Judge orders administration to distribute SNAP contingency money amid shutdown

What power are you talking about here?

The power to withhold money paid by taxes intended to benefit state residents.

That could describe anything the federal government does. It doesn’t helpfully separate state versus federal.

The 10th amendment restrains what the federal government can do. By taxing and administering SNAP, they deprive the states and people the rights reserved to them by the constitution. The federal powers are pretty narrow, and the amount of taxes that can be sustained upon the populace finite. By usurping taxation and distribution of extra-constitutional federal powers, they deprive states the ability to administer it themselves.

This was the argument when the ACA (specifically the medicare changes) went before The Supreme Court! End running around the constitution via the tax and spend power by taxing money out of states and then giving it back with strings. And it's one I happen to agree with. It's a crazy overreach by the federal government and it's being made so much worse today when the executive can ad hoc attach even more strings else withhold the money. So you at least have "my point was argued before the Supreme Court" as a source of legitimacy.

It's bad enough when Congress and federal agencies attach strings like this but when the executive, like literally the man not the branch, can effectively unilaterally write laws enforced by withholding unrelated funds we've reached a whole new level of throwing out the separation of powers.

Yes. And the fundamental problem is that the federal government has too much power. So everything it describes should be considered in this light.

Unsurprisingly, there is not often a consensus by the federal government to reduce its own power or for people whose tribe is in power to suggest that they devolve some of it back to the states.