On most days, my Nextdoor feed plays the usual standbys: Neighborhood coyote sightings, reports of porch pirates and catalytic-converter thefts, conspiratorial screeds about city government, heated arguments about whether or not it’s a hanging offense to put dog-poop bags in other people’s garbage cans. This week, though, the tone has shifted dramatically: With November 1st and the end of federal SNAP benefits looming, residents have locked into mutual-aid mode on the oft-derided social platform. Some posters are people losing their benefits and seeking out free food pantries and food banks. Some are people hoping to help, like a woman offering to bake birthday cakes for kids whose families have lost their benefits. Some are local business owners raising money for emergency food support, like the coffee shop that has raised $200K this week to provide SNAP breakfasts. All are moving reminders of how neighbors rally to take care of each other in crisis moments; all are deeply infuriating reminders that in cases like this, they should not have to.

Last week, a banner appeared at the top of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s home page that reads, in part: “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…. 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.”

That this is a clear violation of the Hatch Act on the part of the USDA isn’t news: The government shutdown that began October 1 has been attended by similarly petty Hatch-Act infractions on the websites of the Department of Justice (“Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated”) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government”). The fact that a contingency plan explaining how the department could continue to fund SNAP during the shutdown with emergency funds disappeared overnight from the USDA site, however, definitely is.

The Agriculture Department had previously confirmed that it would tap these contingency funds — between $5 and $6 billion, which would not fully restore SNAP but could provide partial relief — in the event of a government shutdown. It reversed its policy in late October, stating without explanation that the funds were “not legally available.” The lawsuit filed Tuesday by more than 23 state attorneys general and several governors was an effort to compel the Trump administration to tap the reserve, and two federal judges have since ruled in their favor.

On Thursday, Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts gave the Trump administration until Monday to explain how it plans to fund benefits, saying “If you don’t have money, you tighten your belt. You are not going to make everyone drop dead because it’s a political game someplace.” And on Friday, Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled that the administration must restore benefits “as soon as possible.” Thus far there has been no response from the administration on how they plan to address these rulings.

The disappearance of the contingency plan from the USDA’s site counters Vice President J.D. Vance’s confusing, if telling, assertion that the president has “tried to do everything” in his power to make the shutdown as “unpainless as possible” (mission accomplished?) and suggests that the administration hopes to avoid accountability by denying that it ever existed. Whether or not