Federal judge orders Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits out of contingency fund

McConnell asked the administration for an update on the SNAP funding by Monday at 12 p.m. ET.

NBC News reached out to the White House, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and USDA for comment.

President Donald Trump said on social media Friday that “government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two Courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do.”

“I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible,” Trump said.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett criticized the ruling in a Friday afternoon interview with Meet the Press Now.

“I think that the liberal judges weren’t correct on this,” Hassett said.

“I think that our legal analysis is that we have to use the emergency money for emergencies,” he said. “But if you think about it, we’re in something that a Democrat judge is willing to say is an emergency because the Democrats won’t open the government.”

Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group that represented the plaintiffs, applauded the ruling.

“Today’s decision affirms what both the law and basic decency require: the Trump-Vance administration must use its power to support people in America, not to harm them,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement, “The court’s ruling protects millions of families, seniors, and veterans from being used as leverage in a political fight and upholds the principle that no one in America should go hungry.”

Perryman’s group represented a collection of plaintiffs, including local municipalities, charitable and faith-based nonprofit organizations and business and union groups in the Rhode Island suit.

In the statement, Perryman added that their group is “honored to represent a coalition that refused to accept hunger as a cruel tactic of political pressure—and we will continue fighting to ensure that our institutions serve people with integrity, compassion, and accountability.”

In a separate ruling, a federal judge in Boston said Friday she wants further briefings before deciding if the Agriculture Department has to use emergency funds to continue SNAP benefits for millions of Americans after Democratic leaders sued the agency.

“Plaintiffs have standing to bring this action and are likely to succeed on their claim that Defendants’ suspension of SNAP benefits is unlawful,” Judge Indira Talwani wrote in her finding.

“Where that suspension of benefits rested on an erroneous construction of the relevant statutory provisions, the court will allow Defendants to consider whether they will authorize at least reduced SNAP benefits for November, and report back to the court no later than Monday, November 3, 2025,” she wrote.

Talwani, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, said Thursday the government can’t simply suspend benefits because it can’t afford to cover the program.

Talwani said she wants to hear back from the administration no later than Monday, November 3, 2025.

On Tuesday, the attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the governors of Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguing that it is legally required to continue providing SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, as long as the USDA has the funding. They asked the judge to compel the agency to use contingency funds appropriated by Congress.

The lawsuit sought a temporary restraining order that would require the agency to deliver SNAP benefits through November in their states.

The USDA had said in a message posted on its website that benefits won’t be issued on EBT cards as expected on Nov. 1. Up to 42 million Americans rely on the program.

Earlier Thursday, before the rulings in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were handed down, Trump blamed the lapse in funding for SNAP on Senate Democrats, saying they could vote to end the ongoing federal government shutdown if they wanted to fund SNAP.

“All the Democrats have to do is say, ‘Let’s go.’ I mean, you know, they don’t have to do anything. They have to — all they have to do is say, ‘the government is open,’” the president told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Florida.