Tony Romm

Is the ceasefire with Iran still on?

You didn't hear the chorus of criticism from Democrats and Republicans about the need to do something swiftly to fix the debt.

And that just sort of reflects the hard political reality here, which is that Republicans under President Trump have added considerably to the debt.

The nation's debt solely stands to worsen in the years to come, and policymakers don't seem particularly interested in the kind of grand compromise that might be needed to bring things back into balance.

By all means, move at a glacial pace.

You know how that thrills me.

SNAP is in a very difficult place, and the concerns that you're hearing out of West Virginia are concerns that we're hearing nationally nationally.

as this shutdown now lapses almost into its sixth week.

SNAP is a program that serves about 42 million people across the country.

And even though it's a permanent fixture in law, lawmakers have to put money into that program every year.

But because the shutdown has gone on so long, SNAP has exhausted its normal budget.

And so that's left this program at a bit of a crossroads.

We've seen a number of cities and states and nonprofits file lawsuits against the Trump administration.

over the way that it has handled SNAP during the government shutdown.

And this all stemmed from a decision that the administration made just a few weeks ago.

Initially, USDA said it was going to tap a special set of emergency funds to pay SNAP benefits if the shutdown dragged into November.

This is a pot of money that was roughly about $5 billion or so as of late October that's supposed to be used in instances where SNAP doesn't have enough

to cover benefits for everybody.

And that's a lot, but still not enough to hit the roughly $8 billion or so that it needs every month to keep those benefits flowing.

But sort of abruptly, the administration said it wasn't going to use this money after all.