Trump Gives Away Game on Food Stamp Funding With Supreme Court Request

President Donald Trump’s administration is desperately hoping that the Supreme Court will give it a free pass on funding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits for this month.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer on Monday reiterated the Trump administration’s intention to ask the Supreme Court to intervene over District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.’s order requiring the government to pay full SNAP benefits for November.

After the Department of Justice leapt to challenge McConnell’s order last week, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an administrative stay order Friday in order to give the court of appeals enough time to weigh in. On Sunday, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s motion to stay while it appealed the decision, triggering a 48-hour deadline on Jackson’s administrative stay. Her stay gave the government until Tuesday night to pay for SNAP in full, unless the Supreme Court decided to grant a longer stay.

In the filing Monday, Sauer said that the government intended to file a supplemental brief that afternoon, and he included “developments” to their application to the highest court in the land. He pointed to a federal judge in Boston who blocked a Department of Agriculture memo Sunday that ordered states to “immediately undo” steps to issue full benefits, though he did not say whether the government intended to challenge that order.

He also noted that the government shutdown, which had precipitated the funding lapse in the first place, might soon be coming to an end after a group of mostly Democratic lawmakers dropped their demand for Obamacare tax credits Sunday evening, in what some are calling a major betrayal to their party and the American people.

It was only a week ago Trump claimed it would be an “honor” to fund SNAP, should a court order him to do so. And it was the president’s own blatant unwillingness to follow through on that offer that signaled an “intent to defy” the judge’s order, prompting McConnell to demand the government pay up immediately.

Trump has repeatedly blamed the funding lapse on the shutdown, but with an end to the shutdown now on the horizon, it seems clear that Trump simply doesn’t want people to be able to buy food.

The Oath Keepers are coming back better than ever, according to the group’s founder.

Stewart Rhodes revealed to The Gateway Pundit Sunday that he’s “relaunching” and “rebuilding” the white supremacist organization that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

“They tried to take us out after January 6 but what man means for evil, God will use for good,” Rhodes told the podcast. “I came out stronger after it, and so my goal is to rebuild the organization stronger than ever because it’s an essential mission. Absolutely.”

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for helping to orchestrate an insurrection designed to keep Joe Biden from taking office after he won the 2020 presidential election. Rhodes was also the first individual that Donald Trump pardoned when he returned to office on January 20, 2025.

The 60-year-old also signaled to Trump that the Oath Keepers were still “ready to serve” as his personal militia, just as they had done during the insurrection, encouraging the president to “order us all to come together in our counties under his command.”

“And one other thing I want to say is that President Trump, as commander in chief, always has absolute authority to call all of us up as the militia because every one of us—in federal statues defining the militia, it’s every able-bodied male from age 17-45. And for us veterans, it goes up to age 64 because of our prior training and experience,” Rhodes said.

The National Guard is part of that militia, according to the far-right leader, justifying Trump’s decision to send troops to U.S. cities.

Referring to the Insurrection Act, Rhodes argued that Trump can call upon a citizens’ militia for any one of three reasons: “to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections, and to execute the laws of the union.”

“And right now, we see all three of those in play,” Rhodes said.

This new chapter of the Oath Keepers will maintain the original organization’s mission—to “protect people against radical antifa and other leftist violence in the streets,” according to Rhodes—but will be built to outlast its creator.

“So we want to make sure it’s got resilience and redundancy built in that it can drive on strong,” Rhodes told the podcast. “I mean, I have to make sure that if I’m ever taken out again or if I’m or when I’m taken out again, that the organization can drive on without me. That’s not what happened last time.”

Senator Mark Kelly offered a meandering nonanswer about struggling Americans rather than state how he truly feels about Senator Chuck Schumer’s flailing leadership following the party’s unity fracturing on the government shutdown.

Kelly appeared on MSNBC on Monday morning after seven Democrats and one independent abruptly folded on the party’s demand for a guaranteed extension of Obamacare subsidies.

“Do you support Chuck Schumer to lead Senate Democrats going forward?” Chris Jansing asked Kelly.

