Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery is closely monitoring the ongoing crisis surrounding SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits as the federal government shutdown enters its second month. The situation remains dire for millions of Americans — including hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers — who rely on SNAP to feed themselves and their families. Today, the Trump administration confirmed that the USDA will provide partial benefits to SNAP recipients for November, but, due to states needing to determine how much each recipient will receive and the need to change administrative processes to get lower amounts of funding out, it may take several weeks before people receive these benefits. The administration also confirmed they will not shift additional funds to provide full benefits in November or thereafter if the government shut down continues.
Judicial Rulings Offer Temporary Relief, But Uncertainty Remains
Two federal judges — one in Massachusetts and another in Rhode Island — have ordered the federal government to use emergency contingency funds to provide at least partial SNAP benefits for the month of November. The rulings came after a coalition of 25 states, cities, and advocacy organizations sued the Trump administration for halting benefits.
President Trump has stated that his administration will seek guidance from the courts on how to legally release the funds, but significant administrative hurdles remain before any money can reach recipients. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has until early next week to determine whether it will use only its contingency fund — which contains roughly $5.3 billion — or tap into an additional $17 billion in tariff revenues that have previously been reserved for child nutrition programs.
If the USDA uses only the contingency funds, benefits would likely be reduced across the board, something that has never been done in SNAP’s history. State agencies would also need to reprogram their systems to issue smaller benefits — a process that could take weeks or months to complete.
The Timeline So Far
- October 10: USDA directs states to halt the issuance of November SNAP benefits due to lack of federal funding.
- Late October: States and advocacy groups file lawsuits challenging the decision.
- October 30 – November 1: Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island rule that USDA must use its emergency funds to provide partial benefits.
- November 2: President Trump announces willingness to release funds pending legal clarification, but warns of delays in distribution.
Even if the courts’ orders are fully implemented, millions of households are already missing early-November payments, and the situation could worsen if the administration appeals or limits payments to partial amounts.
What the Federal Government Can and Cannot Do
Under current law:
- The USDA can use contingency funds — estimated at $5.3 billion — for partial benefit payments.
- The agency may legally transfer or repurpose certain tariff revenues to supplement SNAP funding, but has so far refused to do so.
- The Administration and Congress must act together to reopen the government and restore full SNAP and WIC funding.
- Without congressional approval or additional executive action, states cannot independently issue full federal SNAP benefits.
New York’s Response to Protect Food Access
Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a $30 million state emergency allocation to support food insecurity programs, funding over 16 million meals through community food banks and pantries. The state also released $11 million in additional hunger relief grants to local organizations to help fill the gap while federal aid remains uncertain.
In addition, the New York Attorney General joined the multistate lawsuit demanding the USDA release its contingency funds to ensure at least partial SNAP coverage for November.
Alliance Call to Action
The Alliance calls on Congress and the Administration to act immediately to restore full funding for SNAP and other nutrition programs. People’s lives depend on this support, and every day of inaction deepens the crisis for families, children, and older adults.
We will continue to monitor court rulings and federal actions closely and will update our community as new developments emerge during this uncertain and frightening time. Our commitment remains to ensuring that every person — regardless of income — has access to the food, housing, and recovery supports they need to live with dignity.
Will SNAP Benefits be Paid in November? Here’s What We Know About the Judges’ Rulings
By Tami Luhby and Devan Cole | CNN | November 2, 2025
Two federal judges have said the Trump administration is required to use emergency funds to provide at least partial food stamp benefits to tens of millions of Americans in November, as the federal government shutdown drags on.
And President Donald Trump on Friday evening said that he’s instructed the administration’s lawyers to ask the courts how it can legally fund the benefits as quickly as possible.
“Even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay.”
Still, the much-needed assistance won’t come that quickly for many food stamp recipients. Also, it remains unclear whether they’ll receive their full benefits or a smaller amount since the US Department of Agriculture’s contingency fund doesn’t have enough money to cover the total cost.
Several legal and procedural challenges must be overcome before the benefits can start flowing to the nearly 42 million people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps. The US Department of Agriculture halted November allocations, arguing it doesn’t have the funds to provide them, which prompted a coalition of Democratic-led states and a group of cities, non-profits, unions and small businesses to sue earlier this week.
