Minnesota among states facing Trump administration sanctions for releasing SNAP benefits

WASHINGTON The end of the administration shutdown won t end the saga over food stamp funding Left unsolved is whether and how the Trump administration will carry out its threat to financially punish states like Minnesota that published full benefits to food stamp recipients last weekend The Trump administration first disclosed it would pay food stamp benefits for the month of November then explained it wouldn t and absolutely after a court order mandated the payments out of urgency funds disclosed it only had money for partial payments The reopening of the executive will mean recipients across the nation whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Campaign SNAP benefits were cut off since Nov will certainly receive their benefits without interruption That s because the bill that reopened the authorities signed into law by President Donald Trump late Wednesday includes funding for the U S Department of Agriculture the agency that funds SNAP for a full year Related Did the federal executive warn retailers not to give discounts to SNAP food stamp recipients A few states like Minnesota did not wait for the shutdown to end and delivered full benefits to SNAP recipients Now they are threatened with reprisal The USDA warned states over the weekend to desist from paying out full SNAP benefits even as two federal courts ruled that the USDA must release those payments and the agency had issued a memo telling states they could move forward The Trump administration appealed those court decisions and the USDA threatened to impose harsh financial penalties on states that did not comply speedily with the new federal order to undo or take money to buy food from poor Americans The Trump administration also narrated a court that states would be responsible for the consequences of their actions The guidance the USDA issued late in the day on Nov stated states that rushed out full food stamp benefits like Minnesota New York Oregon Pennsylvania Wisconsin and others may end in USDA taking various actions including cancellation of the Federal share of State administrative costs and holding States liable for any over issuances that development from the noncompliance That means Minnesota could lose the roughly million it was slated to receive from the USDA to administer the food stamp effort money that is shared with the state s counties that manage the plan Before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced the federal share of those administrative costs the amount Minnesota received was about million Or Minnesota could be required to pay back the difference between the partial payments the USDA says were authorized and the full payments that the USDA says were not That could cost the state about million In either situation if the USDA carries out its threat Minnesota stands to pay a price The cruelty is the point Sen Amy Klobuchar D-Minn noted in a social media post It is their choice to do this The cruelty is the point It is their choice to do this Senator Amy Klobuchar klobuchar senate gov - - T Z Minnesota and other states that have sued the Trump administration to release the SNAP benefits requested a judge on Saturday to shield states that issued full benefits from punishment They cited legal uncertainty conflicting instructions from the USDA which at one point reported it was preparing to release full food stamp benefits A mess of court orders and still no help The USDA did not respond to a request for comment Minnesota s Department of Children Youth and Families says it has not received additional information from the USDA beyond what was included in the Nov memo That same day Gary Garrow one of Minnesota s food stamp recipients received his full November benefits A disabled former taxi driver who lives in Minneapolis Garrow was making other arrangements to try to meet his nutritional requirements when his benefit amount clicked into the EBT card he uses to buy food I was already planning what food shelves to go to and trying to make an appointment Garrow reported Garrow who lives in the Elliot Twins Apartment also commented his neighbors received their SNAP benefits that day Meanwhile even as the shutdown was moving toward an end the Trump administration continued to battle the release of SNAP funds in court It appealed a ruling by the Boston-based st Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the USDA to fully release SNAP funding to the U S Supreme Court last Friday Minnesota Department of Children Youth and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown indicated the appeals court s ruling prompted the state to release benefits As the longest shutdown in U S history concludes its sixth week we are incredibly grateful Minnesotans will soon have access to their food benefits thanks to pivotal legal system updates Brown reported in a report Related Not only the elderly and disabled A look at the Minnesotans who receive SNAP benefits Then the Supreme Court declared the Trump administration could continue to block SNAP payments and sent the development back to the federal appeals court which once again ordered the release of funds on Monday The Trump administration appealed again to the Supreme Court The high court on Tuesday extended its order that allows the Trump administration to withhold paying for full food stamp payments in November The move appeared to anticipate that the -day long shutdown would end this week allowing all of the nation s million SNAP recipients to once again be able to count on the campaign So the SNAP situation is over But food stamps have never been cut off in any other cabinet shutdown and the fighting during this shutdown on Capitol Hill and in the courts and the Trump administration s refusal to use urgency funds to pay benefits are likely to have a lingering impact on the nation s poorest Americans The post Minnesota among states facing Trump administration sanctions for releasing SNAP benefits appeared first on MinnPost