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 their alleged 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 state 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.”
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— CNBC’s Mary Catherine Wellons contributed to this report.
