Volunteers display information about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a grocery store on Monday, November 3, 2025 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA.
Mel Musto | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that no SNAP benefits would be paid during the government shutdown, contradicting a court filing the Trump administration made the day before.
President Trump said benefits that help feed 42 million Americans would only resume after Democrats in Congress agree to pass a stopgap funding bill to restart the government.
The administration told a federal judge in Rhode Island on Monday that it will pay half the cost of November’s SNAP benefits.
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, President Trump said, “The SNAP benefits, which increased by billions (many times!) during crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term (due to the fact that SNAP benefits were randomly ‘handed out’ to anyone who asked for them, rather than just handing them out to those in need), will only be paid out if the radical left Democrats open up the government. They can do that.” It’s easy to do, but I’ve never been able to do it before! ”
Asked by CNBC to explain President Trump’s statement in light of Monday’s court filing, the White House said, “Please refer to the president’s truth.”
“The administration is fully compliant with the court order,” White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters at a subsequent briefing.
Levitt said he had spoken to Trump about the president’s post, adding: “Recipients of SNAP benefits need to understand that it will take some time to receive these benefits because Democrats have put the administration in a very untenable position.”
“We’re operating an emergency fund for emergencies, catastrophes and wars, and the president hopes to never have to tap into that fund in the future, and that’s what President Trump mentioned in his Truth Social post,” Levitt said.
He also said the U.S. Department of Agriculture released guidance to states on Tuesday regarding how much money will be provided to SNAP recipients.
The social media post came shortly after plaintiffs’ lawyers in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s termination of SNAP benefits told a federal judge in Rhode Island that the decision to pay some of the benefits out of an emergency fund did not comply with an earlier order that “decisions cannot be made on an arbitrary and capricious basis.”
Justice Jack McConnell told the administration on Friday that SNAP benefits must be paid out of the emergency fund as soon as possible and also to examine whether other federal funds can be used to keep the program fully funded in the absence of new appropriations by Congress.
The Trump administration told McConnell on Monday that it would spend all of the $4.65 billion left in the reserve fund, but declined to spend at least $4 billion from the Child Nutrition Program to keep SNAP fully funded for at least November.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case told McConnell on Tuesday that “the court should grant the temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction because the defendants’ decision not to provide full SNAP benefits is arbitrary and capricious, even though the funds are available and switching to partial benefits now would result in catastrophic delays.”
McConnell then directed the Trump administration to respond to the request by Wednesday.
The controversy over the past week over the continuation of SNAP benefits has become a central issue in the ongoing U.S. government shutdown that began on October 1st.
Past presidential administrations have continued disbursing SNAP funds during previous government shutdowns.
But the Trump administration recently announced that SNAP benefits will end this week because Congress has not approved the funding needed to continue the program during the government shutdown. In an apparent attempt to pressure Democrats in Congress to vote to end the government shutdown, the administration also refused to use more than $4 billion in reserve funds that Congress had explicitly set aside for SNAP.
Another group of plaintiffs subsequently sued the USDA to force it to continue paying benefits.
