By Leah Douglas and Nate Raymond
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday it was working to comply with a judge’s order to pay full food aid benefits for nearly 42 million low-income Americans within the day, even as President Donald Trump’s administration urged an appeals court to relieve it of that obligation.
The USDA memo came the same day that the administration also asked a federal appeals court to block the judge’s order. The order issued Thursday blocked the administration’s prior plan to only partially fund benefits during the longest-ever federal government shutdown.
“FNS (USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service) is working towards implementing November 2025 full benefit issuances in compliance with the November 6, 2025, order from the District Court of Rhode Island,” said the memo sent from Patrick Penn, deputy under secretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services at the USDA, to state and regional SNAP administrators.
The USDA did not respond to questions about the memo.
SNAP benefits lapsed at the start of November for the first time in the program’s 60-year history. Recipients have turned to already strained food pantries and made sacrifices like foregoing medications to stretch tight budgets.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, ruled on Thursday that the administration must fully fund SNAP benefits by Friday, which the administration quickly appealed.
The plaintiffs, a group of cities and nonprofits represented by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward, said in a brief that the administration showed disregard for the harm that would befall nearly one in eight Americans if the 1st Circuit agreed to halt McConnell’s decision and allow anything short of full benefit payments to proceed.
“The Court should deny Defendants’ motion and not allow them to further delay getting vital food assistance to individuals and families who need it now,” the lawyers wrote.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Leah Douglas in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)
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