An emergency order by the US Supreme Court has provisionally permitted the Trump administration to freeze billions of dollars of value of food benefits, which are taken by millions of low-income Americans.
The White House further requested the top court in the country to hear the case, when a lower court ruled that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also referred it as food stamps aid, had to be paid in full to recipients by Friday.
The current federal government shutdown has left the programme in a precarious position, and the Trump administration has said it could only afford to partially fund the programme.
The decision of Friday implies that the sum amount of $4bn (£3.04 billion) may be withheld temporarily until further legal hearings.
It has a price of nearly $9bn (£6.9 billion) a month, and 42 million Americans use the SNAP programme, which consists of approximately one out of eight.
A Chief Judge of Rhode Island, John J. McConnell Jr., alleged on Thursday that the Trump administration was withholding food aid “for political reasons” and said that without the aid, “16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry.”
However, he instructed the administration to make full payment of the programme.
The ruling of Thursday was in line with another that ordered the administration to tap into the contingency funds at least to partially finance the programme up to November.
The legal suit was triggered when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages the SNAP programme, declared that it would suspend benefits in November because of the shutdown funding.
Before the intervention of the Supreme Court, the USDA maintained that it was in the process of complying with the numerous court orders and was in the process of disbursing the entire amount of funds.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, released the administrative stay late on Friday, in an effect pausing a lower court decision by McConnell and giving an appeals court more time to consider the case.
The Supreme Court order comes as the senators continue spending the weekend in Washington as they attempt to find a way to end the shutdown, which has been in existence since October 1.
The food aid funding row has turned out to be one of the most acrimonious of what has now turned out to be the longest government shutdown in US history.
The government employees have not received their salaries for more than a month without their salaries and air transport has been in shambles, with Democratic and Republican lawmakers unable to find a compromise to finance the government.
Other states have resorted to their own financial resources to continue with the SNAP payments, which amount to approximately $6 a day to the recipients through pre-loaded debit cards that they can use in the grocery stores.
However, some states have indicated that they cannot compensate for the federal government’s lost funding.
