10 Nov Unclear if Guam will get SNAP funding after appeal

It’s unclear if Guam will get federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as a U.S. Supreme Court justice temporarily paused a judicial order requiring the payout after an appeal filed by the Trump administration.

People in some U.S. states were able to get federally funded SNAP benefits on Friday after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to pay them out.

But the Trump administration appealed the judge’s ruling and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily paused the judicial order to allow time for an appeals court to decide whether to issue a more lasting halt, the Associated Press reported.

The Trump administration has said the ongoing federal government shutdown meant they couldn’t pay out SNAP benefits this month.

But two federal judges ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely and the administration said it would use an emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to provide partial benefits in November.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell Jr. on Thursday said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered other funds to be used to make the full monthly payment.

The Trump administration appealed, asking a higher court to suspend any orders that require it to spend more money than is available in the contingency fund. That is what led to Jackson’s temporary hold issued late Friday.

In his order, McConnell admonished the government for deciding earlier in the week to make only partial SNAP payments. He said officials failed to consider the “needless suffering” that would cause millions of people who rely on that aid.

He also suggested they had delayed the partial payments for “political reasons,” NPR reported.

Before the temporary pause, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds SNAP, issued a guidance saying it would pay November benefits in full in compliance with the court order.

Deputy Under Secretary of Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Patrick Penn, in a guidance to states and territories, said the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service would complete the processes necessary to make funds available “to support your subsequent transmittal of full issuance files to your EBT processor.”