Hakeem Jeffries Trashes Trump and GOP Over Food Stamps: 'Willing to Starve Children!' [View all]

Source: MEDIAite

Oct 31st, 2025, 1:31 pm


House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “willing to starve children” rather than use emergency funds to rescue SNAP benefits amid the government shutdown.

The White House and Republicans have been insisting it would be unlawful to use contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits — commonly referred to as Food Stamps — after the program runs out of money. Federal Judge Indira Talwani is set to rule on whether to force the administration to do so.

On Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, both Jeffries and Psaki pilloried Trump and the GOP over the issue:

PSAKI: Help people understand what the human impact is right now, what you’re anticipating.

JEFFRIES: Yeah, it’s extraordinary that Donald Trump and Republicans are threatening to cut off SNAP benefits to 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, 8 million seniors and over a million veterans. And every single one of those individuals represents a real-life impact, people who would otherwise struggle to put food on the table in the absence of these SNAP benefits.

And there’s absolutely no justification for Donald Trump and the Republicans to withhold SNAP.

They have more than $5 billion in an emergency fund that will allow these benefits to continue through the end of November. They can also find funds for other things, just as they’ve repeatedly done. But they can’t do it for SNAP.