Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said Saturday that her administration expects residents who receive federal food aid to start seeing their accounts replenished on Sunday after a weeklong delay — even after the Supreme Court seemed to pause the flow of funds from the federal government Friday night, causing confusion about what comes next.
A Hochul spokesperson said the state plans to get funds to all New York SNAP recipients by the end of the week “if the federal government upholds their commitment.”
The spokesperson, Nicolette Simmonds, said New York hadn’t heard from the U.S. Department of Agriculture since the Supreme Court order “and as such, the state is continuing to issue benefits using federal funds.”
But it wasn’t immediately clear what upholding the feds’ commitment would mean in light of the latest back-and-forth among the courts. Gothamist has reached out to Simmonds seeking further clarification.
“ We've been asking the state to issue these benefits as soon as possible, to get them out to people before, frankly, the USDA tries clawing them back,” said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a national organization that’s headquartered in New York and works with local SNAP recipients.
Berg said the Trump administration’s disruption of SNAP benefits has exacerbated an existing hunger crisis and beneficiaries of the program have been expressing “fear, anxiety, anger.”
On Thursday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP and release money for the program to states by Friday. The Trump administration immediately appealed that decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which said it would review the request but declined to pause the funds while it considered the case.
Hochul had told New Yorkers on Friday that food assistance was set to resume this weekend — but then late that evening, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily halted the Rhode Island judge’s order to give the appeals court time to decide whether to grant a longer delay — once again leaving millions of New Yorkers in limbo.
Simmonds added that Hochul’s office continues to monitor the situation as it evolves.
Some advocates for hungry New Yorkers previously called on New York to use state funds to cover SNAP benefits for the month of November if federal dollars didn’t come through.
Hochul posted a video Saturday afternoon calling the federal administration’s decision to go to the Supreme Court “cruel” and “depraved” but offered no updates in the video directly to confused New Yorkers who may have been wondering if there would be money in their accounts Sunday.
In New Jersey, officials said full November SNAP funding had already been released to the state’s 800,000 recipients before the Supreme Court’s order. Those benefits remain available, for now, through EBT cards. Still, officials in New Jersey said, it’s unclear whether the USDA will allow the state’s vendor to continue drawing federal funds beyond that. The state urged residents to check their EBT balances and use benefits as needed while it monitors developments.
In an appearance on FOX News, federal Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blamed Congress for the ordeal.
“The executive branch takes the money … from the legislative branch,” she said. “This goes back to the very beginning. We just can't create money out of the sky. That's not how the United States works.”
But multiple courts have now ruled that emergency funding does exist for scenarios like this and has repeatedly ordered the Trump administration to make that funding available to families in need.