It’s now unclear whether the administration will appeal the rulings. However, the Justice Department signaled during a hearing on Thursday that it would do so if US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued an adverse ruling.
Though Talwani stopped short on Friday of requiring the administration to tap into the contingency fund, she said the USDA was required to use money in that rainy-day fund to partially cover November benefits and gave it until Monday to decide whether it would use only those funds or also dip into a separate pot of money.
A judge in Rhode Island said during proceedings Friday in a separate case over the SNAP payments that he was ordering the government to use the contingency fund to ensure at least some benefits could be distributed.
In a written ruling released Saturday, the judge, John McConnell, wrote that the administration must make a partial payment to SNAP beneficiaries using the contingency funds by Wednesday.
But he wrote the USDA should, within its discretion, find additional funds to provide full benefits to recipients. If it chooses to do this, the agency must make the full payment by the end of Monday since it is simpler to make the full payment than calculate partial payments.
The administration could also appeal this decision.
In his ruling, McConnell also responded directly to Trump’s comments Friday, writing, “the Court greatly appreciates the President’s quick and definitive response to this Court’s Order and his desire to provide the necessary SNAP funding.”
Delayed payments
Whatever happens in court, it will take time for SNAP recipients to get access to any assistance in November.
States stopped the process of issuing benefits for November after the USDA sent them a letter on October 10 ordering them to do so. States send SNAP enrollees’ information to vendors every month so they can load funds onto recipients’ benefit cards, often days or weeks before the new month begins. Those steps need to take place before SNAP can restart.
The delay will be felt immediately. Some 3 million recipients should receive their benefits on November 1, according to an estimate by Code for America, which works with all levels of government to improve access to food assistance and other safety net programs. The number grows to nearly 13.7 million by November 5, with remaining SNAP enrollees getting their allotments on a staggered basis during the month.
“They are not going out on time,” Gina Plata-Nino, interim director of SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group, said of the November benefits.
Still, providing full payments would be the fastest way to get assistance to food stamp recipients.
“If the administration complies with the courts’ rulings to release the SNAP contingency funds immediately and supplements those amounts using its legal transfer authority, which the courts also affirmed, then SNAP benefits could begin to be issued with only a short delay,” said Dottie Rosenbaum, director of federal SNAP policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Partial payments harder to do
However, the process could become much more complicated — and time consuming — if the USDA opts to only tap into its contingency fund and doesn’t augment it with leftover tariff revenue dedicated to child nutrition programs, as it did with the WIC nutrition assistance program.
The emergency fund only has $5.3 billion remaining in it, while benefits total about $8.2 billion for the month, according to court filings submitted by the Justice Department, which represents the USDA in the case. (Other expenses and benefits bring the total closer to $9 billion.)
The USDA also has access to nearly $17 billion in tariff revenue, but a Justice Department attorney told a judge Friday that using the funds for SNAP would hurt the child nutrition programs that the money supports. Both Talwani and the judge in Rhode Island, John McConnell, left it up to the USDA to decide whether to use the additional resources to pay full benefits in November.
If only the contingency fund were tapped, the USDA would have to reduce benefits for all SNAP recipients, which it has never done, according to a declaration filed by the agency official who oversees the program. Also, state agencies would need to recode their systems to issue the smaller benefit amounts, which could result in payment errors.
“Because no template, processes, or past experience exist to inform a reduction in benefits, there are multiple variables which could lead to significant problems in attempting to reduce benefits for every SNAP household in the country,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of the USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, said in his declaration. “The ability, time and resources to accomplish this system change would vary greatly among State agencies, with some State agencies working with systems that are decades old.”
For at least some states, the process could take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, Penn said, drawing upon informal conversations with state agencies.
Before states could even act, the USDA would also have to determine how to calculate and authorize the reduced allotments. This effort could be hampered if its employees have been furloughed during the shutdown or laid off or departed amid the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government, Plata-Nino said.
While some states have identified potential ways to issue smaller benefits quickly, the methods must be programmed, tested and verified, which could take time, she noted.
If recipients receive partial benefits in November, they would get retroactive payments to make them whole once the government reopens, she said.
