The USDA wants states to hand over food stamp data by the end of July
Source: NPR
July 19, 2025 5:00 AM ET
When Julliana Samson signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help afford food as she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, she had to turn in extensive, detailed personal information to the state to qualify. Now she's worried about how that information could be used.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made an unprecedented demand to states to share the personal information of tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients by July 30, as a federal lawsuit seeks to postpone the data collection.
USDA is requiring states turn over identifying information on all SNAP recipients and applicants since 2020, "including but not limited to" names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers, as well as the dollar amount each recipient received over time. States that do not comply with USDA's data demand could lose funds.
Samson is one of the more than 40 million people who receive SNAP benefits each month. Their personal data has remained within their states' control, but the USDA's demand would change that.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/19/nx-s1-5471553/usda-snap-privacy-lawsuit

bucolic_frolic
(51,491 posts)Any blame here could fall on recipients. Another fishing expedition for deportation?
cbabe
(5,262 posts)of Ukrainians with famine. British killed millions of Irish. Gaza being starved out. And inner city food deserts.
Lots more examples.
Thinking of crops rotting in the fields as workers are being deported by ice. Watch food prices climb as food benefits are cut.
You control everything if you control food.
Karasu
(1,638 posts)turbinetree
(26,354 posts)I know because we had to in my family...............when I was growing up.........this program started in 1964................JFC.............
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,969 posts)...is that they're looking for records that would indicate that the SNAP benefits are for child but not the entire family...an indicator (to them) that the child is a citizen but the parents are not.
EuterpeThelo
(61 posts)when I was in college as a single mom working to earn my paralegal certification. I used to joke that the forms I had to fill out were so invasive that it may as well have amounted to "what bra size do you wear," "how many calories did you eat yesterday," and "what did you read last night before you went to bed." Even with that, I had to literally spend every 15-minute break I had at my retail job (supervisor for Barnes & Noble) on the phone trying to reach the ever-changing roster of "workers" to whom I had been assigned to ask why, despite the fact I had turned in every single one of my completed forms in a timely manner, I still hadn't received the pittance of a check that I NEEDED in order to pay my daycare provider. I was lucky she was so patient and understanding and loved my daughter as if she was her own.
I was working 32 hours a week at the bookstore and carrying 12 full-time units of school while trying to raise a toddler. Despite the fact that EITHER working OR attending school was supposed to waive my participation in banal activities like showing up for a resume-writing workshop at, say, 2pm on a Tuesday, I would come home after an 18-hour long day to voicemails threatening to cut off my benefits because I'd been a no-show at said workshop, resulting in a fresh round of "spend every waking minute during the workday calling the welfare office in a panic to make sure they realize they've made a mistake."
It got so bad that I wrote a letter to the head of what was then called the "welfare" department of San Mateo County and I demanded AND RECEIVED a written apology from them for the way my case had been handled. I now pay four times the amount in federal taxes than I earned at that job in a year.