Claim:
U.S. Senate Democrats voted 12 times not to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Rating:
What’s True
The pop-up that made the claim on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website appeared on Oct. 25, 2025. At that time, 12 votes to pass a Republican-sponsored continuing resolution on government funding measures had failed in the Senate, with Democrats making up the vast majority of the votes against the resolution every time. However …
What’s False
… We found no evidence that Senate Democrats voted specifically to block funding for SNAP. Senate Democrats have stated throughout the government shutdown that their top priority is a permanent extension on tax credits that millions of Americans use to buy health insurance and that Republicans have falsely claimed would allow “illegal” immigrants to access free healthcare.
In October 2025, as the U.S. government shutdown neared a record 35 days, a pop-up appeared on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website that claimed Senate Democrats had “voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).”
Around 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, which are federally funded. On average, SNAP provides $188 per month, or about $6 per day, in benefits to help seniors, people with disabilities and families purchase household food staples.
One Instagram user posted a video (archived) about the pop-up, saying “This is real.”
The full pop-up read:
Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.
At the time of this writing, the USDA had updated the pop-up to say “13 times.”
The pop-up also circulated on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), X (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if its claim about how Democrats voted was true.
Elements of the pop-up’s claim were true. By Oct. 25, 2025, there had been 12 failed votes in the Senate to pass a Republican-sponsored continuing resolution on government funding measures. Each failed vote prolonged the government shutdown, as lawmakers had to pass a continuing resolution in order to release funds for federal agencies and services such as SNAP benefits. At each of these failed votes, too many senators, overwhelmingly Democrats, had voted against the continuing resolution, meaning the government had not appropriated funding for SNAP when the existing funding was set to expire at the start of November.
Senate Democrats have said since before the government shutdown that their main priority is a permanent extension on tax credits that millions of Americans use to buy health insurance and that Republicans have falsely claimed would allow “illegal” immigrants to access free healthcare. Therefore, the claim that Democrats voted against the continuing resolution solely to block SNAP payments was false.
Both Republican and Democratic senators have attempted to pass resolutions that would fund SNAP independent of a larger continuing resolution or budget bill. Republican Sen. John Thune, the majority leader of the Senate, said he would block these resolutions.
Given the above, we give this claim a mixture of truth and falsehood.
At the time of this writing, senators were next expected back in the Senate on Nov. 3, 34 days into the government shutdown. They had voted on H.R. 5371 13 times. On Oct. 28, 54 senators (51 Republicans, two Democrats and one Independent) voted in favor of the resolution while 45 senators (43 Democrats, one Republican and one Independent) voted against.
Judges rule contingency funding must be used
Snopes previously reported that according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) (archived), a nonpartisan research and policy institute, Congress made $6 billion in contingency funding available for SNAP through the 2024 and 2025 appropriations laws. Under the USDA’s shutdown plan, some of that money would be used to cover states’ administrative expenses, meaning the full $6 billion was unlikely to be available for SNAP benefits alone.Â
Both the CBPP and the Food Research & Action Center, a policy and advocacy organization working to end hunger in the United States, said the U.S. government must use these funds to at least partially fund SNAP into November 2025. Fully funding SNAP for a month would cost around $8 billion, according to the CBPP.
According to a USDA memo, the department said it could not use the contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits because, “SNAP contingency funds are only available to supplement regular monthly benefits when amounts have been appropriated for, but are insufficient to cover, benefits.”
The USDA said it could not use contingency funds to continue SNAP funding because lawmakers failed to pass a continuing resolution or budget that would have appropriated any funds to SNAP that contingency funding could support.
House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson made a similar argument at a news conference on Oct. 27, citing legal analysis from the Trump administration to say that the contingency funds were “not legally available to cover the benefits right now.”
The next day, on Oct. 28, 25 states sued the USDA, claiming that it was unlawful for the agency to not fund SNAP benefits with contingency funds. On Oct. 31, Indira Talwani, a district judge in Massachusetts, wrote that the states were “likely to succeed on their claim that Defendants’ suspension of SNAP benefits is unlawful” and asked the USDA to report back by Nov. 3 whether it would “authorize at least reduced SNAP benefits for November,” using the contingency funds or other funding.
Another district judge in Rhode Island, John James McConnell Jr., went a step further than Talwani, granting a temporary restraining order to the plaintiffs in a separate case that also claimed the USDA’s failure to use contingency funds to fund SNAP was unlawful. McConnell also gave the USDA a Nov. 3 deadline to report back on how it would distribute the funds.
In sum …Â
Though there had been 13 failed votes on extending government funding for agencies and services led by Democrats at the time of this writing, it was not true that Democratic senators voted against the continuing resolution solely to block funding for SNAP.
Democrats in the Senate have maintained throughout the shutdown that their principal concern is a permanent extension on tax credits that millions of Americans use to buy health insurance. Republicans have falsely claimed extending these credits would allow “illegal” immigrants to access free healthcare.
Senators were expected to return to the Capitol on Nov. 3, which is also when judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island told the USDA to report on how it would continue to fund SNAP into November. Talwani, who heard the case in Massachusetts, wrote that the court would “likely” find the USDA’s failure to fund SNAP benefits through contingency funds “unlawful.”
For further reading, Snopes has previously reported on the effects of a government shutdown, what Democrats want to end it and whether SNAP benefits would continue to be paid past Nov. 1.
Sources
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