The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger programme during the government shutdown.
The agriculture department issued the command in a late-night Saturday memo, viewed later by The New York Times. That guidance threatened to impose financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the government’s new orders.
By Sunday morning, officials in several states said they were unsure how the latest directive from the Trump administration would affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, known as SNAP. The programme, which serves one in eight Americans, has already faced staggering disruptions in recent days, as President Donald Trump and his top aides have refused to fund it fully while the government remains closed.
The food stamp programme is funded by the federal government but largely managed by states. To provide benefits, states send files to processors, which manage the electronic benefit transfer system, known as EBT. These vendors then make the funds available on EBT cards, which are the primary way that SNAP recipients purchase groceries.
David A. Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Centre, said it would not be “legal” for the government to claw back benefits that it had already provisioned without affording people due process.
But, Super added, the federal government could halt work that some states had started, but not finished, to release full allotments to families this month. He said the memo could serve to “scare states partway along the process, and it’s telling the states to turn back”.