Monday is Day 34 (but who’s counting?) of the Schumer Shutdown and Day 3 of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) being unfunded. Senate Democrats are stubbornly refusing to fund the federal government and, thus, callously forcing millions of Americans who rely on SNAP to find other means of feeding their families.
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As RedState’s Jennifer Oliver O’Connell reported in her Feel Good Friday column last week, Americans have been stepping up in a big way to help their neighbors who find themselves struggling amidst the ongoing government shutdown. Churches are helping to fill the void by expanding their food pantry services, and families are holding food drives in their neighborhoods to help stock the shelves. America is at its best when Americans show up for their fellow Americans.
READ MORE: Bessent Says SNAP Relief ‘Could Be’ Coming Soon As Democrats Continue to Put Politics Over People
Feel-Good Friday: Americans Step in and Step Up to Give Neighbors Hope During Government Shutdown
But, it now seems that SNAP may be making at least a partial comeback even as the shutdown drags on. The Trump administration told a Federal judge in Rhode Island Monday that it would use billions of dollars in contingency funds to pay some SNAP recipients a portion of their normal benefits for the month of November.
Trump administration agrees to partially fund SNAP despite government shutdown https://t.co/eNm1hcjBX9 pic.twitter.com/RW0hKW1mok
— New York Post (@nypost) November 3, 2025
The move comes in response to Rhode Island District Court Judge John McConnell’s Saturday order giving the Trump administration two options when it comes to SNAP: full payments by Monday or partial payments by Wednesday. Specifically, McConnell suggested the administration “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.”
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In its filing, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP, told McConnell it “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.”
“Per orders issued by the United States District Courts for the Districts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, FNS [Food and Nutrition Service] intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025,” a Department of Agriculture official attested in court documents.
RedState’s resident legal eagle, Susie Moore, did a nice rundown of the two SNAP-related cases that were making their way through the Federal court system, one of which prompted today’s filing by the USDA. In short, two different Federal judges on Friday ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to issue SNAP benefits, which ran out of funds on November 1. It’s estimated that providing full funding for SNAP this month would cost at least $9 billion.
RELATED: Ted Cruz Has a Good Guess As to When the Schumer Shutdown Is Likely to End, and Why
SNAP Judgments: How the Program Can Be Reformed (VIP)
While the exact details of how SNAP will be funded for November are still unclear, the program does have around $6 billion in contingency funds that are held for things like hurricanes or other natural disasters that could lead to food shortages. That’s not enough to cover a full month of benefits for all recipients, so it’s likely that amounts of aid will be cut or certain participants will not be eligible.
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Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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