It’s your money. Apparently you’re not allowed to ask where it went.

There are certain questions you’re apparently no longer supposed to ask.

Like: Who is getting the money?

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing over the federal government’s demand that states provide information about people receiving SNAP benefits, including immigration status. She says the administration is trying to “weaponize” the food assistance program against immigrant communities.

I listened to her argument Tuesday and kept coming back to something very basic.

Whose money is it?

You get up. You go to work. You pay taxes. You buy groceries for your own family — which lately is an adventure all by itself — and then some of your tax money goes toward helping people who can’t afford enough food.

I’m okay with that.

We’re a generous country. People fall on hard times. Children need to eat. Elderly people need to eat. Disabled people need help.

But generosity doesn’t mean nobody gets to look at the books.

The federal government sends billions of taxpayer dollars into these programs and says: Show us who is receiving the benefits. Tell us whether people who are receiving them are legally in the country.

And somehow the offensive part of this story is the question.

Speaker Mike Johnson put it more directly. The administration wants to know how many illegal aliens are receiving benefits in states including New York and California, and Democratic officials are suing to stop the federal government from obtaining the information.

That is remarkable to me.

If I give somebody money to administer a program, I don’t think I’m violating his civil rights when I ask what he did with the money.

I call that an audit.

We used to understand something else about immigration that seems to have vanished along the way. Coming to America was not supposed to mean arriving with an invoice for the people already here.

Immigrants traditionally had sponsors. There was an expectation that you could support yourself or that somebody would be responsible for you. Other countries still have perfectly serious rules about who can enter, who can work and how long visitors can remain.

Try walking into another country and announcing that you’ve decided to stay and would now like its citizens to cover your living expenses.

Let me know how that goes.

This isn’t hostility toward immigrants. America has welcomed people from every corner of the earth.

It’s the difference between immigration and entitlement.

And I think we’re losing the ability to make distinctions like that because increasingly the enforcement of any rule is portrayed as the real injustice.

Which brings me to something else we played Tuesday that was considerably more disturbing.

California State University professor Melina Abdullah appeared at a protest and identified an ICE agent by name. She identified a hotel where she said he might be staying. She repeatedly told the crowd to “f*** him up.”

She talked about guerrilla warfare. She told people to use every tool in the toolbox. She said there should be nowhere these agents go where they are comfortable.

Then she explained that when she said “f*** him up,” she meant it “in many ways.”

Oh.

Well, that clears everything up.

This woman is a college professor.

A professor at a taxpayer-supported university.

Think about the strange circle we’ve completed here.

On one side, government officials want information about how federal taxpayer money is being distributed, and we’re told that asking questions about immigration status is cruel and dangerous.

On the other, a professor being paid by taxpayers can publicly identify an individual federal law-enforcement officer, tell a crowd where he may be staying and repeatedly say “f*** him up.”

Who exactly is creating the dangerous situation here?

You can despise ICE policy. You can protest deportations. You can vote against Donald Trump. You can march, organize, scream, carry signs and demand that Congress change the law.

That’s America.

But an individual law-enforcement officer is still an individual human being. Publishing where you believe he is staying while whipping up an angry crowd isn’t a policy argument.

And apparently this needs to be said now.

The same culture that treats ordinary government scrutiny as intimidation seems increasingly comfortable with actual intimidation when the target is somebody it has decided deserves it.

That’s backwards.

Government should be accountable for the money it spends.

People receiving government benefits should be subject to lawful eligibility rules.

Immigration laws should mean something.

Law-enforcement officers should be accountable when they break the law, too.

And professors should probably be able to make a political argument without giving an angry crowd directions to somebody’s hotel.

These shouldn’t be controversial propositions.

But here we are.

Ask where the taxpayer money went and you’re accused of targeting people.

Tell a crowd where a federal agent may be sleeping and to “f*** him up”?

Apparently that’s activism.

I think we’ve got this exactly backwards.

— Bo Snerdley