Welcome to The Logoff: The status of urgent food assistance is once again up in the air after President Donald Trump weighed in on Tuesday.
What happened? On Tuesday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that “SNAP BENEFITS … will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government.”
If accurate, the president’s decision to deny food aid to millions of Americans would be in direct conflict with a court order and statements by his own administration, which said yesterday it would draw on billions of dollars in contingency funds to provide partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for November.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt subsequently told reporters that, contrary to Trump’s post, “the administration is fully complying with the court order” — but with SNAP benefits currently unavailable after an interruption over the weekend, it may be some time until we know for sure.
What’s the context? The Trump administration isn’t supposed to have a choice in whether it provides at least some SNAP benefits this month, following an order by a federal judge in Rhode Island last week. However, it has opted not to tap additional, voluntary funding sources to provide the full amount to beneficiaries.
Why does this matter? As a rule, the Logoff tries to cover only concrete, meaningful actions by the Trump administration. Sometimes the Trump administration’s internal back-and-forth is just noise, and nothing ultimately comes of it — but this is one of those times where the words do matter.
Food benefits have already lapsed, and it’s unclear when they’ll resume. At best, Trump’s comments merely deepen the uncertainty that millions of Americans, many of them children, are feeling about when they will next receive vital food aid. At worst, they mean Trump is actively attempting to use SNAP benefits as a political cudgel, harming Americans in hopes his political opponents will cave.
