It’s not that it was credible when Trump said he would be “honored” to fund SNAP so 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, wouldn’t go hungry, except that he didn’t think he had the lawful authority. The general notion that lawful authority entered into the calculus didn’t pass the sniff test, but the specifics were outright ridiculous given the alacrity with which Trump scrounged up money to pay the military.
But after Judge John McConnell, twice, ordered payment, thus conclusively establishing that lawful basis that so concerned our law-abiding president, it seemed that there was no way, no conceivable way, that the President of the United State of America, could stand up and fight against feeding starving children. Remember the old lawyer joke?
Client: What happened in court?
Lawyer: Justice was done.
Client: Appeal immediately.
The Justice Department quickly appealed, arguing on Friday that there was no “lawful basis” to force the president to find money in the “metaphorical couch cushions.” But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to impose a temporary halt to the judge’s order, known as an administrative stay, prompting the administration to turn to the Supreme Court by Friday night.
As if the Trump administration wasn’t desperately seeking an excuse, any excuse, not to feed the hungry, when the First Circuit refused to stay the order, they doubled down at SCOTUS.
“A single district court in Rhode Island should not be able to seize center stage in the shutdown, seek to upend political negotiations that could produce swift political solutions for SNAP and other programs, and dictate its own preferences for how scarce federal funds should be spent,” said Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in a series of posts on social media.
How dare a single district court in Rhode Island (completely ignoring the circuit court) tell the president to use readily available and appropriated funds to feed the hungry is not a position many attorneys general would have the shamelessness to take.
But Bondi’s statement says the quiet part out loud. It’s not about the legal authority, as Trump initially pretended, to pay for food stamps, but about using starving Americans as leverage to force the Democrats to capitulate to Trump’s demand to end the shut down. The threat is that Trump is more than willing to let hungry, a group unlikely to ever be invited to dine in Trump’s golden ballroom, starve if the Dems don’t acquiesce by letting go of ACA subsidies so that millions of Americans can afford their health insurance.
As if appealing the ruling to the First Circuit wasn’t bad enough, Trump turned to the Supreme Court after the circuit refused to stay Judge McConnell’s ruling.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday temporarily halted a court order that would have required the Trump administration to fund food stamps in full, in a move that fueled new uncertainty around the immediate fate of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.
The justice did not rule on the legality of the White House’s actions. Instead, she imposed a pause meant to give an appeals court more time to weigh legal arguments in the case, as the government forged ahead in its bid to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the federal shutdown.
Judge Jackson issued an administrative stay, which is not an endorsement of the merits of the government’s position. But any delay in funding SNAP payments means that people will go without food. In the scheme of irreparable harm, there is little more irreparable than hunger. And yet, despite there being funds to use and legal authority to use them, Trump has made the decision that he would rather use starving children as a bargaining chip against the Democrats.
It seemed inconceivable that any president, even Trump, would choose to let Americans go hungry to gain leverage in his fight over the shutdown. Yet, that was the choice he made, making this the worst appeal ever as the President fights for his authority to starve Americans.
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Brazen. Trump’s legacy will be having shown other people it can be done.
If I could slightly modify Blackstone’s Ratio.
“It is better that 10 unqualified for food stamps get fed than one qualified individual go hungry.”
I voted for Trump and agree with a lot of what he has done, but this I disagree with.
There are ways to get unqualified individuals off the rolls without punishing the deserving.
Deuteronomy 15:8.
“But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.”
“The word ‘grocery,’ it’s a sort of simple word. But it sort of means, like, everything you eat. The stomach is speaking, it always does. And I have more complaints about that ― bacon, and things going up double, triple, quadruple.” Trump last October.
“Don’t talk to me about the affordability!” I think it’s the ass that’s speaking…
Well played, Howl. I was betting on, “Cheeseburger in Paradise”.
I know that the phrase “rule of law” is only a talking point and not an actual principle but if each individual Federal district court judge can decide where “available” $$ gets spent during a shutdown caused by many programs not having appropriated funds available, we will end up with judicial civil wars. A conservative judge in Wyoming could order the Section 32 fund to be spent on ICE agents while a district court judge in Rhode Island orders the same $$ be spent on SNAP while another district court judge orders the same $$ spent on air traffic controllers. And on and on.
I’m not suggesting this is motivating Trump or any of the other players in the SNAP litigation but it seems like it should be a concern for the judiciary.
That this is a crisis of the executive branch’s own making is obvious. I recognize a certain emulsion has taken place over the past two decades between the executive branch and the leading legislative party. I still find it rich for the executive branch to accuse a federal court of straying from its lane in the same breath that the executive branch justifies disregarding an existing legislative mandate in hopes of getting more legislative hand-outs.
Careful what you wish for; it must just come true.
Society is only three meals away from chaos; Nine meals away from anarchy.
It seems both parties have agreed that advancing their goals in the shutdown is worth starving 42 million Americans. It is a light on the political morality of our times, and the continuing validity of my most valuable advice, “don’t be poor.”
I know this ain’t Tuesday, but the issue is much bigger than Trump’s hubris or a judge trying to exercise powers to to prioritize spending that the judiciary was not intended to exercise. For 250 years the Republic depended on the three branches staying in their lanes. Now we have a president governing by executive orders while Hegseth systematically turning the regular military and the National Guard into a Praetorian Guard to deploy against MAGA’s political enemies while normalizing a secret police force snatching people off the streets with no accountability. Congress long ago ceded the war making power to the executive so now the military bombs boats and polices the border and the cities. And government shutdowns, invented only 45 years ago are becoming normalized pressure tactics while states enact legislation and pass constitutional amendments to legalize political gerrymandering. This is a race to the bottom. Or maybe national suicide. The least dangerous branch is just not equipped on any level to do the job of Congress and the President which is why Brown-Jackson, probably the most liberal judge on SCOTUS, threw up her hands and stayed the district court’s order. She wants to give the First Circuit time to consider the merits before kicking the case up to the Supreme Court. Jackson’s order is a recognition that too many liberals are demanding too much from SCOTUS’s shadow docket. SCOTUS is not set up to be a court of first impression. IMO it is a good thing that the Roberts Court generally avoids writing long decisions on emergency applications. But the overload is becoming overwhelming. Judges cannot save us from our selves or the selfish partisan politicians we elect.
Scott, this is not the worst appeal ever. If I have learned one thing from Trump’s second term, it is that the worst is always yet to come.
I’m thinking Jackson was afraid that if she didn’t grant Bondi’s stay, the conservative majority would have overruled her and maybe gone straight to the merits. Now at least the First Circuit gets a chance to make a record..