Scott Bessent Admits Trump’s Doing Everything He Can Not to Fund Snap

Funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program isn’t rocket science. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is sure trying to make it seem like it is.

During CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Jake Tapper asked Bessent about rulings from two federal judges who ordered the Trump administration to obey the law and use emergency funds to pay SNAP benefits during the government shutdown.

“When can we expect the Trump administration to make these payments?” asked Tapper.

“Well, President Trump just Truthed out that he needs to hear from the courts how this is gonna be done, and Jake, as you know, the best way for SNAP benefits to get paid is for five democrats to cross the aisle and reopen the government,” Bessent said.

Tapper noted that the administration could simply dip into the contingency funds as outlined in USDA’s Lapse of Funding Plan—which was removed from the agency’s website in September. The Trump administration has since cited a USDA memo published in August that inexplicably claimed that SNAP contingency funds could not legally be used to cover regular benefits.

Bessent claimed that Trump was “very anxious” to resume SNAP benefits but insisted “it’s gotta go through the courts.”

“The courts keep jamming up things. Democrats are in the middle of a civil war. And they should just open the government; that is the easiest way to do this,” Bessent said.

“Is the administration going to appeal the ruling by the judge—is that what you mean by the courts need to weigh in? Because the courts have weighed in,” Tapper asked.

“No, but there’s a process that has to be followed. So we gotta figure out what the process is. President Trump wants to make sure that people get their food benefits,” Bessent replied, again urging Democrats to reopen the government.

On Friday, Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that the two courts had issued “conflicting” rulings and that his administration was seeking “appropriate legal direction.”

“Even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out,” Trump wrote. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay.”

U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to dip into the USDA’s contingency funds. He added that the administration must deliver a plan for how it planned to pay for SNAP benefits by Monday at noon. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston did not issue a temporary restraining order, and gave the Trump administration until Monday to decide how to pay at least partial SNAP benefits.

While the two rulings were slightly different in their approaches, they both suggested the Trump administration dip into emergency funds. And each day the government delays in distributing funds prolongs the absence of essential food aid.

In a filing Friday, the Trump administration said it was “expeditiously attempting to comply” with McConnell’s order. “Clarity as to the Court’s ruling is critical to ensure that Defendants can comply with the Court’s order while avoiding an operational collapse,” DOJ lawyers wrote.

President Donald Trump desperately tried to pivot the conversation away from his tanking economy in an interview with 60 Minutes Sunday. When probed by Norah O’Donnell about grocery prices, Trump first flailed, before outright lying.

When the president brought up the stock market, O’Donnell pointed out that many Americans may not feel the effects of market growth in their wallets: “When the stock market is doing well, that doesn’t affect everybody. Not everybody is invested in the stock market—”

“It does,” insisted Trump. “Oh it does, it does.”

O’Donnell pushed ahead, observing, “Grocery prices are up.”

Trump ignored her, choosing to instead over-exaggerate the growth of 401(k) retirement savings accounts. O’Donnell, not taking the bait, tried again to get the president to answer her question: “But for people that don’t have 401(k)s, who are not invested in the stock market—they’ve seen their grocery prices go up.”

“No, you’re wrong.” Trump responded. “They went up under Biden, right now they’re going down. Other than beef, which we’re working on.”

In reality, grocery prices are not down—they’re up. Grocery prices are 2.7 percent higher than they were last September and 1.4 percent higher than January, when Trump triumphantly returned to office. They’re also still on the rise, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday. Overall, grocery prices have increased almost 30 percent in the last five years.

Though this is far from the first time that Trump has lied on camera, pretending that grocery prices are down is particularly egregious. The president campaigned on lowering prices, and has lied repeatedly about the fact that his nonsensical tariffs and cruel mass deportation campaign—which targets many of the people who grow and harvest our food—have hurt consumers.

Meanwhile, Trump is gilding the Oval Office and building a ballroom. At least he’s not out of touch!