“So Chris, again. We found ourselves in a situation I don’t think the Senate has found itself in before. I think under any president, Democrat or Republican, they’re gonna care about the American people’s health care, and care if they’re gonna be able to put food on the table, and try to bring down costs, not do the opposite,” Kelly said, completely ignoring Jansing’s very direct question. “So when I hear folks say things like that, I understand their frustration. But I also hope they understand that we all need to be on the same team here. And what matters at this point is restoring these tax credits—if we can do it—in December. And we’re gonna work really really hard, and we’re gonna focus on getting the Republican votes necessary to do that.”

He then pivoted to the importance of Democrats winning the midterm elections in 2026 in order to stand up to President Trump. Jansing jumped back in.

“I will note, senator, that given two opportunities you did not voice your unequivocal support for Chuck Schumer, but his job at least for the moment is not over.”

“Chris, I will say: Chuck Schumer and the leadership of the Senate are dealing with an incredibly complex situation where … it’s hard to find a way out,” Kelly replied. “But I am gonna continue to fight for my constituents and the American people to just make life affordable for them.”

“Well that’s exactly what people are calling on the Democrats to do.”

Kelly both talked around the original question and made a claim about securing Republican votes on extending health care subsidies—with zero confirmation that any Republicans will vote “yes,” or if there will be any vote in the House at all.

Donald Trump isn’t content with shaking down U.S. news outlets. Now, he’s set his sights on the BBC.

Trump is threatening the British taxpayer–funded outlet with a $1 billion lawsuit, claiming that it tried to “interfere in the presidential election” by editing one of his January 6 speeches in a broadcast one day before the 2024 vote. After the editing revelations, two of the corporation’s leaders, Director General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness, resigned Sunday, which Trump bragged about on Truth Social.

“The BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally and deceitfully editing its documentary in order to try and interfere in the Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s outside legal team said to NBC News. “President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in lies, deception, and fake news.”

At issue is an episode of the BBC’s Panorama program, which edited together two sections of Trump’s 2021 speech, including his line to supporters to “fight like hell” but left out a part where he told them to peacefully protest. The story was picked up on by the U.K.’s right-leaning newspaper The Telegraph last week, which fueled a pressure campaign by other British right-wing media.

Trump has already gotten a $16 million settlement with CBS News over edits to an interview with Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 election, as well as an additional $16 million settlement with ABC News over the network’s George Stephanopolous using the phrase “liable for rape” to describe Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case verdict.

Perhaps the president thinks he can extort the BBC like he has extorted those outlets in the U.S. However, this lawsuit will have greater implications for U.S.-U.K. relations, as well as with how the Trump administration deals with international media. Freedom of the press applies to foreign as well as domestic journalists working in the U.S. To Trump, that seems to mean they all have to bow to him.

I’m sorry to say, but no, you’re not going to be getting that $2,000 stimulus check Donald Trump floated over the weekend. 

The president raged on Truth Social Sunday against any “FOOL” who opposed his likely unconstitutional sweeping tariff policy, promising that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

And on Monday, Trump wrote that the remaining money after the payments to low- and middle-income Americans would “be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT.”  

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had already put that rumor to rest during an interview with ABC’s This Week. Just hours after Trump’s initial post, Bessent clarified that the president’s mention of a two-grand payout “could come in lots of forms.”

“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda,” Bessent said Sunday, listing out the supposedly “substantial” various tax deductions outlined in Trump’s behemoth budget bill that passed in July, and falsely claiming that Social Security would no longer be taxed. 

Crucially, Trump’s tariffs haven’t actually collected enough money to pay for the kind of payout the president promised. The Trump administration has collected more than $220 billion in tariff revenue, but the $2,000 paid to all 163 million Americans who filed their taxes would cost roughly $326 billion, according to CNN. So that would leave -$106 billion to pay off the national debt. Great plan!

Meanwhile, the president’s tariff policy has come under scrutiny by the Supreme Court, which last week greeted arguments in its favor with intense skepticism.