So this gets complicated.
Article I establishes the legislative branch, Congress. Congress controls the purse. They decide how money is to be spent and what tax rates should be.
Once Congress allocates money, it is the responsibility of the Article II executive to spend the money.
The Article III judiciary is there to make sure that what Article I and Article II branches are within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Congress decided that they were not allocating money for non-essential work for the 2025-2026 budget year, which started October 1st.
This means that only essential money can be spent.
SNAP is not considered an essential expenditure. And before you get upset about this, the military is something in the Constitution, and they are not considered essential.
This means that The Executive, The President, ordered the United States Department of Agriculture to stop SNAP payments.
SNAP benefits are administered at the state level. The state gets money from the federal government, skims a bit off the top, and then sends the money to those with EBT cards. Note, having an EBT card doesn’t mean you are on SNAP. EBT cards are bought and sold all the time. Yes, that’s illegal.
A group went to a district court in Massachusetts. Why? Because it is a progressive hell hole.
They claimed that it was illegal for the president to turn off the SNAP spigot. The judge agreed and issued a temporary order requiring the Article II Executive to take money from a pot of money that Congress had allocated for something else and send it to the SNAP program.
The Article II Executive appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming that the Article III district court did not have the power or authority to order the Article II Executive to break the law and send money that Congress did not allocate to the SNAP program.
The First Circuit looked at the facts; the petitioner is the Trump administration, and they lose.
This ran out the clock. Even if a judicial order is illegal, you must follow it or face contempt charges.
The money was stolen from one program, sent to the USDA, which then sent it to the states. The states then sent it to the EBT cards.
The Article II Executive appealed the case to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket. KJB then issued an administrative stay. Yeah, even a broken clock is right once or twice a day.
The USDA then started the clawback process, demanding the money back.
The states said, “We don’t have it, we sent it out.”
The states should have clawed back all the unspent money on EBT cards.
Regardless, those states now owe the federal government all the money they spent.
The good news is that 8 Democrat Senators have voted for a CR through January.
More precisely, it is the responsibility of the Executive not to spend money not appropriated by law. The Constitution doesn’t actually require all appropriate money to be spent; that’s a dubious innovation inflicted in the aftermath of the Nixon presidency, as were a bunch other equally questionable innovations (like the War Powers thing).