The Agriculture Department plans to freeze federal funding for 21 states starting next week as it escalates its crackdown on possible fraud in the food stamp program, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday.
The USDA requested states in February to turn over data about benefit recipients under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serves nearly 42 million people.
Rollins said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday the withholding move would aid the department’s efforts to root out fraud, adding that 29 “red states” complied with the order.
“But 21 states including California, New York and Minnesota — the blue states — continue to say ‘no,’ so 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 protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said.
The move would put the USDA at odds with a federal court order.
More than 20 states and the District of Columbia — virtually all of them led by Democratic governors — filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in August to block the USDA action seeking the state data. Judge Maxine M. Chesney granted the states’ request for a preliminary injunction in mid-October.
Among the states under threat of losing federal funding is Pennsylvania, the home state of House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson. He defended the USDA’s decision.
“Transparency and accountability are not bad things,” Thompson said. “Question is, what are you hiding? What do you have to hide?”
“What does it mean for the folks in the [Democratic Gov. Josh] Shapiro administration choosing not to participate,” he said. “They’ll be accountable to the citizens of Pennsylvania.”
Thompson’s Democratic counterpart, ranking member Angie Craig, D-Minn., is also facing the threat of her state losing federal funds.
“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.
“Her disregard for the law and willingness to lie through her teeth comes from the very top — the Trump administration is as corrupt as it is lawless, and I will not sit silently as she carries out the president’s campaign against Americans struggling to afford food in part because of this president’s tariffs and disastrous economic policies,” she said.
The USDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for additional information, but Rollins said on social media that administrative funding would be withheld.
States and the federal government share the cost of administering SNAP, while the federal government pays the entire cost of the benefits.
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