An EBT sign is displayed on the window of a grocery store on Oct. 30, 2025 in the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City.
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The Trump administration told a Rhode Island federal judge on Monday that it would tap billions of dollars in contingency funds to pay 50% of the normal amount of SNAP benefits in November as the U.S. government shutdown persists.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides food stamps to about 42 million low-income Americans.
The administration in a court filing told Judge Jack McConnell that it had declined the option he suggested to make full November payments for SNAP benefits by using at least $4 billion from the Child Nutrition Program, as well as from other unspecified funds.
Instead, the administration will use all of the $4.65 billion remaining from a contingency fund for SNAP appropriated by Congress for “November benefits that will be obligated to cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments.”
McConnell, in a ruling on Friday, said the administration could not cease paying SNAP benefits. Before his order, the administration had rejected the idea of using the contingency funds in the face of the shutdown, which began Oct. 1.
Prior presidential administrations, including the first one of President Donald Trump, have used contingency funds to continue paying SNAP benefits during government shutdowns.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on October 31, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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It is not clear when the benefits will begin being paid out by individual states. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the benefits could be paid by Wednesday.
In its filing Monday, the administration said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture “will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today by generating the table required for States to calculate the benefits available for each eligible household in that State.”
USDA authorized the states to begin disbursing the benefits once the table is issued.
McConnell, in a written order on Saturday, gave the USDA two options.
One option was to make the full payment of SNAP benefits for November by the end of the day on Monday by using Section 32 Child Nutrition Program funding and other unspecified funds.
The other option was to “make a partial payment of the total amount of the contingency fund and … expeditiously resolve the administrative and clerical burdens it described in its papers, but under no circumstances shall the partial payments be made later than Wednesday.”
Patrick Penn, the USDA’s deputy undersecretary of the Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, in a separate court filing on Monday, told McConnell that the department had considered using the Child Nutrition Program funds.
But the department determined that those funds “must remain available to protect full operation of Child Nutrition Programs throughout the fiscal year, instead of being used for SNAP benefits,” Penn said.
“Section 32 Child Nutrition Program funds are not a contingency fund for SNAP,” Penn said. “Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances.”
The Nutrition Program includes school lunch and summer food service programs for children, he noted.