Federal Food Assistance Payments at Risk for Wisconsin Amid Data Sharing Dispute
In a move that could significantly impact Democratic-led states like Wisconsin, the Trump administration has announced plans to halt federal food assistance payments due to a data sharing impasse.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins declared that the federal government would suspend Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments to states that fail to provide personal data on program participants. This program is commonly referred to as FoodShare in Wisconsin. Rollins emphasized, “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,” as reported in the cabinet meeting.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has previously demanded that states submit detailed information about SNAP beneficiaries, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, immigration status, and transaction records. In response to this demand, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined a lawsuit alongside 21 other states and the District of Columbia, contesting the legality of such data collection. The lawsuit argues that the mandate constitutes an unlawful breach of privacy, as reported by Wisconsin Public Radio.
The federal government has given the states until December 8 to comply with the data request or provide a rationale for non-compliance. Meanwhile, the legal standing of the funding freeze remains uncertain. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction in October, preventing the White House from withholding SNAP funds from non-compliant states. The USDA has until December 15 to appeal this decision, as detailed in the court document available here.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has not yet commented on the current situation, though he has previously expressed confidence in the integrity and efficiency of the FoodShare program, remarking, “That system is analyzed every single year and we feel confident in it,” on WISN-TV.
Nationwide, improper payments account for about 11.7 percent of SNAP distributions, as per USDA data. These errors, which encompass both overpayments and underpayments, are often due to administrative mistakes rather than intentional fraud. More information on error rates can be found here.
Approximately 700,000 Wisconsin residents depend on SNAP benefits, with the state receiving about $1.5 billion in 2023, according to a report by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The financial ramifications of the potential funding freeze are yet to be fully understood.
These recent threats from the Trump administration follow a historic pause in SNAP payments during the first-ever federal government shutdown, which left recipients in limbo during early November. The state of Wisconsin managed to resume its payments after a federal judge mandated the release of funds, a development that effectively suspended the related court case following the end of the shutdown on November 12.
