THE HUNGER GAMES: The Trump administration immediately went to the Supreme Court after  a federal appeals court ruled that the government must fund the food aid program known as SNAP, which stopped sending out benefits  because of the federal shutdown.

  Late last night Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the lower court order that the administration had to fully fund SNAP yesterday. So, it’s still unfunded.

  Forty-two million Americans, about 1 in 8, depend upon SNAP to eat.

  Although President Trump has moved money around at will for other purposes, ignoring Congress, the administration has claimed it is helpless to fund SNAP even though there is an emergency fund. The Justice Department argued that there is no “lawful basis” to force the president to find money in the “metaphorical couch cushions.”

  The administration then turned to the Supreme Court, asking them to decide the matter within hours.

  Some states, including New York, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Oregon, have gone ahead and funded SNAP anyway.

GROUND HOLD:  A total of 757 domestic flights have been canceled today as FAA reductions kick in because of the government shutdown. So far this morning, 964 are delayed.

  This is just the beginning as phased cutbacks reach 10 percent by next Friday.

ECON 101: US consumer sentiment slumped to a 3-1/2-year low as people worry about fallout from the government shutdown, now the longest in history.  Not everyone is worried. Economists describe this as a K-shaped economy in which  higher-income households are doing fine and the lower-income Americans are struggling. The wealthy are particularly pleased about higher stock values.

THE REGIME:

— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the destruction of yet another suspected drug boat in international waters. He posted on Twitter/X, “To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you.”

  US forces have destroyed at least 18 boats, killing 70 occupants.

— Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon issued a permanent order blocking President Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland, rejecting government arguments that protests had made it impossible to carry out immigration enforcement.

— This week at a Home Depot in Los Angeles immigration officers arrested a US citizen then drove off with the man’s car and his infant in the back seat. Officers broke out a window to get to the man and later accused him of assault.

  A Department of Homeland Security statement said, “During the operation, a U.S. citizen exited his vehicle wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement while he had a child in his car.”

— In his first political speech since leaving office, President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser in Omaha last night that the country is in a “very, very dark moment” and that President Trump has acted “in a way that embarrasses us as a nation.”

— President Trump approved a pardon for former NY Mets baseball star Daryl Strawberry, who pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud in 1995. A White House official said, “Following his career, Mr. Strawberry found faith in Christianity and has been sober for over a decade – he has become active in ministry and started a recovery center which still operates today.” 

TRILLIONS: Tesla’s Elon Musk this week became the first business executive to be given a trillion dollar pay package. That’s more than they pay Japanese baseball stars. 

  Musk is already the richest person in the world and he would not just be handed the trillion dollars. He would be given tranches of stock if he meets certain business benchmarks over the next 10 years. Those benchmarks include dramatically increasing the market value of the company and selling 20 million vehicles. 

THE OBIT PAGE: James D. Watson, who with his working partner Francis H.C. Crick discovered the structure of DNA, the genetic code of life, died at age 97 on Long Island.

  Watson went on to  lead the ambitious Human Genome Project and wrote “The Double Helix,” one of the most celebrated memoirs in science. He was only 25 at the time of the DNA discovery and won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

  Watson tarnished his reputation later in life telling the Sunday Times of London that Black people were not as intelligent as whites. He repeated that claim in a PBS documentary about him that was part of the “American Masters” series.

THE SPIN RACK: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is setting up a special project to monitor the  actions of Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor-elect, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor. — UPS and FedEx, have grounded their MD-11 planes after one of UPS’s MD-11s crashed in Kentucky this week, killing 14 people. The plane’s left engine detached. — The number of executions in Saudi Arabia has reached 320 so far this year in a “war on drugs” and smugglers who sneak hashish and amphetamines into the kingdom. Two-thirds of executions have been related to drug offenses, according to a London-based human rights group. Execution is normally carried out by beheading in Saudi Arabia. In other news from the kingdom, they hosted an international comedy festival last month. —  A cleaning lady in Indianapolis who knocked reporting for a job at the wrong address was shot dead Wednesday right through the door. Maria Florinda Ríos Pérez, 32, was a mother of four. As of yesterday, there had been no arrest.

BELOW THE FOLD: French artist James Colomina installed a life-size red figure floating face down in an Amsterdam canal and holding a flag reading “I’m fine” to protest global climate change policy.

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