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S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Speaker Mike Johnson is siding with the Trump administration’s decision not to tap emergency funds to avert a lapse in food aid for 42 million Americans.

“I got a summary of the whole legal analysis, and it certainly looks legitimate to me,” Johnson said during a news conference Monday.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is due to run out of money Nov. 1 amid the government shutdown. President Donald Trump suggested Friday night he may shift around funding to avoid such a potentially catastrophic outcome.

But the administration also warned lawmakers in a memo Friday it could not and would not seek access to a range of emergency funds, putting millions of low-income families on track to lose food aid as the partisan government funding standoff continues.

Johnson said Monday a SNAP contingency fund, which currently contains $5 billion, is “not legally available to cover the benefits right now” because they represent “a finite source of funds.” Democrats, and privately some Republicans, have argued the administration always has the legal authority to tap those funds in an emergency.

He added that if the administration were to “transfer funds from these other sources, it pulls it away immediately from school meals and infant formula.”

SNAP food aid benefits have never lapsed in modern history, including during shutdowns. And the fallout would devastate both red and blue states, including vast swaths of rural America and Trump voters, along with the House GOP’s Hispanic-majority districts.

Some Senate Republicans are pushing for passage of a standalone SNAP funding bill if needed this week, including Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine, but it’s unclear if GOP leaders will agree to move it. The party is struggling with whether to advance a number of bills that would lessen various shutdown pain points as Republicans demand Democrats vote for a House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the government, full-stop.

“Piecemeal funding is not the way this should be done,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), a vulnerable incumbent whose district would be hit hard by a SNAP funding lapse, said in an interview. “Senate Democrats need to vote to pass the clean CR and stop holding the American people hostage.”

Many Republicans privately believe the Trump administration, or the governors of their own states, will ultimately end up shifting funding to avert the impending crisis, according to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers interviewed by POLITICO about the fallout.

“I find it hard to believe a department with so many slush funds can’t find the money for a month of SNAP benefits,” one House Republican, granted anonymity to share private conversations, said of the Agriculture Department.

Asked in a brief interview Monday if he believed the Trump administration would find a way to fund SNAP benefits by week’s end if needed, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise replied: “They’re doing everything they can right now.”

“Obviously, there’s some limits too,” said Scalise, “and the easiest way to solve it is to open the government.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview last Friday that he’d lean toward tapping the emergency funds to avert a massive SNAP food aid shortfall.

While he blamed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for the shutdown “travesty,” he said, “I think the President and GOP should do what we can to alleviate harm done by the Democrats.”

As for whether the House should return from extended recess to vote on a standalone SNAP funding bill, should the Senate approve one this week, Bacon replied, “I figure the Speaker would want to and I’d support.”