October 31, 2025

By the time you open this email, a federal judge may have ruled that the Trump administration must dip into emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits, at least partially, flowing to the nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the federal assistance program.

If that's what indeed unfolds, as widely believed after the judge's remarks on Thursday, the decision will be a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration, which has claimed from one side of the mouth that it is legally prohibited from using emergency funds, while, from the other, attacking SNAP beneficiaries as lazy and out to swindle the federal government.

Either way, significant challenges will remain for SNAP recipients. But what stays with me is the abject cruelty of this showdown, the logical extreme of a Republican Party that has long promoted the falsehood that those who depend on assistance are corrupt. All those lies you hear right now about food stamp beneficiaries? They've been percolating for decades.

When people say that capitalism is violence, this is exactly what they mean.

—Inae Oh

The Shutdown Will Worsen Hunger—Which the Trump Administration Just Stopped Tracking

Millions of women and children are at risk of losing food benefits.

BY AYURELLA HORN-MULLER

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