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‘It Does Not Have to Be This Way’: Child Hunger Set to Surge as Trump Withholds SNAP Funds
Two federal courts ruled Friday that the White House must release contingency food assistance funds, but officials have suggested they will not comply with the orders.
Oct 31, 2025
Though two federal judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must use contingency funds to continue providing food assistance that 42 million Americans rely on, White House officials have signaled they won't comply with the court orders even as advocates warn the lapse in nutrition aid funding will cause an unprecedented child hunger crisis that families are unprepared to withstand.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is planning to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Saturday as the government shutdown reaches the one-month mark, claiming it can no longer fund SNAP and cannot tap $5 billion in contingency funds that would allow recipients to collect at least partial benefits in November.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration is "going to get it done," regarding the funding of SNAP, but offered no details on his plans to keep the nation's largest anti-hunger program funded, and his agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, would not commit on Friday to release the funds if ordered to do so.
"We're looking at all the options," Rollins told CNN before federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ordered the administration to fund the program.
The White House and Republicans in Congress have claimed the only way to fund SNAP is for Democratic lawmakers to vote for a continuing resolution proposed by the GOP to keep government funding at current levels; Democrats have refused to sign on to the resolution because it would allow healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to expire.
The administration previously said it would use the SNAP contingency funds before reversing course last week. A document detailing the contingency plan disappeared from the USDA's website this week. The White House's claims prompted two lawsuits filed by Democrat-led states and cities as well as nonprofit groups that demanded the funding be released.
On Thursday evening, US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) addressed her followers on the social media platform X about the impending hunger emergency, emphasizing that the loss of SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans—39% of whom are children—is compounding a child poverty crisis that has grown since 2021 due to Republicans' refusal to extend pandemic-era programs like the enhanced child tax credit.
"One in eight kids in America lives in poverty in 2024," said Jayapal. "Sixty-one percent of these kids—that's about 6 million kids— have at least one parent who is employed. So it's not that people are not working, they're working, but they're not earning enough."
"I just want to be really clear that it is a policy choice to have people who are hungry, to have people who are poor," she said.
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an economist at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post that the loss of benefits for millions of children, elderly, and disabled people all at once is "unprecedented."
“We’ve never seen the elderly and children removed from the program in this sort of way,” Schanzenbach told the Post. “It really is hard to predict something of this magnitude."
A Thursday report by the economic justice group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) emphasized that the impending child hunger crisis comes four months after Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which slashed food assistance by shifting some of the cost of SNAP to the states from the federal government, expanding work requirements, and ending adjustments to benefits to keep pace with food inflation.
Meanwhile, the law is projected to increase the incomes of the wealthiest 20% of US households by 3.7% while reducing the incomes of the poorest 20% of Americans by an average of 3.8%.
Now, said ATF, "they're gonna let hard-working Americans go hungry so billionaires can get richer."
At Time on Thursday, Stephanie Land, author of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, wrote that "the cruelty is the point" of the Trump administration's refusal to ensure the 61-year-old program, established by Democratic former President Lyndon B. Johnson, doesn't lapse for the first time in its history.
"Once, when we lost most of our food stamp benefit, I mentally catalogued every can and box of food in the cupboards, and how long the milk we had would last," wrote Land. "They’d kicked me, the mother of a recently-turned 6-year-old, off of food stamps because I didn’t meet the work requirement of 20 hours a week. I hadn’t known that my daughter’s age had qualified me to not have to meet that requirement, and without warning, the funds I carefully budgeted for food were gone."
"It didn’t matter that I was a full-time student and worked 10-15 hours a week," she continued. "This letter from my local government office said it wasn’t sufficient to meet their stamp of approval. In their opinion, I wasn’t working enough to deserve to eat. My value, my dignity as a human being, was completely dependent on my ability to work, as if nothing else about me awarded me the ability to feel satiated by food."
