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President Donald Trump drew a line in the sand on Tuesday when it comes to doling out SNAP benefits to millions of Americans nationwide, following two recent federal court orders that directed the food aid programs to continue disbursing funds to recipients in November.
“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” the president wrote on Truth Social.
As reported by RSBN, dual court orders ordered the federal government to use a $5 billion contingency fund to partially cover SNAP payments in November, while noting that the administration would need to decide by Monday whether it would either reduce continuing benefits or use federal money from elsewhere to continue fully funding the program in the future.
The president’s Tuesday statement suggests that his administration will not lean into funding those benefits in the future. This means that SNAP funding would remain frozen after November’s partial payments until Democrats vote to reopen the government.
On Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration was “fully compliant” with what the court had ordered.
She explained, “The recipients of the SNAP benefits need to understand it’s going to take some time to receive this money…we are digging into a contingency fund that’s supposed to be for emergencies, catastrophes, for war. And the president does not want to have to tap into this fund in the future, and that’s what he was referring to in his Truth Social post.”
With the government now closed for over a month, this may become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, exceeding the 35-day shutdown of 2018-2019.
This latest shutdown comes as the Democrats refuse to vote for a continuing resolution in the U.S. Senate on 13 occasions so far.
“What is outrageous to us is that they have gone onto the Senate floor and they have voted no. They have voted to close the government,” Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said this week during a press conference.
He continued, “And then they have gone out to the hall, to the nearest camera they can find, and they look into the lens and say, ‘Republicans are shutting down the government…’ It’s the most extreme example of gaslighting in the history of American politics.”