PHOENIX – In a brief order, the U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday acceded to a request by the Trump administration to at least temporarily block enforcement of an order by a lower court judge for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the full November allotment of each of the 42 million Americans who qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

That administrative “stay’’ ran only through 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

But the justices gave no indication of how they are leaning on the underlying question of how much authority a federal court judge has to tell the USDA how to spend its money – or what that might mean to food stamp recipients depending on what they decide.

All this relates to the claim by the administration that the government shutdown that began at the end of September left the USDA with no money – and no authority – to make November payments.

Judges in two separate federal courts rejected that contention.

They pointed out the agency has about $5 billion in contingency funds. And they ruled that, at the........

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