Friday Round Up! 11/7/25

The Trump administration's official legal position is: Let them eat cake (or not at all).

A few quick notes up front: First, next Saturday is my birthday! So, I will be taking a break from the Round Up to spend the weekend with my kids. (I might send a pic, though!) Second, I have some exciting announcements coming up soon after that about some fun changes to the Substack for the New Year, so stay tuned!

It’s 9:16 p.m. on Friday as I write this (I do often actually write these on Friday), and I’m waiting to see whether the Supreme Court is going to give the Trump administration yet another assist in its effort to break the country. This time we’re not talking about deportations or racial profiling, but about funding SNAP benefits so Americans don’t starve until the government opens up again. You’d think this would be an easy one, but this Court may not think so.

Others have written about the procedural nuts and bolts of the lawsuit, so I won’t rehash them here. The main substantive issue centers around two buckets of money available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund SNAP benefits in the event of a government shutdown. The first includes about $6 billion in “contingency funds” that can be used to cover a shortfall in appropriations for SNAP. The second includes $23 billion in “Section 32” funds, which are designated for nutrition programs (and which the administration has stated an intention to use for programs like WIC and the Child Nutrition Program), and which under the law can be used “interchangeably” by the USDA for other nutrition programs, like SNAP.

*A key point here is that the contingency fund alone cannot fully fund SNAP, so relying only on that would require “partial funding” — meaning that the amount allocated to states across the board would need to be reduced by 35%. And, according to the administration, the payment system isn’t set up for partial funding, and would therefore require administrative adjustments that might result in delays of several months. (Again, this is just the administration’s claim.)

On October 31, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a TRO, giving the Trump administration two options: 1) partially fund SNAP using the contingency fund only, as long as it was done “expeditiously” (i.e., deal with the administrative problems ASAP) and no later than last Wednesday AND as long as the administration could provide a reason for partial funding that was not “arbitrary and capricious”; OR 2) fully fund SNAP using one or both of the available funds no later than last Monday. Well, the administration chose Option 1. Except that on Wednesday, the administration basically said (I’m paraphrasing), “Yeah sorry, this is going to take a while, because we’ve never partially funded SNAP before so it might be months to get this all figured out.”

In short, they chose the one option provided offered by the judge that they knew they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) comply with. The administration also claimed that the reason it could not choose Option 2 and dip into the Section 32 funds is because to do so would take money away from the Child Nutrition program — leaving that program “with an unprecedented and significant shortfall.”

It sounds compelling on its face, in a Jedi-mind-trick sort of way. The problem is that the math on this claim just doesn’t add up. Remember that there is $23 billion in Section 32 funds. According to the district court, the contingency fund leaves a deficit of $4 billion to fully fund SNAP for November. It costs $3 billion per month to fund Child Nutrition program. So even moving over $4 billion to SNAP would leave $19 billion in Section 32 funds, allowing the Child Nutrition Program to still continue for November (and beyond). To put a finer point on it, the court noted:

Contrary to what the Defendants claim, 29 million children who participate in the Child Nutrition Program are not at risk of immediately going hungry in the event of a transfer of Section 32 funds. Instead, SNAP recipients—16 million of whom are children—will go hungry if they do not receive their SNAP benefits this month…In other words, it defies belief that the Defendants would prioritize a hypothetical disruption in child food assistance, projected to occur no sooner than May of 2026 (if at all), over the very real and immediate risk of children being deprived of their food assistance today.

In short, the court is saying, the administration’s argument is bullshit.

So on Thursday, the district court issued a second TRO, basically calling the administration’s voodoo math out and concluding that its reasons for not fully funding SNAP — and not “expeditiously” funding it even partially — were political, and ordered the administration to implement Option 2: Fully fund SNAP using both buckets of money, by Friday.

As usual, the administration ran to the Supreme Court, asking for a stay of the TRO, and without even waiting for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a decision on the appeal to them, first. (As I write this, I’ve learned that Justice Jackson has issued an administrative stay, to give the First Circuit a chance to rule first on whether to stay the TRO — One First has a write up on that here.)

In its application to the Court, the administration rehashes its voodoo math. But what’s really rich is the other part of its argument. THIS administration is claiming that the district court has usurped Congress’ power of the purse by ordering how money should be spent, arguing that its “unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers.” HA! It gets better. The administration goes on,

Put simply, the district courts’ orders are not short-term emergency measures keeping existing affairs in place. They are a single judge’s attempt to commandeer billions of dollars in federal funds to address the consequences of the government shutdown as he sees fit, and to do so in a way that would force the transfer and expenditure of billions of dollars that would otherwise go towards other worthy ends on a timetable guaranteed thwart meaningful appellate review.

