The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Nov. 6, 2025, to make full November SNAP payments by the next day, using available Section 32 funds together with contingency money. The order came after USDA said it would try to cover only part of the month for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves tens of millions of people nationwide.

The government moved fast. It first asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for a stay and an administrative stay, then turned to the Supreme Court the same evening. By the time Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson entered an administrative stay on Nov. 7, the high court said the administration was facing an estimated need to transfer $4 billion by that night to keep SNAP funded through November.

The district judge rejected the argument that USDA had no lawful path to keep the program whole during the shutdown. In the court’s view, the department could use contingency funds, Section 32 funds, or both to meet the November obligation, and the agency’s own partial-funding plan did not satisfy that requirement. The order also found that leaving households with reduced or delayed benefits would cause immediate harm.

The fight exposed the tradeoff at the center of the shutdown: whether the administration would preserve food aid by drawing from money already on hand, or protect other nutrition accounts by letting SNAP run short. The court chose the first option. The administration asked higher courts to undo it, and the Supreme Court temporarily froze the ruling while the First Circuit moved first on the stay request.