Donald Trump is using an imaginary list of “wars” he’s solved to silence questions about his untenable relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The president refused to answer questions about why Putin was dragging his feet on ending Russia’s war on Ukraine during a sit-down interview with 60 Minutes Sunday. Instead, Trump pulled a propaganda-packed sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket to illustrate just how successful he thinks he’s been at solving international crises.

“So why won’t Putin end this war?” asked host Norah O’Donnell.

“But, Nora, that was Joe Biden’s war, not my war. I inherited that stupid war,” Trump responded, 11 months into his own presidency.

“But I brought just a little list of, look at this, wars,” Trump said.

Trump has touted himself for months as a great peacemaker, pushing a narrative that he has—so far—solved eight foreign conflicts. He has claimed responsibility for inventing peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between Cambodia and Thailand, between Israel and Iran, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, between Armenia and Azerbaijan (although he has previously forgotten and said Albania instead of Armenia), between Israel and Gaza, and for “doing the Abraham Accords.”

But as Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan pointed out in September, practically all of Trump’s war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue” to the extent that several of the listed examples were never even at war.

“And you have branded yourself the peace president,” O’Donnell continued.

“Well I think I did pretty good, I solved eight of the nine wars I solved, you know how I solved them? I said, in many cases, in 60 percent, if you don’t stop fighting I’m putting tariffs on both of your countries and you’re not going to be able to do business in the United States,” Trump said.

“So why isn’t that working with Putin?” pressed O’Donnell.

“Uh, it is working with Putin, I think,” Trump said.

Trump has conceded quite a bit to the Russian dictator, to no avail. This summer, Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, marking Putin’s first return to U.S. soil in more than a decade. After the theatrics were over, the two world leaders still failed to reach a consensus on how to end the bloodshed, with Trump losing his cool while Putin demanded that Ukraine cede more territory to Russia.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June.

CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an exclusive interview with Donald Trump on Sunday, but the news magazine cut out a contentious portion regarding the president’s pardon of a cryptocurrency billionaire.

Trump’s televised interview was only 28 minutes long, with CBS also releasing a 73-minute extended cut online. But neither video contained Trump’s full answer after interviewer Norah O’Donnell asked the president about people he pardoned, specifically Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said about Zhao, despite the pardon coming just last month. “I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”

O’Donnell pointed out that the Trump family had formed a cryptocurrency business with the Witkoff family, World Liberty Financial, and that after being pardoned, Binance struck a $2 billion deal with the Trump’s business. O’Donnell then asked Trump if he was “concerned about the appearance of corruption.”

Trump’s full response was missing from video posted online but was in CBS’s published transcript.

“I can’t say, because—I can’t say—I’m not concerned. I don’t—I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah. This is the question …” Trump replied, going on to dodge the question and touting cryptocurrency.

“We’re No. 1 in crypto in the whole world,” Trump said. “Other people wanna be. They’re fighting like hell to be. But we’re No. 1 in crypto because I’m the president.… We are No. 1 in crypto, and that’s the only thing I care about. I don’t want China or anybody else to take it away. It’s a massive industry,” Trump said.

It’s telling that the video of this portion of the interview is nowhere to be found online, especially considering that CBS’s parent company, Paramount, reached a $16 million settlement with Trump in July over a frivolous lawsuit where Trump claimed an interview with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, was deceptively edited. There’s also the right-wing shift the company has taken following Trump allies Larry and David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount.

Trump even hinted as much in another portion of the interview that was conveniently left out of posted or televised video, saying, “And actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you.”

“But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me—a lot of money because they took [Harris’s] answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”

The Heritage Foundation is facing a staff rebellion over its president, Kevin Roberts, expressing support of Tucker Carlson following his softball interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

After Carlson posted his interview online on Monday, many conservatives urged the foundation to distance itself from the conservative commentator due to Fuentes’s racist and antisemitic views. Fuentes is the founder of the Groypers, a group of internet trolls that praises Hitler as well as white and Christian nationalism.

