Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island issued rulings on Friday requiring the Trump administration to use emergency funds to provide SNAP benefits as the federal government shutdown is about to enter its second month.
The USDA emergency fund has $5.3 billion in it, a little more than half the $9 billion that the agency allocates each month toward SNAP benefits, but Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee to the federal bench in Massachusetts, issued a 15-page opinion laying out how the government could “supplement” these emergency funds “by authorizing a transfer of additional funds … to avoid any reductions” in the SNAP benefits.
Twenty-three state AGs had filed suit challenging the Trump administration on its decision to cut off SNAP benefits as a leverage point in the ongoing negotiations with Democrats to end the shutdown, which is in its 31st day.
Not among those state AGs: our own here in Virginia, Jason Miyares, a MAGA Republican running for re-election.
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“Twenty-three attorneys general fought to protect their states from Trump’s harmful policies and ensure kids have enough to eat. Where was Jason Miyares? Siding with Trump and spending the week campaigning alongside other Republican AGs instead of doing his job and defending the more than 850,000 Virginians who rely on food assistance,” said Jay Jones, the Democratic Party nominee challenging Miyares in next week’s election.
Earlier in the week, the MAGA Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, trying to position himself as a hero, committed the state to providing emergency nutrition assistance once the federal dollars were to run out, trying to frame the political issue in DC as a “dereliction of duty on the part of our federal Democrat senators,” even as Donald Trump himself was busy posting to social media in the wee hours of Friday morning that congressional Republicans had the ability to end the stalemate by using the “nuclear option” on the Senate filibuster.
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Republicans in Congress have been trying to force Democrats to sign on to a funding bill that would have them agreeing to the trillions of dollars in healthcare cuts put into place in the July 4 Big Ugly Bill, which has already forced primary-care facility closures locally, and is about to double the monthly health insurance premiums for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tens of millions of Americans.
The thrust of that effort: MAGAs want to take away a campaign issue from Democrats to use against them in the 2026 midterms.
Democrats, for their part, are trying to preserve access to something resembling affordable healthcare for tens of millions of Americans who are otherwise about to find themselves royally screwed.
Now that Trump has given up the game, you’d think the MAGAs in Congress would follow the marching orders he laid down, but there’s clearly no one in charge on that side of the aisle, to the point that the loudest voice from the Republican side today is that of Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins, who offered an observation rivaling that of Marie Antoinette, of “Let them eat cake” fame.
“Any American who has been receiving $4,200 dollars per year of free groceries and does not have at least one month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack,” Higgins posted on Twitter, which, wow.
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Chris Graham
