WASHINGTON — The end of the government shutdown won’t end the saga over food stamp funding.
Left unsolved is whether, and how, the Trump administration will carry out its threat to financially punish states like Minnesota that released full benefits to food stamp recipients last weekend.
The Trump administration first said it would pay food stamp benefits for the month of November, then said it wouldn’t and, finally, after a court order mandated the payments out of emergency funds, said it only had money for partial payments.
The reopening of the government will mean recipients across the nation whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were cut off since Nov. 1 will finally receive their benefits — without interruption. That’s because the bill that reopened the government, signed into law by President Donald Trump late Wednesday, includes funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the agency that funds SNAP — for a full year.
Related: Did the federal government warn retailers not to give discounts to SNAP food stamp recipients?
Some states, like Minnesota, did not wait for the shutdown to end and delivered full benefits to SNAP recipients. Now they are threatened with reprisal.
The USDA warned states over the weekend to desist from paying out full SNAP benefits, even as two federal courts ruled that the USDA must release those payments and the agency had issued a memo telling states they could move forward.
The Trump administration appealed those court decisions and the USDA threatened to impose harsh financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the new federal order to “undo” or take money to buy food from poor Americans.
The Trump administration also told a court that states would be “responsible for the consequences” of their actions.
The guidance the USDA issued late in the day on Nov. 8 said states that rushed out full food stamp benefits like Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and others, “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.”
That means Minnesota could lose the roughly $40 million it was slated to receive from the USDA to administer the food stamp program, money that is shared with the state’s 87 counties that manage the program. Before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced the federal share of those administrative costs, the amount Minnesota received was about $80 million.
Or Minnesota could be required to pay back the difference between the partial payments the USDA says were authorized and the full payments that the USDA says were not. That could cost the state about $27 million.
In either case, if the USDA carries out its threat, Minnesota stands to pay a price.
“The cruelty is the point,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a social media post. “It is their choice to do this.”
Minnesota, and 25 other states that have sued the Trump administration to release the SNAP benefits, asked a judge on Saturday to shield states that released full benefits from punishment.
They cited legal uncertainty conflicting instructions from the USDA — which at one point said it was preparing to release full food stamp benefits.
A mess of court orders, and still no help
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment. Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families says it has “not received additional information from the USDA” beyond what was included in the Nov. 8 memo.
That same day, Gary Garrow, one of Minnesota’s 440,000 food stamp recipients, received his full November benefits.
A disabled former taxi driver who lives in Minneapolis, Garrow was making other arrangements to try to meet his nutritional needs when his benefit amount clicked into the EBT card he uses to buy food.
“I was already planning what food shelves to go to and trying to make an appointment,” Garrow said.
Garrow, who lives in the Elliot Twins Apartment, also said his neighbors received their SNAP benefits that day.
Meanwhile, even as the shutdown was moving toward an end, the Trump administration continued to battle the release of SNAP funds in court.
It appealed a ruling by the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the USDA to fully release SNAP funding to the U.S. Supreme Court last Friday.
Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown indicated the appeals court’s ruling prompted the state to release benefits.
“As the longest shutdown in U.S. history concludes its sixth week, we are incredibly grateful Minnesotans will soon have access to their food benefits thanks to important legal system updates,” Brown said in a statement.
Related: Not only the elderly and disabled: A look at the Minnesotans who receive SNAP benefits
Then the Supreme Court said the Trump administration could continue to block SNAP payments and sent the case back to the federal appeals court, which once again ordered the release of funds on Monday. The Trump administration appealed again to the Supreme Court.
The high court on Tuesday extended its order that allows the Trump administration to withhold paying for full food stamp payments in November. The move appeared to anticipate that the 43-day long shutdown would end this week, allowing all of the nation’s 42 million SNAP recipients to once again be able to count on the program.
So, the SNAP crisis is over. But food stamps have never been cut off in any other government shutdown and the fighting during this shutdown on Capitol Hill and in the courts and the Trump administration’s refusal to use emergency funds to pay benefits are likely to have a lingering impact on the nation’s poorest Americans.
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