Ex-federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade slammed JD Vance on Friday after the vice president brushed off a federal judge’s “absurd ruling” requiring President Donald Trump’s administration to pay full food benefits for November.
“JD Vance is a law school graduate — shame on him,” said McQuade in an interview with MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera.
Vance, in remarks following the judge’s ruling on Thursday, claimed that the administration can only make full Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) payments after Democrats “open up the government.”
“In the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation,” he said. “We’re not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge.”
Earlier in the day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — which administers the program — told states that it was working to comply with the judge’s ruling. The Supreme Court has since paused the order requiring the administration to pay full SNAP benefits for November.
McQuade, who pointed back to the “seminal case” of Marbury v. Madison, stressed that it’s been the role of the courts to “tell the president what to do when he is violating the law.”
“The president’s remedy is to file an appeal and if they get a different ruling there, that’s fine. But in the meantime, they are obligated to follow the court’s order,” she explained.
McQuade pointed to the judge’s remarks that the administration was disrupting SNAP “for political reasons,” despite the money being available for it.
She noted that the judge cited Trump’s Truth Social post to support his conclusion, as well.
“So this idea that somehow the president doesn’t have to follow the order of the court, that’s what’s absurd,” she said.