In May, as the details of his party’s domestic policy megabill took shape, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote a memorable op-ed for The New York Times to offer some advice to his fellow GOP policymakers. “We must ignore calls to cut Medicaid,” the senator wrote, adding that “slashing health insurance for the working poor” would be “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

For many on the left, Hawley’s message was both a pleasant surprise and an encouraging signal about his apparent beliefs. Indeed, the vote on the right-wing legislation was likely to be close, and if the Missouri Republican was sincere in his concerns about Medicaid cuts, the bill’s many opponents thought there was still a chance the package could be improved or derailed.

The optimism, however, was short-lived: Just seven weeks after his Times op-ed was published, Hawley voted for the bill that included hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts.

This week, the GOP senator wrote another op-ed for the same newspaper, and once again, the Republican positioned himself as a proponent of a progressive priority: Hawley expressed concern about a looming deadline that will mark the end of federal food assistance for roughly 42 million Americans. From his opinion piece:

Congress must not let that happen. America is a great and wealthy nation, and our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit. We help those in need. We provide for the widow and the orphan. Love of neighbor is part of who we are. The Scripture’s injunction to ‘remember the poor’ is a principle Americans have lived by. It’s time Congress does the same.

He went on to write, “Millions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps — officially it’s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store. Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That’s over 12 percent of the American population. … Nobody in America, this richest of nations, should go to bed hungry, and certainly no child.”

It’s easy to imagine a great many Democrats reading this and endorsing the sentiment. There are, however, a couple of problems that Hawley overlooked.

For starters, as I noted above, he voted for his party’s domestic policy megabill, which included — you guessed it — dramatic cuts to federal food assistance.

For another, there are highly relevant details about the ongoing dispute. Punchbowl News reported:

Democrats claim that the responsibility for the SNAP crisis is squarely on the Trump administration, arguing that the Agriculture Department should draw on a roughly $5 billion contingency fund to pay benefits for a few weeks. The Trump administration doesn’t believe it can use that funding to keep benefits available in November for more than 40 million Americans who use the program.

Democrats claim this because it’s true.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told reporters, “This is a hoax being perpetrated by this administration for political reasons to point a finger at Democrats. … They have $5 [billion] to $6 billion in a contingency fund which says it’s exactly for these kinds of purposes.”

With this in mind, Democratic governors and attorneys general from 25 states filed suit this week to stop the White House from ending SNAP benefits on Nov. 1, calling the looming food aid cutoff “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”

Hawley, as best as I can tell, has yet to publicly endorse the Democratic litigation. Watch this space.