Topline
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Trump administration will revoke food stamp funding for 21 “blue states” that haven’t complied with the agency’s request for SNAP program data she said it needs to identify “fraud.”
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on Friday, October 31, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Key Facts
The Trump administration “will begin to stop moving federal funding into those states” next week “until they comply,” Rollins said during a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
A USDA spokesperson said the agency will send the states another request for data and if they don’t comply they will be issued a formal warning that “USDA will pull their administrative funds.”
California, New York and Minnesota are among the states that haven’t provided the data, while 29 “red states” have complied with the request initially issued in February, Rollins said.
Rollins claimed the agency has identified hundreds of thousands of “dead people” still receiving food stamp benefits and others “receiving double benefits,” though she did not present evidence for the claim, which she’s made previously.
The USDA has “established a SNAP integrity team” to assess the state data in order to “end indiscriminate welfare fraud,” a USDA spokesperson told CNBC.
Tangent
Rollins has suggested in recent weeks an overhaul of the SNAP program, telling Fox News recently the government shutdown “has given us a platform to completely deconstruct the program.” The USDA walked back Rollins’ recent comments that the agency would require SNAP recipients to reapply for funding, telling multiple outlets it would instead use its “standard recertification processes.”