The Hunger Games 2.0

 

     Not long before my roommate left town for an extended period last summer, we went to St. Mary's food bank on 3131 West Thomas Road here in Phoenix. St. Mary's partners with over 700 other organizations to help feed the hungry and the W. Thomas Road facility is a sprawling complex nearly as large as small industrial parks. There's no paperwork to fill out, no vetting process. You drive up, show your license to a volunteer to scan and you're in. The only restriction is that you can't go back more than once a week.

     It was our third trip to St. Mary's in the 18+ months I've been living here. The first two times, we were put in one of two lines that bent around the complex. Once you're in, expect a wait of at least half an hour. But the wait is worth it. Once you go around the last bend, you'll see dozens of dedicated volunteers working very hard to load the trunks and back hatches of peoples' vehicles. You get canned food, dry goods and even fresh produce. I don't know how many people St. Mary's helps each month but the size of the complex gives one a rough idea of the sheer scale of the good they do for Phoenix residents.

     The last time we went, I noticed the lines had been expanded to three to handle the growing number of people seeking nutrition assistance. When I mentioned this to my roommate, he said that things were only going to get worse. Often prescient, he was right. St. Mary's is the largest food bank in the capital city of Arizona and it's a wonderful way to stretch one's SNAP benefits.

     This was August, just before he left for Florida, about a month and a half before the government shutdown. I can only imagine how long the lines are now that the government is bitterly fighting tooth and nail to be allowed to starve Americans just weeks before Thanksgiving.

     Just two days ago, I got my benefits after a five day delay. Then this morning I woke up and discovered the USDA is ordering state agencies to claw back the benefits they'd already disbursed this month. Noncompliance, they balefully added, would cost them government funding, the usual Trump tactic when things don't go his way. “To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized. Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” they said.

     I checked my EBT card's balance right after learning this and, for now, I still have the November allotment. But, since this situation is ridiculously fluid, that money could disappear at any moment. Luckily, our state government is run by Democrats and perhaps our Attorney General, Kris Mayes, will take the government to court for injunctive relief. As it is, literally half the states in the union are hauling the Trump administration to court for not coughing up the congressionally-allocated funds for the SNAP program.

     So I'm left with a quandary: Do I keep the benefits on my card and hope for the best or spend them all now to prevent my own government from stealing them? I can think of 42,000,000 of my fellow Americans who are thinking the same thing now.

     The government has the money. They simply don't want to use it to feed the 42,000,000 Americans who are on the SNAP program. At first, the US District courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ordered the USDA to release the funds in a contingency account with about $5.5-6 billion in it. But then it became known that the USDA had another, much larger account with tens of billions more in it, called Section 32. 

     Section 32 has been around for 90 years. It's a Roosevelt-era commodity procurement program that acts as an emergency fund in the event of disaster (such as putting Donald Trump back in the White House). The latest estimate is that there's $24.4 billion in the Section 32 fund, which would fund SNAP for three solid months.

     But then the government audaciously said, "But... but what about the children from whom we took away a billion dollars in school lunch funding?" Yes, the USDA, and Trump, are hiding behind the bodies of countless millions of children who had their school lunches taken from them by the orange Grinch as a way to defy the court's order.

     Here's the reason for the USDA's turnaround: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, of all people, temporarily lifted the deadline for the disbursement of SNAP benefits (the 1st Circuit is her jurisdiction). Two days ago, right after the USDA released the funds per Judge John McConnell's order, the USDA appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the lower court's order. Said Politico, 

      "However, Jackson, a Biden appointee, noted that the appeals court indicated it planned to release a further ruling 'as quickly as possible' and she said lifting the deadline for now would 'facilitate' the appeals court’s next action, which she said she expected 'with dispatch'.”

     It's not up to me to question Justice Brown's actions, but on the face of it it seems wrong-headed and the government is taking full advantage of this small window of opportunity to try to claw back those benefits then preemptively threaten state agencies' administrative funding if they don't comply.

     In his 27 page ruling, Judge McConnell wrote, “This Court is not naïve to the administration’s true motivations. Far from being concerned with Child Nutrition funding, these statements make clear that the administration is withholding full SNAP benefits for political purposes.” His clarity of thought on the matter and refusal to sugar-coat the administration's real motives are refreshing to read but offer no long-term relief as the Trump junta runs back to the Supreme Court yet again like a local bully running to his Daddy when opposed.

     I haven't been to St. Mary's since last summer but I can only imagine the impossibly long lines off W. Thomas Road. As much good as they do, it's shameful that organizations like St. Mary's even have to exist in the richest country on earth or that we need a SNAP program to feed one eighth of our population. And one can be forgiven for conjuring images of long bread lines in Soviet Russia from decades ago.