Twenty-five states sue the federal government for not paying November SNAP benefits.

OK. Tuesday. Twenty-five states. Walking into federal court. Twenty-five. That is half the country. Plus three governors. Plus the District of Columbia. The complaint, filed in the District of Massachusetts, runs roughly forty pages and concerns the following question: when Congress writes a contingency fund into the food stamps appropriation and labels the fund “contingency fund,” and the Department of Agriculture refuses to draw on the contingency fund during a contingency, is that the kind of thing that a federal court might want to look at?

Buddy. The answer is yes.

I have run a casino floor. We have a cage fund at the cage. The whole point of the cage fund is that some nights are bad nights. When some nights are bad nights, we take from the cage fund. The cage fund is sitting in the cage. The cage is not locked. The cage is labeled. The label says, in capital letters, USE THIS WHEN THE NIGHT IS BAD.

The Department of Agriculture, as of this Tuesday, is the manager who walks the floor on a bad night, refuses to open the cage, and tells the dealers they will need to make change with whatever is in their pockets.

The states’ argument is short. The argument is: Congress wrote the fund. Congress said use it. The fund exists. Use it. The administration’s argument is also short. The administration’s argument is: the fund is reserved for true emergencies, and we do not consider this an emergency.

I do not know what to call a country whose Department of Agriculture, with 42 million people enrolled in food assistance, on a Tuesday in late October, is in court arguing that the federal food assistance shutdown does not rise to the level of a true emergency. I have words for it. They are not for the paper.

The complaint will be assigned to a federal judge by Wednesday. The judge will rule for the states by Friday. The administration will appeal by Saturday. The federal courts of appeals and, for one stop, the Supreme Court, will be working through this all the way into the second week of November. The fund, by the second week of November, will mostly be drawn down to where Congress always intended it to be drawn down.

It will have taken twenty-five states, three governors, and a federal courthouse to get the cage opened.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is filing in Boston.