Federal food benefits have started flowing to some low-income Pennsylvanians for November, but uncertainty is still lingering as the bulk of the monthly assistance remains tied up in legal battles and the ongoing federal shutdown.
Gov. Josh Shapiro on Nov. 7 announced that the commonwealth had rushed to restore Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to residents after a judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to provide the aid.
More: Can states provide full SNAP benefits? Trump admin tells them to ‘undo’ efforts
However, the Trump administration has continued to fight in court and, over the weekend, admonished states that started distributing full benefits for November. Federal officials ordered Pennsylvania and several other states to “undo” these payments, but the mandate was stayed temporarily by the courts.
Shapiro decried the “federal government’s cruelty” in digging in over the halt to SNAP.
“The only thing you’re fighting for is to make Americans hungry,” he said. “I don’t know why you’d want to do that.”
About one in eight Pennsylvanians depend on SNAP for grocery assistance totaling about $366 million each month, and the commonwealth is one of more than 20 states pressuring the U.S. Department of Agriculture to tap into its reserves to sustain the program through the government shutdown. The USDA has contended it can’t dip into its contingency fund to keep benefits going.
In the wake of a court decision siding with the states, Shapiro’s administration announced the government had released about $100 million in assistance, saying these payments were being reloaded onto the electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards of certain Keystone State recipients. EBT vendors add benefits onto cards gradually over the first 10 business days of each month, so the payments were already overdue for many SNAP users.
State officials said they had hoped to eliminate the backlog by the end of Nov. 7 and said the month’s benefits would continue flowing for the ensuing several days. However, later that evening, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson paused the court order compelling the release of grocery benefits.
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services said EBT vendors managed to issue about $70 million in benefits before the justice’s stay took effect.
“At this time, USDA has not indicated that Pennsylvanians cannot use money already on their EBT cards to purchase food across the Commonwealth,” Brandon Cwalina, the agency’s spokesperson, said in a statement.
Trump officials have indicated they will take their bid to withhold full food stamps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the same time, congressional action to reopen the government could restart the program and end the legal fight over SNAP.
Bethany Rodgers is a USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania investigative journalist.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Have SNAP benefits in PA restarted?
