Trump Administration Threatens Wisconsin Food Aid
USDA will withhold SNAP funding unless states turn over sensitive applicant data.
Grocery store shelves. Photo by Sophie Bolich.
The Trump administration is planning to withhold funding for food assistance in Wisconsin.
During a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump Tuesday, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins said the agency would begin withholding Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP) funding from states that won’t share sensitive personal data from SNAP recipients and applicants.
In May, the USDA sent a notice to states demanding “SNAP application, enrollment, recipient, and transaction data” and threatened to withhold funding if states did not comply.
The federal agency claims it needs the data to investigate “overpayments” and “fraud and abuse.” States refusing the request question the federal government’s motives. They argue federal law limits data sharing for privacy reasons and establishes a system for vetting candidates and quality control that does not require giving the USDA unfettered access to sensitive data on millions of SNAP applicants and recipients.
Wisconsin was one of 21 states and the District of Columbia that refused to share the data and later sued the USDA in federal court over the demand. In October, U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney issued a preliminary injunction, ordering USDA not to withhold SNAP funding for failing to comply with the data request.
“29 states said yes, not surprisingly, the red states. But 21 states, including California, New York and Minnesota, blue states, continue to say no,” Rollins said during the cabinet meeting Tuesday. “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 to protect the American taxpayer.”
The states that previously sued the USDA argued the data request was “unprecedented” and that the federal agency was going beyond what is allowed by federal law and threatening the privacy of millions of Americans. The data requested included sensitive information including home addresses, Social Security numbers, recent locations, citizenship and immigration status, and household income of millions of Americans. Noncitizens are legally allowed to apply for SNAP benefits on behalf of their citizen children.
“USDA makes this demand for the stated purpose of detecting ‘overpayments and fraud.’ Instead, the move appears to be part of the federal government’s well-publicized campaign to amass enormous troves of personal and private data, including information on taxpayers and Medicaid recipients, to advance goals that have nothing to do with combating waste, fraud, or abuse in federal benefit programs,” the states argued in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on July 28.
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sought data from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Wisconsin joined a lawsuit in August seeking to block the release, or use, of state Medicaid data for purposes other than healthcare.
The SNAP data sought by the Trump administration is protected by federal privacy laws, according to states suing the USDA. Historically, states have only shared limited data sets necessary to conduct quality control checks. Federal law has also established systems for states to vet applicants and investigate fraud while maintaining privacy protections, which includes limits on the federal government’s ability to access SNAP records.
“Sensitive information about people shouldn’t be turned over to the federal government simply because they applied for or received assistance through SNAP. It’s troubling that the federal government is working to compile this kind of information,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in July.
In Wisconsin, the SNAP funded program is called FoodShare. The data requested by USDA includes information provided by more than 934,000 Wisconsinites in 2024 alone, according to Kaul’s office.
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