A pair of federal judges on Friday compelled the Trump administration to keep food stamps flowing as the government shutdown stretched into its first month.
A judge in Rhode Island and another in Massachusetts issued rulings that said that the Department of Agriculture had to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, up and running next month. The program is set to exhaust its funding on Saturday, imperiling nutritional aid for more than 40 million low-income Americans.
The White House previously said it was unable to finance the program past the weekend due to the government shutdown, which began Oct. 1. Trump administration officials said they wouldn't have access to a $5.5 billion contingency fund, even though they tapped into the emergency money for a past shutdown in Trump's first term.
"It’s called a contingency fund, and by law, contingency funds can only flow when the underlying fund is flowing," Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins $ROL said at a Friday news conference alongside GOP leaders.
However, the decisions mandate only at least partial payment, meaning some people will still lose access to their SNAP benefits. It comes after two dozen Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's move to suspend the program starting Nov. 1, for the first time in U.S. history.
The White House rerouted a request for comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond.
The AFL-CIO and 26 other labor groups sent a letter on Friday to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins prodding her to release the designated contingency funds. Any lapse in SNAP funding will have devastating impacts for program beneficiaries, reduce hours and wages for food workers in every state and congressional district in the country... and hurt local economies," the letter said.