States are scrambling again to figure out how to deliver food assistance without violating a U.S. Supreme Court order or crossing the Trump administration.
On Saturday, Trump administration officials directed states to “immediately undo” any actions they had taken to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The move follows a series of conflicting court rulings and federal directives.
Last week, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the administration to immediately fully fund SNAP, accusing the government of withholding payments for “political purposes” and causing “needless suffering.” The administration said it would send those payments while it appealed. Then the Supreme Court on Friday temporarily paused full payments while appeals proceed.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture warned states that any full payments made outside the administration’s instructions were “unauthorized” and that sending them “may result in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administrative costs and holding States liable for any over issuances that result from the noncompliance.” The USDA said states must continue to reduce the benefits they issue by 35%, per the administration’s earlier guidance to comply with another court order.
Rhode Island was among several states that had already issued full benefits before the Supreme Court’s pause. Democratic Gov. Dan McKee criticized President Trump in a Sunday statement, saying the president “intentionally created chaos for states across the country — playing games with people’s ability to feed their families, weaponizing hunger, and gaslighting the American people. It’s inhumane.” McKee said he was exploring contingency options to protect Rhode Islanders.
About two dozen states, including Rhode Island, asked a federal judge in Massachusetts for protection, arguing in a brief filed Saturday that they feared the federal government “may attempt to recoup funds from the States that the States’ residents have used to feed themselves and their families.” The states said such recoupment could total hundreds of millions of dollars and would “risk catastrophic operational disruptions for the States, with a consequent cascade of harms for their residents.”
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins used X and a Fox News appearance to blame Democrats and “activist judges” for the benefits lapse, calling court orders attempts to force funding that Congress did not appropriate.
Meanwhile, SNAP recipients and aid organizations remain in limbo. Facing Hunger Foodbank in Huntington, W.Va., reported tripling its usual food distributions for this time of year. CEO Cynthia Kirkhart said the back-and-forth coverage has been especially damaging: “The news comes out that we are going to get SNAP benefits. Then, we aren’t going to get SNAP benefits. This is much worse. Folks get their hopes built up and then they crash. It’s a lot,” she said. “We can do better.”