Pot-kettle, anyone? And not sure about you, but I had a flashback to this scene from Ghostbusters:

Reading between the lines, it also seems like the administration has #$%! up, even in its attempt to starve people across the country. It appears that precisely because the SNAP system is not set up for “partial payments,” once the USDA opened the contingency fund (or whatever it did on the backend to let that money flow into SNAP), several states that were waiting in the wings, like California, Kansas, Oregon, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, moved like the wind to submit their full SNAP requests as per the district court’s Thursday order — resulting in their states getting full funding. Which is great! Except that some other states are still “waiting for federal guidance.” So…if some states have gotten full funds and the contingency fund is potentially already dry, where does it leave the ones that haven’t gotten anything?

In its application for a stay, the government argues — to support its claim of “irreparable harm” — that if it is required to use Section 32 funds to fund SNAP, it can never recover this money from the states since they will be disbursed immediately. If that is true, then the only issue that should be in front of the Court is one of equity — if some handful of states have received full SNAP funding for November, then it would only seem fair that the others do too if there is no way to claw any of the money back and redistribute evenly, if only partially.

But “fair” is not this Court’s strong suit, so don’t get your hopes up. Stay tuned for more updates as this unfolds.

Meanwhile, in this week’s pod Renato and I discuss the Comey “Choose Your Own Adventure” Indictment, as well as the skepticism from SCOTUS (finally!) in the tariffs case. Plus I make mild progress on my knowledge of Major League Baseball.

Join me and Renato in Alaska!

It’s Complicated is cruisin’! Come join me and Renato as we explore the stunning beauty of Alaska and discuss how we can work together to protect our democracy! It’s a small ship, and there will be lots of opportunities to talk to us both, plus we will have an opening and closing reception and dedicated democracy discussion tables throughout the cruise. You can find out more at this link, and fill out your info here to have an agent call you with more information. Stay tuned for our next happy hour/info session!

Upcoming events:

• COMING UP! Class Guest Speaker Professor John Witt, author of the forthcoming The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, Tuesday, November 11, 7:30 p.m. EST. Our current moment has many parallels to the Gilded Age. The Progressive Era, which followed, generated many grassroots movements and jumpstarted our democracy towards what Scholar Robert Putnam calls an “upswing.” Professor Witt’s book is about one of those movements, which may hold lessons for us today. Please join! Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.

• NEW! Zoom Office Hours, Tuesday, November 25, 4 p.m. EST. We will discuss the latest. I hope to bring in another special guest, so stay tuned! Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before the event. Office hours are not recorded.

• Wednesday, December 3, 12 p.m. EST. Class Guest Speaker

  David Pepper
  and author of the Pepperspectives Substack, on Local Affairs and the Habits of Democracy. So excited to have my friend, law school classmate, and colleague David — who has been a previous guest speaker for my Substack class on the role of state politics in facilitating autocracy — come and talk to us about how we can effect change at the local level. Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.

• NEW! Wine & Fries Holiday Happy Hour (date/time TBA — soon after I am back from Thailand on December 20!). We’ll close out 2025 with our usual no-politics-allowed wrap up of the year. Zoom link will be sent to Wine and Fries (founding) members three hours before the event.

• Freedom Academy Book Club, Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA by Christina Hillsberg (Date/Time TBA, sometime in January 2026). Christina interviewed women from different eras of the CIA and paints a picture of what being a female spy in the agency was really like. Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before the event. The talk will be recorded and posted for those who cannot make it live.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I am getting a lot of questions from friends and colleagues asking what they can do in this urgent political moment. I have three potential actions steps you can take now:

1. Pro bono lawyers are on the front lines to stop Trump’s breakdown, takedown, and shakedown of the federal government. You can contribute to this effort on the donation page of State Democracy Defenders Action

2. I think it’s worth reupping from last week: If you have not already and are able, donate to a local food bank to help those who will have their SNAP benefits cut off as of today. (Also check schools and your local libraries, which may be running food drives or offering free pantries.)

3. Self care tip of the week: Enjoy your (or a) pet. I realize not everyone owns a pet, but I have to admit I have been extra snuggly with mine this week. I haven’t posted a picture of Pancake in a while, so am doing so here. If you are not fortunate to have this kind of cuteness in your home, visit a kitty cafe, a friend who owns a pet, or hey, adopt one. Why not? Would love to see your fur babies in the comments!

   

‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’

— The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley, stanza XXXVIII