Roughly 42 million Americans rely on SNAP for food. This week, a number of Democrat-led states sued the Trump administration for refusing to tap into a $5 billion SNAP emergency reserve. The USDA website blames Democrats, in turn, for the suspension in food assistance. “SNAP benefit recipients wouldn’t have to worry at all if Democrats would stop using them as political ‘leverage,’” Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told me. (When I emailed the USDA’s press office, an auto-reply from a spokesperson said they were furloughed and would respond when funding was restored.)