Will SNAP benefits be paid in November? Here’s what we know about the judges’ rulings
Trump Administration Says SNAP Will be Partially Funded in November
By Geoff Mulvihill and Kimberlee Kruesi | AP News | November 3, 2025
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP after two judges issued rulings requiring it to keep the nation’s largest food aid program running.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it during the federal government shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8 billion per month nationally. The government says an emergency fund it will use has $4.65 billion — enough to cover about half the normal benefits.
Exhausting the fund potentially sets the stage for a similar situation in December if the shutdown isn’t resolved by then.
It’s not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. November payments have already been delayed for millions of people.
The administration said it would provide details to states on Monday on calculating the per-household partial benefit. The process of loading the SNAP cards, which involves steps by state and federal government agencies and vendors, can take up to two weeks in some states. But the USDA warned in a court filing that it could take weeks or even months for states to make all the system changes to send out reduced benefits. The average monthly benefit is usually about $190 per person.
The USDA said last month that benefits for November wouldn’t be paid due to the federal government shutdown. That set off a scramble by food banks, state governments and the nearly 42 million Americans who receive the aid to find ways to ensure access to groceries.
Most states have boosted aid to food banks, and some are setting up systems to reload benefit cards with state taxpayer dollars. The threat of a delay also spurred lawsuits.
Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled separately but similarly Friday, telling the government that it was required to use one emergency fund to pay for the program, at least in part. They gave the government the option to use additional money to fully fund the program and a deadline of Monday to decide.
Patrick Penn, Deputy Under Secretary Food Nutrition and Consumer Services for USDA, said in a court filing Monday that the department chose not to tap other emergency funds to ensure there’s not a gap in child nutrition programs for the rest of this fiscal year, which runs through September 2026.
Trump said on social media Friday that he does “NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” He said he was telling government lawyers to prepare SNAP payments as soon as possible.
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions. Cities and nonprofits also filed a lawsuit.
Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills. The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the SNAP debit cards.
Rhode Island officials said Monday that under their program, SNAP beneficiaries who also receive benefits from another federal program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, received payments Saturday equal to one-fourth of what they typically get from SNAP. Officials in Delaware are telling recipients that benefits there won’t be available until at least Nov. 7.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a household’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line. For a family of four, that’s about $32,000 per year.
Trump administration says SNAP will be partially funded | AP News
Trump Admin Says it Will Provide Partial November SNAP Benefits
By Zach Schonfeld | The Hill | November 3, 2025
The Trump administration will provide partial food stamp benefits this month as the government shutdown approaches a record length, officials told a federal judge Monday.
The administration indicated it will not tap other funds to fill the gap, meaning the more than 40 million people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are set to receive reduced benefits. Administration officials have warned those recalculations could spur significant delays before November payments reach households.
On Friday, two federal judges ruled the Trump administration must empty a roughly $5.25 billion emergency fund before cutting off SNAP.
It is not enough to cover the full November benefits, which are expected to cost upwards of $9 billion. The judges indicated the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could use dollars from another funding source to fill the remaining gap for November.
The new update indicates the Trump administration will not do so, calling it an “unacceptable risk.”
“Section 32 Child Nutrition Program funds are not a contingency fund for SNAP,” Patrick Penn, who oversees the SNAP program at the USDA, wrote in a sworn declaration Monday.
“Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances,” he continued.
Penn said USDA can provide states with the specifics on the reductions later Monday so they can begin calculating each household’s new benefit amount. But he warned of disruptions and long delays, suggesting many SNAP recipients will be without benefits for some time.
“For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes States must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months,” Penn said.
The SNAP lapse has become one of the most visible signs of the government shutdown as it approaches its sixth week.
Democratic-led states, cities and private groups sued the administration last week as it warned that SNAP benefits would expire in November as shutdown negotiations remained at a stalemate.
The Trump administration argued that the SNAP emergency fund is only meant for unforeseen disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes, and it can’t be used to mitigate government shutdowns.
But U.S. District Judges John McConnell and Indira Talwani, both appointees of former President Obama, rejected the argument in separate rulings Friday.
McConnell had mandated an update by midday Monday. The administration is still due to provide Talwani an update later in the day.