In a dramatic late-night ruling Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a critical win in the escalating budget war with Senate Democrats, temporarily blocking a lower court’s order that would have forced the administration to immediately release billions in emergency food stamp payments — money the administration argues simply doesn’t exist.
At issue is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds over 42 million Americans each month. With the government now in its sixth week of a shutdown, the White House had already tapped into its full $5 billion contingency reserve to make partial payments for November. But a lower court ordered the administration to come up with $4 billion more — by midnight — to fully fund the program.
The Supreme Court said: not so fast.
Judicial activism at its worst.
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…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) November 7, 2025
Citing the “imminent, irreparable harms” posed by the order, Solicitor General Liz Diamond argued that the courts were crossing a constitutional line by attempting to reallocate federal funds without congressional authorization. “Congress has failed to appropriate funds… The Executive Branch has since exhausted the entirety of its SNAP contingency reserve,” the emergency filing read. “But that will be only enough to cover partial payments for the month of November.”
The high court’s 48-hour administrative stay — notably issued by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — blocks the lower court’s order and gives the Trump administration breathing room while legal arguments unfold. Though temporary, the ruling is a powerful rebuke of judicial overreach in the face of fiscal paralysis — and a rare moment of bipartisan recognition that the courts cannot play Congress when the budget breaks down.
More from the administration’s #SCOTUS filing over #SNAP benefits – putting blame squarely on lawmakers:
“Congress has failed to appropriate funds to pay for Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for this fiscal year. The Executive Branch has
since…— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) November 8, 2025
The Department of Justice put it bluntly in its argument: “The court below took the current shutdown as effective license to declare a federal bankruptcy and appoint itself the trustee.”
In short: the court was about to pick winners and losers with dwindling federal funds, absent any legislative authority to do so.
SNAP UPDATE: The Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay.
The Federal Government can’t just create money for food stamps when Democrats CHOOSE to not fund the government (14 times and counting♀️).
Activist judges have ordered reckless and unconstitutional legal maneuvers… pic.twitter.com/kbh2izckOz
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) November 8, 2025
The context of this fight matters. Democrats in the Senate have now voted 14 times to keep the government shut down, refusing to negotiate a Republican plan that would fund government operations while eliminating expiring Obamacare subsidies and rejecting funding for illegal migrant healthcare and radical social priorities.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t mince words either. Its homepage now directly blames Democrats for the disruption to SNAP and other vital services, citing blocked funding for food inspection, farm programs, and rural development. “Senate Democrats are withholding services to the American people in exchange for healthcare for illegals, gender mutilation, and other unknown ‘leverage’ points,” the agency stated — a level of bluntness rarely seen from federal departments, but perhaps fitting for the scale of the crisis.
As our Supreme Court brief puts it:
“The core power of Congress is that of the purse, while the Executive is tasked with allocating limited resources across competing priorities. But here, the court below took the current shutdown as effective license to declare a federal…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) November 7, 2025
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the ruling late Friday, posting to X: “The Supreme Court just granted our administrative stay in this case. Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”
