The US government is working to fully pay for food benefits for more than 42 million Americans, according to the agriculture department, even as the Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to let it freeze funding.
Funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), also known as food stamps, were put on pause on 1 November, with the administration saying there was not enough money available due the US government shutdown – now in its 38th day.
A judge on Thursday ordered the government to fully fund the programme, which one in eight Americans depend on. It appealed, but was rejected by a higher court on Friday.
Now, the Trump administration is turning to the Supreme Court.
Describing the order as “judicial activism at its worst”, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media on Friday evening that “we have filed an emergency stay application in the Supreme Court requesting immediate relief”.
While the legal back-and-forth played out, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Friday that it was taking steps to make sure full funds were available.
The confirmation from the USDA on its website marks what could be the end of one of the major through-points of the longest government shutdown is US history.
On Thursday, Judge John McConnell accused the Trump administration of withholding the food aid “for political reasons” and said that without the aid, “16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry”.
That came after a judge told the Trump administration it had to use a contingency fund to feed millions of Americans, but acknowledged that those emergency reserves could not cover the programme’s entire monthly price tag of nearly $9bn (£6.9bn).
Trump has repeatedly said that Snap is used by Americans in Democrat states and said the program would be funded once Democrats end the government shutdown.
Both Republican and Democrat-led states administer Snap with funding from the federal government. Some this week stepped in with their own money to keep the aid, which works out to about $6 per person per day, flowing to those in the programme. Others, though, said they could not make up for the sudden interruption in funding.
Meanwhile, in the past week, millions of Americans have gone without any aid for groceries.
Snap provides many low-income Americans with reloadable debit cards that they can use to buy food.
It is not clear how long it will take USDA to transfer funds to states, or when all the states will be able to reload those debit cards.
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