The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Trump administration may temporarily withhold approximately $4 billion in food assistance payments affecting 42 million low-income Americans, a substantial portion of whom reside in counties that enthusiastically voted for the president.
Nearly four out of five U.S. counties that have seen an increase in households receiving food stamps since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020, according to available data, though this curious demographic overlap appears to have gone completely unnoticed by administration officials celebrating the ruling.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an administrative stay, giving lower courts additional time to review the case while millions of Americans await the $4 billion needed to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for November amid the ongoing government shutdown.
The decision represents a significant legal triumph for an administration that has consistently demonstrated its commitment to ensuring that economically vulnerable Americans in Republican strongholds receive exactly the level of government assistance they voted for: substantially less.
The average Republican in the House has 33,500 households in his district that receive SNAP benefits, including an average of 16,000 children, 13,000 seniors and 17,000 people with disabilities
