Judges on Friday ordered the federal government to continue providing food assistance during the shutdown. But benefits will still most likely be interrupted.
Christine Tully, 78, worried that November would come but her food assistance from the federal government would not.
Maybe she could will a good outcome, she thought, by writing down her grocery list for the month as usual. Chicken. Apple juice. Carrots. And if she could find them on sale, she wrote, “a pack of three steaks.”
Millions of low-income Americans are in a similar position as the new month begins, wondering how long they will have to wait for a vital type of support.
“I’m just so confused,” Ms. Tully, a great-grandmother and retired diner cook in Miami, said on Friday, trying to figure out the status of the federal program that provides her with $285 in monthly help. “How did we get here?”
A judge in Rhode Island on Friday ordered the Trump administration to keep paying for food stamps during the shutdown, finding that it had acted unlawfully by refusing to tap emergency funds to sustain the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Late on Friday, President Trump said that the administration would provide the funding for food stamps in November once a federal court could clarify “how we can legally” supply the money. But he indicated that a delay was inevitable.
“It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed through the monthly payment date,” he wrote on social media, “and, even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while states get the money out.”
Typically, the issuance of SNAP benefits involves state agencies, vendors who load the program’s debit-style cards, grocery stores, other retailers and the federal government.
