The Trump administration plans to block Democratic-controlled states from accessing billions of dollars they need to run their food stamp programs unless governors turn over benefits rolls to federal officials, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday.
In May, Rollins ordered states to submit information on enrollees of SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, so administration officials could verify the eligibility of the more than 42 million monthly participants. It’s unclear if Rollins has the authority to demand that data, and the request could violate recipients’ privacy rights.
The program is funded largely by the federal government and administered by states. The federal government pays for benefits and for 50 percent of administrative costs, and states pay the other half.
As of Tuesday, 29 states had provided that data, Rollins said at a White House Cabinet meeting. Democratic-controlled states, including New York and California, have refused.
“As of next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said.
It is unclear if Rollins or the White House has the authority to cut SNAP funding to states that refuse to share data.
After Rollins ordered states to submit the information in July, 22 states and the District of Columbia suedthe U.S. Department of Agriculture over the request, arguing that the demand is unlawful. In October, a federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary temporary injunction that prevents USDA from demanding the data and cutting funds. The judge ruled that the agency’s actions likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act and that cutting SNAP funds could cause irreparable harm to the states and their residents.
USDA’s request for SNAP beneficiary data is part of a push by Rollins to create an “integrity team” meant to target “waste, fraud and abuse” within the program. In a statement to The Washington Post, USDA said Tuesday that it wants to “scrub all available information to end indiscriminate welfare fraud.”
“28 States and Guam joined us in this fight; but states like California, New York, and Minnesota, among 19 other blue States, keep fighting us,” the agency said in the statement. “We have sent Democrat States yet another request for data, and if they fail to comply, they will be provided with formal warning that USDA will pull their administrative funds.”
States that don’t turn in constituent data stand to lose millions in federal funding to run the program — which could jeopardize states’ ability to implement SNAP, potentially forcing them to push beneficiaries out of the program.
For example, Washington — one of the 22 states that sued the administration in July — currently receives about $129.5 million a year from the federal government to administer the program. In an October statement, the office of Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said that “any delay in that funding could be catastrophic for the state and the residents who rely on SNAP for food.”
Larger states stand to lose even more. According to fiscal year 2023 USDA data, California received $1.2 billion in federal funding for SNAP administrative costs, while New York received about $475 million.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) criticized Rollins’s comments in a post on X.
“Genuine question: Why is the Trump Administration so hellbent on people going hungry?” Hochul said.
Officials in New York told The Post that they have not yet received USDA guidance on the alleged withholding of funds. It wasn’t clear if other states had gotten more information.
Rep. Angie Craig (Minnesota), the top Democrat in the House Agriculture Committee, said Rollins was disregarding the law by threatening to withhold federal funding to states that don’t release constituent data.
“Secretary Rollins continues to spew propaganda, attacking a food assistance program which 42 million Americans rely on to feed their families,” Craig said in a statement. “Rather than address the cost of living, the secretary is once again weaponizing hunger by putting political talking points ahead of feeding seniors, children, veterans and Americans with disabilities.”
In its statement to The Post, USDA claimed baselessly that states that refuse to turn in their constituents’ data are choosing to “to protect illegals, criminals, and bad actors over the American taxpayer.” While Rollins and the Trump administration have repeatedly claimed that SNAP is rife with fraud, experts have repeatedly said that fraud in the program is minimal.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center, told The Post that the administration keeps saying that “there’s fraud, waste and abuse, when we do know that that is incorrect.” She noted that, historically, no agency has required that states share this amount of data with the federal government, adding that it is current practice for states to send over only randomized samples. What Rollins and USDA are asking for, Plata-Nino said, is vast quantities of identifying information that include names, addresses, when an individual enrolled, and whether or not they are still enrolled in SNAP.
“The federal law restricts USDA access to this,” Plata-Nino said. “The agency has always relied on anonymized data or small samples to perform oversight. … Them saying, ‘We’re gonna go ahead and remove this funding,’ it’s just so unprecedented.”
The administration has also repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants are accessing SNAP. Immigrants in the country illegally are not eligible for the program. Only specific groups of legal migrants are eligible for the program, and their status is repeatedly verified by states when implementing the benefit.
The Trump administration paused SNAP benefits for the first time in U.S. history during the 43-day government shutdown that ended last month. The Agriculture Department initially refused to release billions of dollars in contingency funds or reprogram other resources that would have provided partial payments for SNAP recipients.
A coalition of states sued to release those funds. Some governors attempted to overhaul their budgets to free up states’ money to prevent a SNAP funding shortfall.
The issue became one of the significant factors in leading lawmakers to end the impasse. Rollins said during the waning days of the shutdown that she hoped to use the attention on SNAP to review potential fraud in the program.
She said in a Newsmax interview after the shutdown that her department would require enrollees to reapply for their anti-hunger benefits. Rollins claimed that data USDA had received from complying states showed that “186,000 dead people receiving benefits, 500,000 Americans receiving benefits two times, so double what they should be receiving. We’ve arrested more than 120 people with SNAP fraud.”
USDA has not responded to Post requests for that data.
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