No. of Recommendations: 12
It's not a politically risky move, it's a necessary legal move. These judges don't have the authority to micro-manage the executive branch, but they think they do.
It is a politically risky move. The DOJ could choose to appeal the decision but not seek an immediate stay of the order. That would legally let them fund SNAP ("we were ordered to") while still not conceding the legal point of whether this is the sort of thing a judge can do. N.B. - as a general matter, judges have lots of authority to "micro-manage" the executive branch whenever there's a law that directs the Executive to take (or refrain from taking) actions on things; whether this is one of those instances is a longer discussion.
It wouldn't even be a very unusual move for them. The Administration has frequently gone ahead with actions that have a very good chance of being reversed on appeal, because they know that appeals take time and they can get facts on the ground before the courts end up stopping them - the most obvious example being his firing of a bunch of inspector generals without following the law, which the court held was blatantly illegal but by the time it got to final decision from the judiciary it was already too late to order any relief. So if the Administration wanted to, they could cry foul about how awful the judiciary was and how certain they are that they will prevail on appeal....but let the funding go through for now so that they don't get blamed for having declined a chance to prevent SNAP from collapsing.
I think the GOP's need to have this CR get through the Senate, rather than going back to the House, is affecting that decision. If the GOP is going to get the Democrats to fold, they pretty much have to do it next week. Else Mike Johnson and the House are back in the hot seat, and they probably don't have a way out if that happens.
