SNAP

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

October 29, 2025

Today is the twenty-ninth day of the government shutdown, and the House of Representatives is still on break as House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to force the Senate to pass the House measure to fund the government without negotiating over the Democrats’ demand for the extension of the premium tax credit without which healthcare premiums will skyrocket.

Yesterday air traffic controllers received their first “zero” paycheck. For weeks, flights have been delayed across the country as air traffic controllers call in sick. Also across the country, states are bracing for food insecurity among the 42 million Americans who depend on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits when those payments don’t go out on time on November 1. The administration maintains it cannot distribute the $6 billion the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) holds in reserve to cover for November 1.

Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported on Monday that even some Senate Republicans want to fund SNAP in a stand-alone bill, but yesterday House speaker Johnson dismissed Democrats’ attempts to pass stand-alone measures to fund federal workers and SNAP, calling them a waste of time. Also yesterday, governors and attorneys general from 25 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued the USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the Office of Management and Budget along with its director Russell Vought, and the United States itself over the government’s refusal to use the USDA’s reserves to fund SNAP.

The lawsuit argues that Congress has mandated SNAP payments and has made appropriations for them, including the $6 billion the USDA holds in reserve. Another USDA fund has more than $23 billion in it. The USDA took money from it earlier in the shutdown to fund another nutrition program, the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program. The lawsuit notes that the USDA itself initially said it could use reserve funds; the decision saying it cannot is recent.

The lawsuit notes that the “USDA’s claim that the SNAP contingency funds cannot be used to fund SNAP benefits during an appropriation lapse is contrary to the plain text of the congressional appropriations law, which states that the reserves are for use ‘in such amounts and at such times as may become necessary to carry out program operations’ under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008.”

Today, ignoring Johnson’s insistence that he would not recall the House to debate stand-alone funding for SNAP and WIC, Democrats led by Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico introduced a measure to fund both.

The loss of SNAP benefits will hit not only the 42 million Americans who depend on them but also the stores that accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. At the same time, the cost of healthcare insurance premiums is soaring because of the expiration of the premium tax credits. Medical debt is central to throwing families into bankruptcy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which under President Joe Biden tried to remove medical debt from credit reports, yesterday published a rule to make sure states cannot stop companies from including such debt on credit reports. The acting director of the CFPB is Russell Vought.

So, just as the government stops addressing food insecurity and as healthcare costs skyrocket, the administration permits credit-reporting agencies to put medical debt back onto people’s credit scores even if state laws say they can’t.

This is happening as higher costs, economic uncertainty, and increased use of AI mean hiring is slow and jobs are disappearing across the economy. Lindsay Ellis, Owen Tucker-Smith, and Allison Pohle of the Wall Street Journal reported last night on layoffs at Amazon, UPS, Target, Rivian, Molson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton, and General Motors that together mean the loss of tens of thousands of white-collar jobs.

The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill of July, the law they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and made dramatic changes to SNAP, including cuts of $187 billion from SNAP over ten years. Crucially, the Republicans designed those cuts to go into effect after the 2026 midterm elections.

But their refusal to extend the premium tax credits and end the government shutdown has given Americans an early taste of what those changes will mean.

Despite the growing crisis in the U.S., President Donald J. Trump broke precedent to leave the country during the shutdown. His erratic behavior on that trip has drawn attention. On October 27, Greta Bjornson of People noted that Trump seemed to be referring to a dementia screening when he boasted on Air Force One that he got a perfect score on an “IQ test” that required him to identify “a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe.” Physicians have been giving Trump the test since at least 2018. In Japan, during a welcome ceremony on October 28, Trump appeared to wander, leaving Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi behind.

While Trump is out of the country, the White House has made dramatic changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Sasha Rogelberg of Fortune reported last week that law enforcement agents from ICE are still getting their paychecks, including overtime, thanks to the injection of an extra $75 billion into ICE’s budget from July’s budget reconciliation bill. Nonetheless, ICE is claiming the shutdown means it no longer has any legal obligation to permit congressional oversight visits to its detention facilities.

