When the Trump administration declined to tap into contingency funds that could have kept food assistance going during the government shutdown, the justification that leaders offered was a claim of powerlessness. “There’s no legal mechanism to do it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters . “My understanding is that the administration made the assessment that those funds could not be used for this purpose,” said Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) on CNN . As families across the country