National SDS Condemns the Trump Administration’s Weaponization of Hunger

In the strongest possible terms, National SDS condemns the Trump administration’s choosing to use hunger as a bargaining chip.

The recent government shutdown, the longest in US history, has exposed the Trump administration’s cynical and morally bankrupt strategy to further enrich billionaires by cutting a huge hole in the nation’s already insufficient social safety net. We are witnessing the political weaponization of hunger. The crisis over SNAP benefits is not an accident. It is an intentional, manufactured atrocity executed by the administration and its allies in Congress.

The initial standoff, which saw Speaker Mike Johnson shut down the House, was designed to force a Sophie’s Choice upon Democrats: either surrender on protecting healthcare for millions of low-income citizens, or become complicit in ripping food from the mouths of 42 million low-income families. This was a calculated gamble designed to wreak human suffering, no matter which option Democrats in Congress chose.

For weeks, the administration claimed its hands were tied legally, that it wanted to fund SNAP but could not find a legal avenue to do so. Multiple federal courts rejected this bad-faith argument and ordered the government to fully fund SNAP benefits. But the administration refused. It appealed the decisions all the way to the Supreme Court–appealing for the right to deny our nation’s most vulnerable citizens food.

While the administration dallied with its machinations, multiple states had announced they would fund SNAP for their citizens until the federal government could get its act together. When the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay, allowing the Trump administration to refuse to fund SNAP while it negotiated, yet another evil act by an increasingly irrelevant and unhinged Court, the administration seized that narrow legal window to inflict more pain. The Department of Agriculture issued a chilling, unprecedented order demanding that states “immediately undo” any steps they had taken to distribute the full benefits. In other words, the party that claims to be for states’ rights is now ordering states not to feed their children.