Jennifer Ludden

But when the Supreme Court then paused the order, the Agriculture Department said states must immediately undo those payments and threatened penalties.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Plattkin says this makes no sense, especially given new moves to possibly end the shutdown.

A Trump administration attorney says states jumped the gun and should only send partial payments for now.

Once the shutdown does end, we'll issue full benefits in 24 hours, he told the judge.

Jennifer Lutton, NPR News, Washington.

An appeals court late Sunday repeated what two federal judges had already said.

The Trump administration must pay the full amount of food aid that SNAP enrollees are entitled to.

In its ruling, the court said the harm in limiting those payments would be immense.

And it said the administration had, quote, sat on its hands for nearly a month, refusing to prepare for a funding shortfall it knew was coming.

The Agriculture Department argues that tapping a larger pot of money to make full payments would hurt other nutrition programs.

The government's latest appeal to the Supreme Court comes despite moves to end the federal shutdown, which would render the SNAP standoff moot.

Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

Shortly after the ruling Thursday, a growing number of states started to announce they'd send out November's SNAP payments.

Some people even woke up to the money on the cards they used to buy groceries.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said benefits would keep going out all night.

The Trump administration earlier said it only had money for partial payments and those could take weeks.

A federal judge said officials had moved too slowly and failed to consider the risk of people going hungry.

Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

Just last week, the same judge, John McConnell Jr., ordered the release of at least partial SNAP payments.

A group of cities and nonprofits argued that was not enough and could take weeks for some states to administer.