Every person who receives SNAP benefits will soon have to reapply, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
Rollins appeared on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight on Thursday and reiterated that the Trump Administration is serious about “clamping down” on fraud within the SNAP system. This has been the messaging of the USDA under Rollins since she took office.
She made an X post featuring a clip from a Fox News interview at the beginning of the month, talking about a Trump executive order, which attempted to compel states to transmit SNAP benefits data to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.
Only 29 states willingly participated. Rollins claimed in an X post that just two states had sued the Trump Administration over the issue.
However, Oregon and 20 other states came together to sue the Trump Administration and won.
The states won the right to keep the sensitive information of SNAP beneficiaries — including home addresses, social security numbers and immigration status — out of the hands of federal agencies.
The lawsuit was announced in July and argued that the information would likely be shared across federal agencies and used for immigration enforcement, which is illegal.
During the same Fox News segment, Rollins said the USDA was asking for this data to “better understand how this explosion of SNAP benefits happened under Joe Biden. We increased almost 40% on this program in just a couple of years under the Biden administration.”
“Of course, we know they were trying to buy the election, but that’s a conversation for another time,” she continued.
The USDA’s own data shows that under the Biden administration, the number of SNAP beneficiaries went from 41.6 million people in 2021 to 41.7 million in 2024. That’s an increase of less than 1%.
Congress’s website hosts several research articles written by members of the Congressional Research Service. CRS is a nonpartisan staff shared among congressional committees and members of Congress that conducts research only at the behest of Congress.
CRS member Randy Alison Aussenberg had a research article published this year on Congress.gov that looks at errors and fraud within SNAP. That research shows that “SNAP fraud is rare, according to available data and reports, but there is no single data point that reflects all the forms of fraud in SNAP.”
Rollins claimed on Newsmax that after receiving the SNAP information from the 29 red states that willingly participated, “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”
Even if Rollins’ figure is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are 186,000 cases of fraud. Aussenberg’s article breaks down the types of fraud and errors that could be present in the SNAP infrastructure. There is room for error clerically that could cause issues that appear to be fraudulent.
A full reapplication process, according to Rollins, would “give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it.”
According to the USDA’s own material, most municipalities require updated data on location and earnings every 6-12 months.
No details on the reapplication process have been announced by the USDA. It’s unclear if the burden of this new application process would be left with states or become a federal matter. Likewise, no timeline was given.
This announcement is only the latest SNAP news. Earlier this month, the Trump Administration balked at using contingency funds to keep SNAP going during the longest government shutdown in history.
Oregon took steps to provide full SNAP benefits to beneficiaries by Nov. 7, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services website. The government has since reopened, and Rollins said on Rob Schmitt Tonight that all beneficiaries should get this month’s benefits by Nov. 17.
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