USDA emailed grocery stores around the country telling them not to offer special discounts or deals to SNAP recipients amid the freeze, warning that doing so would violate the program’s “Equal Treatment Rule.”

That rule requires stores to sell eligible food items to SNAP-EBT customers at the same prices and under the same conditions as other shoppers.

The email said: “Offering discounts or services only to SNAP-eligible customers is a SNAP violation unless you have a SNAP equal treatment waiver.”

I don’t know what the origins of that rule is. Maybe it was meant to prevent the stores from jacking up prices on SNAP recipients, because, you know, the money is coming from the government anyways. That would make it a sensible rule. But in either case, using that to require the grocery stores to not give discounts to SNAP recipients while the SNAP funds are frozen and the administration seems unwilling, against two separate court orders, to tap into the contingency funds, is just sheer cruelty.

Let’s say MAGA Mike Johnson is right, and the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault, and the GOP-controlled House and Senate and the administration are desperate to help people and prevent or reduce suffering during the shutdown but their hands are tied. Then how should one explain the above directive?