On October 24, Hamed Aleaziz and Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported that the White House was frustrated that deportations are not moving quickly enough to meet what deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller has said is the target of a million deportations in Trump’s first year.

On October 27, Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner broke the story that the White House was reassigning ICE field officers and replacing them with officers from Customs and Border Patrol (CPB). Greg Wehner and Bill Melugin of Fox News reported that the shift will affect at least eight cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, El Paso, and New Orleans. They reported that the changes reflect a split within the Department of Homeland Security. In one camp, so-called border czar Tom Homan and ICE director Todd Lyons have focused on arresting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes or who have final deportation orders. The other includes Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, special government employee Corey Lewandowski, who advises Noem, and Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol sector chief who has been overseeing the agency’s operations in Los Angeles and Chicago. That faction, Wehner and Melugin say, wants to arrest all undocumented immigrants to boost their deportation numbers.

One senior official told Wehner and Melugin: “ICE is arresting criminal aliens. They [Border Patrol] are hitting Home Depots and car washes.” A border patrol agent, though, told the journalists: “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself—anyone in the U.S. illegally is on the table.”

Bovino has been the official face of CBP’s violence. On October 6, journalists and protesters in the Chicago area sued the Trump administration for a “pattern of extreme brutality” designed to “silence the press and civilians.” On October 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to restrict federal officers’ use of flash-bang grenades, tear gas, pepper-spray and other “less-lethal” weapons and tactics against journalists, peaceful protesters, and religious leaders in and around Chicago. On October 16, after videos emerged of agents throwing tear gas canisters into crowds and charging protesters, Ellis required officers to wear body cameras.

Last Thursday, a video showed Bovino throwing what seemed to be a tear gas canister at protesters without warning, and plaintiffs called Ellis’s attention to it, arguing that his actions violated the TRO. Immigration officers claimed a “mob” of “hostile and violent” rioters had thrown a rock at Bovino and hit him in the head, although none of the videos from the protest show such an event. On Friday, Ellis ordered Bovino to appear in court on October 28, yesterday. Michelle Gallardo, Mark Rivera, and Cate Cauguiran of ABC Eyewitness news in Chicago shared the Department of Homeland Security’s boast that Bovino would “correct Judge Ellis of her deep misconceptions” about what it calls “Operation Midway Blitz.”

In fact, according to WTTW Chicago politics reporter Heather Cherone, Ellis took time to read her initial TRO to Bovino and reminded him that agents must give warnings before throwing tear gas. She called out an incident in Little Village when an agent pointed a pepper gun and then a real gun at a combat veteran lawfully standing on the side of the road and allegedly said: “Bang, bang,” and “You’re dead, liberal.” She also called out an incident in Old Irving Park on the North Side of Chicago in which federal agents threw tear gas near a children’s Halloween costume parade. “Those kids were tear gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “[T]heir sense of safety was shattered.” “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat. They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them,” she said.

When Bovino told Ellis he does not wear a body camera and has not been trained in their use, she ordered him to get one by Friday and undergo training, reminding him that the camera would enable him to back up claims like the rock-throwing incident.

Bovino promised to abide by the TRO. Ellis ordered him to submit to the court all the reports and all the body camera footage of use of force incidents in and around Chicago by Friday. She also ordered Bovino to come to her court every day at 6:00 p.m. to keep her informed of agents’ actions.

Meanwhile, there are also changes underway at the Pentagon. Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced three strikes on four boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed another 14 people. This brings the total of those dead to at least 57. Hegseth says one person survived the recent strikes.

Phil Stewart of Reuters reported yesterday that officials in the Defense Department have asked subordinates to sign non-disclosure agreements concerning the administration’s expanding operations in Latin America. This is, as Stewart puts it, “highly unusual,” especially as lawmakers are complaining the administration is not disclosing information about the strikes that would support its claim that those killed were trafficking drugs. Military officers are already required to keep national security issues out of public view.

Administration officials briefed Republican lawmakers today about the U.S. military strikes but excluded Democrats. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration had shut Democrats out of a briefing on the military strikes. “Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” he said. “Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party. For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress’ constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American