which McConnell challenged USDA’s inability to ensure that SNAP recipients received some money by November 5. McConnell noted in the ruling that President Donald Trump, in a post shared on Truth Social, “stated his intent to defy the court order”. In that post, Trump said SNAP payments “will be given only when the government opens”.

The administration, McConnell said, “then filed the notice with this court saying that it chose partial payment, but it did not do anything to resolve the administrative and clerical burdens that it had described in its paper, and that the order, directly referred to”.

McConnell said USDA is causing “irreparable harm” by not releasing full funding.

“The evidence shows that people will go hungry,” he said. “Food pantries will be overburdened, and needless suffering will occur … This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided. Therefore, the court … orders the administration to make the full SNAP payment to the states by tomorrow.”

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