Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins conducts a news conference with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., in the U.S. Capitol on the government shutdown on Friday, October 31, 2025.
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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday threatened to cut off federal funding to Democratic-leaning states over what she alleged is their refusal to share SNAP program data with the Trump administration.
The administration “will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states” starting next week “until they comply,” Rollins told President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
Rollins said her department needs the state-by-state data on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, “to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer.”
The secretary said the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February had asked all 50 states “for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government.”
She said 29 “red states” complied, but 21 “blue states continue to say no.”
The noncompliant states include California, New York and Minnesota, Rollins said. The governors’ offices for each of those three states did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
A USDA spokesperson later specified in a statement to CNBC, “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 department had “established a SNAP integrity team” to analyze state data and “end indiscriminate welfare fraud,” the spokesperson said.
“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.”
Nearly 42 million people benefited from SNAP each month in fiscal year 2024, most of whom are children, elderly or people with disabilities, according to USDA’s official website.
Rollins at the Cabinet meeting said SNAP suffers from “rampant fraud.” But a fact sheet from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, citing fiscal year 2023 data, says, “The majority of SNAP benefits are used as intended.” Out of nearly 262,000 authorized SNAP retailers, 1,980 were disqualified and 561 were fined in that time period, according to the fact sheet.
— CNBC’s Mary Catherine Wellons contributed to this report.
