(CNN) — A federal judge in Rhode Island said Thursday that the Trump administration must fully cover food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November.
“People have gone without for too long,” U.S. District Judge John McConnell said during a hastily called hearing Thursday. “Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.”
Nearly 42 million Americans receive food stamps. Payments are made on a staggered basis over the course of a month.
McConnell’s order comes days after the administration, in response to an earlier order from him, said it would provide only partial food stamp benefits for November by tapping into some $4.65 billion in a contingency fund maintained by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The judge said the government had not worked quickly enough to release the funds pursuant to the requirements of his earlier order and that the government had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it decided earlier this week that it would not provide the full benefits this month.
Under McConnell’s new ruling, the government must tap into billions of additional dollars held by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a separate pot of money so full SNAP benefits can be paid. The judge said those payments needed to be made to states, which administer the program, by Friday.
“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. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”
In reaction to the judge’s move, New York Attorney General Letitia James said, “A judge in Rhode Island just stopped the federal government from starving millions of Americans. I am relieved that people will get the food they need, but it is outrageous that it took a lawsuit to make the federal government feed its own people.”
James and a coalition of other attorneys general and governors had filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts seeking to force the administration to make SNAP payments. A judge in that case instructed the Trump administration to use a contingency fund to pay the SNAP benefits for November but the administration said it would only send out partial payments. James and the others went back into the Massachusetts federal court today to ask the court to order the administration to fully fund SNAP benefits.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
