The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP, which feeds 42 million Americans, has been used as a political pawn in the ongoing government shutdown.

Just last week, 25 states and the District of Columbia successfully sued the Trump administration in a push to use contingency funds to pay for the program. Hello, and welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Tuesday, November 4, 2025. In 1939, as the country sought its way out of the Great Depression, the U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented the first food stamp program. The original program spawned other pilot programs, which have been revised through the years. But at their core, these programs remain a crucial safety net for

some of the countries most vulnerable. Here to discuss some of the politics around the SNAP program

and the effects on everyday Americans. I'm now joined by USA Today, Senior National Reporter,

Sarah D. Wyer. Sarah, it's good to have you here. Thanks for having me.

Sarah, first, tell me about the case and the rulings which came down on October 31st, just one day shy of the funding deadline.

So the case was brought by governors and attorney generals from 25 different states. And on

Halloween, actually, day before they were supposed to go into effect,

two different judges ruled that the federal government did have to provide these benefits. And they

gave the Trump administration until November 3rd to come back with a plan, whether that was

going to be partially funding or whether they were going to move money around in order to provide these benefits. At this point, it looks like about half of people's snap

benefits will arrive. This is a process. It's going to take a couple of days. It's not going to be

immediate. And in one of the cases that Trump administration has not answered whether they're going

to pay the rest of the benefit later in November.

In both cases, the judges said that the administration did have the authority to spend the money,

something that they've said in the last few weeks that they didn't believe they had.

They've also said that the Trump administration has the authority to move money from tariffs in order to fully fund SNAP benefits because of the wording in the SNAP law,

which says that it will be provided, not that it shall be provided. There's news out just on

Monday with Trump weighing in on this. What did he say he'd do? The biggest thing was that he said

he wasn't planning on appealing it, that if he got the authority to spend his money, if the court said that he could, that he'd

go forward with it. But he wanted the courts to explain what authority he had. And Sarah, where

does this leave states? A lot of states had already said that they were going to try to help out in some

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