Instead, Roberts released a video on X Thursday in support of Carlson and Fuentes, calling the former “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation” and saying that “canceling” Fuentes is not the solution, even though he personally abhors what he says. In response, Heritage staff members—including Heritage research fellow Preston Brashers and Richard Stern, the director of Heritage’s economic policy institute and federal budget center—have started criticizing Roberts on social media.

At least a handful of Heritage staffers, including Jason Bedrick, Jay Greene, and John Peluso, also retweeted Brashers’s post. Other conservatives, including Senator Ted Cruz and influencer Bethany Mandel, have also criticized Roberts. The backlash led to Roberts making a follow-up post on Friday condemning Fuentes’s views but reiterating his view “that the best way to fight antisemitic ideas was to challenge them head on.”  

“Our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place. Join us—not to cancel—but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail,” Roberts’s post read.  

However, Roberts’s continued support of Carlson’s interview of Fuentes, which failed to challenge the neo-Nazi, exemplifies how today’s conservatives seem to be normalizing such views. Giving people like Fuentes a platform in conservative media creates the impression that their point of view deserves to be heard, and gives them a path to become part of the MAGA movement and the Republican Party. 

Earlier this month, the leak of a group chat full of Young Republicans supporting racist and Nazi beliefs caused a similar divided reaction from Republicans in which some, including Vice President JD Vance, defended the participants. Today, it seems having Nazi views is not a dealbreaker for mainstream conservatism. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered a baffling defense Friday for President Donald Trump’s directive to resume nuclear testing.

Following a meeting with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn, Hegseth said his agency would work with the U.S. Department of Energy on just how they would carry out nuclear weapons testing for the first time in 30 years.

“We need to have a credible nuclear deterrent, that is the baseline of our deterrence. And so having understanding, and resuming testing is a pretty responsible—very responsible way to do that. I think it makes nuclear conflict less likely, if you know what you have and make sure it operates properly,” Hegseth said.

But experts suggest that resuming nuclear testing would shatter global norms, deprioritize disarmament, and grant nations license to test their own weapons.

Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly slammed Trump’s explosive directive. “If we did a test and then China decided, ‘OK, I’m going to start testing.’ They’ll start testing their nuclear weapons, then their strategic forces capability gets much better,” the former naval aviator said Thursday. “We have zero to gain. This would be a gift to China.”

Paul Dean, vice president for policy at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told Politico that the U.S. could certify its stockpile without expensive weapons testing (each test would cost $140 million). Dean added that it was a risky move “that can be easily misconstrued, generate arms race pressure and rapidly evolve into a crisis.”

Earlier this week, Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence, told CNN that resuming nuclear testing was a “bad idea” that would benefit other countries more than it would benefit the U.S. Already, Russia has indicated that if other nations resumed nuclear testing, Moscow would follow suit.

New York City votes Tuesday for its next mayor, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer still has to make a decision on who he’ll pick on his ballot.

The Democratic leader ran away from the press Friday when asked who he intended to cast his ballot for in the upcoming election.

“[Zohran] Mamdani, are you going to vote for him?” asked CNN’s Manu Raju.

“The bottom line is very simple. I have a good relationship with him, and we’re continuing to talk,” said Schumer.

“But the vote is on Tuesday. What are you going to do?” pressed Raju.

But Schumer had already turned his back and walked out of the room.

After a tight Democratic primary (and stunning upset victory) this summer, Mamdani has gained citywide appeal. The Ugandan-born New Yorker is currently leading the mayoral race by double digits, according to three new polls out this week.

An Emerson College poll published Thursday put Mamdani at 50 percent favorability with likely voters. Ex–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo trailed behind at 25 percent, while the poll estimated that Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa would attract 21 percent. Just 5 percent of voters remained undecided, according to the Emerson College poll.

Mamdani’s candidacy has proven a pivotal turning point for the Democratic Party, separating out the politicians with a dream for the future against those without one. Ultimately, Schumer’s abstention only serves as yet another illustration of how detached Democratic leadership has become from the desires of their base, who apparently—per New York’s anticipated election results—crave drastic change.

