By GEOFF MULVIHILL and MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund SNAP benefits for November.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Donald Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8 — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries that quickly.
The order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would leave some recipients getting nothing for this month.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown.
It has been a week of twists and turns for SNAP beneficiaries
Last week’s rulings ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.
On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program.
The next day, Trump appeared to threaten not to pay the benefit s at all unless Democrats in Congress agreed to reopen the government. His press secretary later said that the partial benefits were being paid for November — and that it is future payments that are at risk if the shutdown continues.
Late Wednesday, the USDA, which runs the program, said in a filing in federal court in Rhode Island that it had done further analysis and found that the maximum benefit will be 65% of the usual amount.
Speaking at the Greater Boston Food Bank in Massachusetts Thursday morning, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said the Trump administration is sending mixed messages: “Come on. You know, you’re going to partially fund food for Americans? You’re going let people starve?”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection to the U.S. House, bringing to a close her storied career as not only the first woman in the speaker’s office but arguably the most powerful in American politics.
Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced her decision Thursday.
“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said in a video address to voters.
Pelosi, appearing upbeat and forward-looking as images of her decades of accomplishments filled the frames, said she would finish out her final year in office. And she left those who sent her to Congress with a call to action to carry on the legacy of agenda-setting both in the U.S. and around the world.
“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way.”
Pelosi said, “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
The decision, while not fully unexpected, ricocheted across Washington, and California, as a seasoned generation of political leaders is stepping aside ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Some are leaving reluctantly, others with resolve, but many are facing challenges from newcomers eager to lead the Democratic Party and confront President Donald Trump.
Pelosi, 85, remains a political powerhouse and played a pivotal role with California’s redistricting effort, Prop 50, and the party’s comeback in this week’s election. She maintains a robust schedule of public events and party fundraising, and her announced departure touches off a succession battle back home and leaves open questions about who will fill her behind-the-scenes leadership role at the Capitol.
Former President Barack Obama said Pelosi will go down in history as “one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had.”
An unmatched force in Congress
An architect of the Affordable Care Act during Obama’s tenure, and a leader on the international stage, Pelosi came to Congress later in life, a mother of five mostly grown children, but also raised in a political family in Baltimore, where her father and brother both served in elected office.
Long criticized by Republicans, who have spent millions of dollars on campaign ads vilifying her as a coastal elite and more, Pelosi remained unrivaled. She routinely fended off calls to step aside by turning questions about her intentions into spirited rebuttals, asking if the same was being posed of her seasoned male colleagues on Capitol Hill.
In her video address, she noted that her first campaign slogan was “a voice that will be heard.”
And with that backing, she became a speaker “whose voice would certainly be heard,” she said.
But after Pelosi quietly helped orchestrate Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, she has decided to pass the torch, too.
Last year, she experienced a fall resulting in a hip fracture during a whirlwind congressional visit to allies in Europe, but even still it showcased her grit: It was revealed she was rushed to a military hospital for surgery — after the group photo, in which she’s seen smiling, poised on her trademark stiletto heels.
Pelosi’s decision also comes as her husband of more than six decades, Paul Pelosi, was gravely injured three years ago when an intruder demanding to know “Where is Nancy?” broke into the couple’s home and beat him over the head with a hammer. His recovery from the attack, days before the 2022 midterm elections, is ongoing.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Pelosi faced a potential primary challenge in California. Newcomer Saikat Chakrabarti, who helped devise progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political rise in New York, has mounted a campaign, as has state Sen. Scott Wiener.
While Pelosi remains an unmatched force for the Democratic Party, having fundraised more than $1 billion over her career, her next steps are uncertain. First elected in 1987 after having worked in California state party politics, she has spent some four decades in public office.
Madam speaker takes the gavel
Pelosi’s legacy as House speaker comes not only because she was the first woman to have the job but also because of what she did with the gavel, seizing the enormous powers that come with the suite of offices overlooking the National Mall.
During her first tenure, from 2007 to 2011, she steered the House in passing landmark legislation into law — the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms in the aftermath of the Great Recession and a repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against LGBTQ service members.
With Obama in the White House and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada leading the Senate, the 2009-10 session of Congress ended among the most productive since the Lyndon B. Johnson era.
But a conservative Republican “tea party” revolt bounced Democrats from power, ushering in a new style of Republicans, who would pave the way for Trump to seize the White House in 2016.
Determined to win back control, Pelosi helped recruit and propel dozens of women to office in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats running as the resistance to Trump’s first term.
On the campaign trail that year, Pelosi told The Associated Press that if House Democrats won, she would show the “power of the gavel.”
Pelosi returns to the speaker’s office as a check on Trump
Pelosi became the first speaker to regain the office in some 50 years, and her second term, from 2019 to 2023, became potentially more consequential than the first, particularly as the Democratic Party’s antidote to Trump.
Trump was impeached by the House — twice — first in 2019 for withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine as it faced a hostile Russia at its border and then in 2021 days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate acquitted him in both cases.
Pelosi stood up the Jan. 6 special committee to probe Trump’s role in sending his mob of supporters to the Capitol, when most Republicans refused to investigate, producing the 1,000-page report that became the first full accounting of what happened as the defeated president tried to stay in office.
After Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Pelosi announced she would not seek another term as party leader.
Rather than retire, she charted a new course for leaders, taking on the emerita title that would become used by others, including Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California during his brief tenure after he was ousted by his colleagues from the speaker’s office in 2023.