"Whether the current administration decides to continue to fund SNAP in November or not, the intended damage has already been done. The fear of losing means for food, shelter, and healthcare is the point," Land added. "Programs referred to as a 'safety net' are anything but when they can be removed with a thoughtless, vague message, or scribble from a permanent marker. It’s about control to gain compliance, and our most vulnerable populations will struggle to keep up."
On Thursday, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) expressed hope that the president's recent statement saying the White House will ensure people obtain their benefits will "trigger the administration to use its authority and precedent to prevent disruptions in food assistance."
"The issue at hand is not political. It is about ensuring that parents can put food on the table, older adults on fixed incomes can meet their nutritional needs, and children continue to receive the meals they rely on. SNAP is one of the most effective tools for reducing hunger and supporting local economies," said the group.
"Swift and transparent action is needed," FRAC added, "to restore stability, maintain public confidence, and ensure that our state partners, local economies and grocers, and the millions of children, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans who participate in SNAP are not left bearing the consequences of federal inaction."
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Chicago Judge Demands Answers From Border Patrol Chief Over Tear Gas at Kids' Halloween Parade
"Their sense of safety was shattered," the judge said of local children whose Halloween parade was disrupted by federal agents deploying tear gas in their vicinity.
Oct 28, 2025
A Chicago judge rebuked US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino on Tuesday after several of his agents over the weekend deployed tear gas in a neighborhood where local children were preparing for a Halloween parade—in violation of a previous court order barring the use of the chemical unless federal officers are in immediate danger.
During a court appearance, Bovine was dressed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis, who said Border Patrol agents had violated her earlier restraining order that barred US Department of Homeland Security officials from using riot control weapons “on members of the press, protestors, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others."
As reported by Heather Cherone, a politics reporter at local Chicago news station WTTW, Ellis grilled Bovine about multiple uses of force by federal immigration agents in recent weeks.
First, Ellis asked Bovine to comment on allegations filed in her court last week about federal immigration agents pointing a gun at a man who was peacefully protesting against their actions while standing on the side of a public street.
Bovine replied that he did not know the specific details of that incident, which Ellis said violated her earlier restraining order "on its face."
Next, Ellis described video footage taken last weekend in the neighborhood of Old Irving Park showing federal immigration agents placing a US citizen in a chokehold after he had approached agents and asked them what they were doing. In this case, Bovino acknowledged that this action as described would not be an appropriate use of force.
Finally, Ellis asked Bovino about the tear gas deployed in Old Irving Park as families were preparing for an annual children’s Halloween parade. The Border Patrol agents' use of the chemical appeared impossible to justify, said Elliis, given all known facts.
"These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered," Ellis said, referring to children in the neighborhood. "It is going to take a long time to come back, if ever."
According to Chicago Tribune reporter Jason Meisner, Ellis also told Bovino that kids should feel they're able to go to local Halloween events without having to "worry about getting tear-gassed."
"That’s not how any of us want to live," Ellis emphasized. "I know you wouldn’t want to live that way."
The federal immigration operation in Old Irving Park on Saturday targeted a man named Luis Villegas, an undocumented immigrant who was working in the area and who, according to his brother, was brought to the US when he was four years old.
Agents detained two other people in the neighborhood in addition to Villegas, and deployed tear gas after several neighbors came out of their homes to yell at the officers, film them, and demand that they leave the neighborhood. A former Cook County prosecutor who lives in Old Irving Park and witnessed Villegas' arrest told reporters that the agents were never under any threat.
Ellis ordered Bovino to appear in her courtroom every single day going forward to recap his agents’ actions in the district, according to Cherone.
She also demanded that Bovino ensure that every one of his officers is equipped with a body camera, and to submit all reports on use of force incidents and corresponding body camera footage by Friday.
A hearing on whether to make permanent Ellis' restraining order which strictly limits the use of riot control munitions has been set for November 5, according to Cherone.
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ICE Tear Gas Disrupts Halloween Parade as Trump’s Chicago Crackdown Spreads
"I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground," said a former prosecutor who lives in a neighborhood that was tear-gassed.