Mamdani’s campaign has already collected support from the likes of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Like Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries waited until the last minute to support the Democratic Socialist. Jeffries extended his backing just last week, too late to make any meaningful difference in the race’s outcome.

As Americans braced Friday for SNAP benefits to expire, President Donald Trump couldn’t stop bragging about his extravagant new bathroom.

With less than 24 hours left to fund essential food resources 42 million Americans rely on, Trump was hard at work sharing pictures on Truth Social of the pristine white marble facility adorned with gaudy golden hardware. In a separate post, Trump explained that they were photographs of the refurbished bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom.

“Highly polished, Statuary marble!” he wrote. (In September, Trump reportedly took an hour to give Republican lawmakers from Florida a tour, where he showed off the new marble tiles he’d selected for the floors.)

But Trump wasn’t done there. With the deadline to ensure funding fast approaching, he turned his attention to his renovations at the Kennedy Center.

“It is really looking good!” he wrote in another post on Truth Social, touting fixes to the apparently corroded columns, rebuilt stages, fresh carpets, as well as “new seats, new chairs.”

“It is happening faster than anticipated, one of my trademarks,” Trump wrote. “My people are doing a really great job! We are bringing this building back to life. It was dead as a doornail, but it will soon be beautiful again!”

But it seems that speed is only a virtue when it comes to construction—the president has allowed the government shutdown to stretch on for 31 days, making it the second-longest in history.

A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary order requiring the government to use contingency funds to pay for SNAP benefits as the shutdown continues. But just hours earlier, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wouldn’t commit to releasing SNAP funds if ordered to do so.

Two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to use contingency funds to pay out SNAP funds while the government is shut down.

U.S. District Judges John J. McConnell in Rhode Island and Indira Talwani in Massachusetts each ruled Friday that the government had to keep funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, either partially or in full for November. Prior to news of the ruling, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was planning to freeze payments for food stamps Saturday.

White House officials had refused to fund SNAP from a $5 billion contingency fund that existed precisely to keep funding the program in the event of something like this. In response, 25 states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government in federal court to keep the program running, alleging that the USDA had “both the authority and legal duty” to do so.

Both Talwani and McConnell asked for updates from the government by Monday. In his ruling, McConnell ruled that the previous work requirement waivers must stay intact, reversing the USDA’s decision during the shutdown to terminate waivers exempting older adults, veterans, and others from work requirements.

Talwani called the government’s suspension of SNAP unlawful, writing in her ruling that “Defendants’ suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments. This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.”

The Trump administration will undoubtedly appeal, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court. But for now, millions of people across the country will not have to make hard choices about how to feed themselves and their families. Several states that had already declared emergencies to tackle the impending crisis will have at least some temporary relief.

This story has been updated.

One Republican representative is angry that Donald Trump’s redistricting war has put his congressional seat in danger.

California Representative Kevin Kiley criticized the GOP in an interview with The New York Times’ podcast The Daily Friday, saying that his party’s attempt to grab more seats in the House of Representatives and keep control of Congress is “incredibly destabilizing.”

“I said from the moment this was on my radar that it shouldn’t be happening anywhere. I’m against it in Texas, I’m against it in California. It’s pure political opportunism,” Kiley said.

If California Governor Gavin Newsom is successful in his retaliation, Kiley could be squeezed out of Congress, as California would gain five new Democratic seats. The congressman tried to head off the redistricting tit-for-tat back in August by introducing a bill to prevent congressional districts from being redrawn in the middle of a decade, as opposed to the customary end of a decade following the national census.

But Republican leadership didn’t support his idea and went on with their gerrymandering efforts across the country, including in places like Ohio, Missouri, Utah, and Indiana. This has prompted Democratic redistricting efforts in states besides California such as Maryland, New York, and even purple Virginia, and drawn the ire of other vulnerable Republicans in addition to Kiley. Who knows what Congress is going to look like when the dust clears?