This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is making its way from East Greenbush, New York. The 75-foot-tall Norway spruce will be cut down on Thursday and travel about 130 miles to New York City, where it’s expected to arrive in Rockefeller Plaza on Saturday.

The tree weighs about 11 tons and spans 45 feet at its widest point. Once it’s set into place, crews will begin decorating it with more than 50,000 multicolored LED lights strung along roughly five miles of wire. To finish it off, a 9-foot Swarovski star covered in 3 million crystals will be placed on top.

The annual tree lighting ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday, December 3 at 7 p.m. ET. You can watch “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” live on NBC, on Peacock and through NBC 4 New York streaming platforms.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that it will reduce air traffic by 10% across 40 “high-volume” markets beginning Friday morning to maintain safety during the ongoing government shutdown.
The reduction stands to impact thousands of flights nationwide.
The FAA is confronting staffing shortages among air traffic controllers who have been working unpaid since the shutdown began Oct. 1, with some calling out of work, resulting in delays across the country.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency would not for a crisis to act, citing growing staffing pressures caused by the shutdown.
“We can’t ignore it,” he said.
Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they will meet later Wednesday with airline executives to determine how to safely implement the reduction in flights.
“The early indicators are telling us we can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating,” Bedford said.
Both Bedford and Duffy declined at a news conference Wednesday to name the affected markets until they speak with the airlines first. Bedford said a list would be released Thursday.
“If the pressures continue to build even after we take these measures,” he said, “we’ll come back and take additional measures.”
There have already been numerous delays at airports across the country — sometimes hours long — because the FAA slows down or stops traffic temporarily anytime it is short on controllers. Last weekend saw some of the worst staffing shortages, and on Sunday, flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were delayed for several hours.
Major airlines, aviation unions and the wider travel industry have been urging Congress to end the shutdown.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium says flight data showed a “broader slowdown” last Thursday across the nation’s aviation system for the first time since the shutdown began, suggesting staffing-related disruptions were starting to become more widespread. That came days after controllers missed their first full paychecks.
Earlier this week, Duffy warned there could be chaos in the skies next week if the shutdown drags on long enough to keep air traffic controllers from getting their next paychecks on Tuesday.
Most controllers have continued to work mandatory overtime six days a week during the shutdown, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has said. That leaves little time for a side job to help cover bills, mortgage payments and other expenses unless controllers call out.