Oct 27, 2025
A former Cook County prosecutor said he had collected a tear gas canister from his own front lawn in a residential Chicago neighborhood and submitted it to a law firm that is preparing a lawsuit over immigration officers' persistent use of tear gas against residents who object to their raids across the city—including in Old Irving Park this past weekend, where parents and children were getting ready for a Halloween parade when agents wreaked havoc on the neighborhood.
The Chicago Tribune reported that former prosecutor Brian Kolp had been watching news coverage Saturday morning of a temporary restraining order handed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis earlier this month barring federal agents from using riot control weapons like tear gas against protesters who do not pose an immediate harm to officers' safety, when he realized federal agents where on his street in Old Irving Park.
"I could see two fully uniformed agents in military fatigues literally tackling a guy right here in my front lawn," Kolp told CBS News.
The man the agents detained, Luis Villegas, had been working at a house in the neighborhood, and his brother told reporters he was an undocumented immigrant who came to the US with his family at the age of four.
Neighbors ran out of their houses and filmed and heckled the agents, Block Club Chicago reported, with some shouting, "Get off of him!" Another appeared to call one of the officers a "fucking Nazi."
The outlet reported that agents got out of their vehicles moments later, "put on their gas masks, and attacked at least two different people."
A person on a rapid response team that warns locals when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are in the area told Block Club Chicago that a 67-year-old woman was "knocked to the ground" by masked officers. She and a 70-year-old man were detained, and Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed they were "arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer."
McLaughlin also claimed Villegas was arrested for a previous assault charge, but provided no evidence of his criminal background.
In nearby Avondale, Chicago Tribune reporter Laura N. Rodríguez Presa said another woman was pushed to the ground by an ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent when she approached their vehicle during another anti-immigration operation.
"This appears to be the new normal in Chicago," said Rodríguez Presa.
A very disturbing video from today’s ICE/CBP operations in Avondale.
An officer pushes a woman to the ground, people get angry and throw -what’s seems to be a rock- towards the moving unmarked vehicle.
This appears to be the new normal in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/dbKSnhULN5
— Laura N. Rodríguez Presa (@LAURA_N_ROD) October 25, 2025
In Old Irving Park, the "new normal" for residents on Saturday included federal agents deploying tear gas as parents and costumed children were leaving their homes on their way to a neighborhood Halloween parade.
Resident James Hotchkiss told Block Club Chicago that he was leaving his house with his wife and children at 9:45am for the parade when he heard whistles ringing out in the neighborhood—a sound Chicagoans have come to recognize as a warning that ICE is nearby.
“At that point, I saw a man running towards me followed by two to three officers chasing after him. They tackled him onto a neighbor’s front yard," he said.
About 10 minutes later, Hotchkiss saw smoke in the air.
“I took my glasses off because my eyes were burning,” he said. “I saw someone pour water on a gas canister that appeared to be on fire.”
Heather Cherone, a senior reporter at WTTW, said the attack on Old Irving Park marked the "third straight day that federal agents have deployed tear gas against Chicagoans and the seventh time in 22 days," despite the court order.
Kolp told Fox 32 that he "didn't see anybody with a weapon" that would have justified the agents' use of force.
"So you had folks who were literally out on the street taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened," he said. "I didn't see anybody make physical contact with these agents. I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground."
The agents left the neighborhood after about 30 minutes, and the Halloween parade proceeded—but with many families opting to stay home.
Kolp told CBS News he retrieved a tear gas canister from his yard.
"I knew that piece of evidence would be critical for the judge to understand what the facts are," he said.
Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino is due in court on Tuesday, Fox 32 reported, to answer questions about agents' continued use of tear gas against residentsin violation of Ellis' order.
"I was pretty upset to be honest with you," Kolp told the outlet. "I am an attorney. I used to work with and in law enforcement, and watching this happen in my front yard was just not something that I ever thought was gonna come to my front door. But you know, here we are."
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