Michigan's state health department said Monday that it's ordered full benefits to be delivered to SNAP recipients for the month of November.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the federal government's largest anti-hunger initiative, and about 1.4 million low-income Michiganders use it to afford food.
It's been a wild week and a half for SNAP recipients nationwide, with the federal government whipping between pausing SNAP payments completely, paying half benefits, back to paying full benefits under a court order, and ending benefit payments again, all while arguing that it should not have to pay the benefits at all while the government is shut down.
In Michigan, full SNAP payments restarted late last week, only to end again hours later. People who got their benefits scrambled to spend them, fearing they could be clawed back.
And over the weekend, the Trump administration told states like Michigan that they "must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025."
Nevertheless, on Monday, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement titled, "MDHHS directs SNAP vendor to resume issuing full payments for November." (It was a familiar headline to those closely watching the state's SNAP saga this month — a November 6 statement from the department was titled, in part, "MDHHS directs SNAP vendor to issue full payments to Michiganders.")
The Monday announcement said SNAP recipients who normally get their benefits on the ninth of the month should be receiving them within 48 hours. Those who normally get benefits later in the month should get them on their normal date, the health department said. And people who get SNAP benefits on the third, fifth, or seventh of the month should have already gotten them last week.
Neither the state health department nor the governor's office responded to questions about where the money to issue the benefits was coming from, given that the federal government was still shut down and its attorneys were arguing in court Monday that it should not have to use a multibillion dollar contingency fund to cover SNAP benefits.
Hanging over the confusion around SNAP funding was the possibility that the federal government shutdown could end soon, and the program's budget be restored. The Senate was moving forward with a series of votes Monday night that could send a government funding bill to the president's desk.
