Donald Trump wants them to
The Trump administration made good on its threat to appeal a federal judge’s order to release SNAP emergency funds to 42 million Americans facing hunger during the government shutdown. Late Friday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who oversees that judicial district, granted a stay on the order:
The justice did not rule on the legality of the White House’s actions. Instead, she imposed a pause meant to give an appeals court more time to weigh legal arguments in the case, as the government forged ahead in its bid to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the federal shutdown.
The order, known as an administrative stay, came as a growing number of states, including New York, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Oregon, had started to release full benefits to their residents anyway. Many announced their plans on a day when even the Agriculture Department had suggested in guidance that it could soon make the money available for food stamps, after initially refusing to do so.
But it remained unclear late Friday how the new, temporary hold imposed by the Supreme Court might now affect some of those payments, or whether SNAP benefits might once again face delays, cuts or other restrictions.
The appeal came hours after the USDA announced it had set about funding the program to comply with the court order.
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You can’t make me! You can’t make me!
Look beyond the legal wrangling. Let’s be clear. Trump’s effort to stop the flow of food aid to American families is not something he had to do. It is something he chose to do. Once the court ruled that distributing SNAP funds from the emergency reserve was legal and appropriate, the Trump administration might simply have released the emergency funding and saved food-insecure Americans additional anxiety, scrounging, and growling bellies. It/he just doesn’t want to. Because it’s more important to Trump that everyone know that he is above the law. No Obama-appointed judge can tell him what to do.
“JoJo From Jerz” (Joanne Carducci) wants to make sure you don’t miss that:
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