The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is under fresh scrutiny after the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary Brooke Rollins pushed a reapplication and recertification plan while revealing extensive fraud figures, including more than 226,000 fraudulent SNAP claims and hundreds of thousands of unauthorized transactions that are draining taxpayer dollars.
USDA officials say they are trying to clean up a program meant to be temporary aid for families in need, and the new review is part of a broader push to make sure benefits go only to eligible households. The administration’s demand that every recipient reapply has already produced a patchwork of state cooperation, and early audits have produced alarming numbers. Those figures are fueling calls for deeper reforms to how benefits are issued and monitored across state lines.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Monday the Trump administration will require all participants in the nation’s largest food assistance program to reapply for benefits in an effort to prevent fraud.
Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which supports more than 40 million Americans, will need to demonstrate that their households still meet eligibility requirements to continue receiving benefits.
Requiring reapplication is a blunt tool, but advocates for tighter oversight argue that blunt is exactly what’s needed when fraud reaches the levels now being reported. States were instructed to share recipient-level data earlier in the year, and only a minority complied right away, leaving gaps in the national picture. The cooperation, or lack of it, has political overtones because participation in the data request has been uneven across state governments.
New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal the states where the nation’s largest food assistance program is costing taxpayers the most through fraud and misuse.
Among the findings: more than 226,000 fraudulent SNAP benefit claims and over 691,000 unauthorized transactions have been approved nationwide, according to the USDA’s initial compilation. Fraudulent transactions include purchases the recipient did not authorize, frequently the result of card skimming, cloning, or other electronic theft. Those numbers are not small anomalies; they represent systemic vulnerabilities in the card-based benefit system.
The USDA’s early data also flagged 186,000 deceased individuals getting benefits and roughly 500,000 people collecting SNAP assistance in more than one state. That kind of duplication and oversight failure creates windows for organized fraud and for simple clerical errors that remain uncorrected. Fixing it will require better identity verification and inter-state data sharing, both politically charged and technically challenging.
State-by-state tallies show sharp disparities. Alabama was listed as leading with more than 26,000 stolen benefit claims, followed by California with 25,818 and New York with 25,210. Nationwide, SNAP cost $99.8 billion last year, and beneficiaries received an average of $187 per month, figures the USDA included in its briefings. Those totals provide context for why fraud on this scale translates into real losses for taxpayers.
USDA officials estimate the stolen benefits will cost the government roughly $102 million in the first quarter of 2025 alone. That quarter’s losses are a headline-grabbing start to what could be a longer-term accountability push. Policy conversations now center on whether to tighten eligibility rules, improve card security, or adopt new verification systems that would limit cross-state abuse.
Public debate over how to balance compassionate aid with fiscal responsibility is heating up. Critics of the reapplication plan pitch it as burdensome for low-income families who rely on consistent access to food, while supporters say routine recertification is a reasonable safeguard to protect taxpayers. Either way, the program’s scale—supporting millions of Americans monthly—means any reform will affect a broad swath of households.
Some commentators argue for stricter rules about how recipients spend benefits, suggesting that purchases of nonessentials should disqualify someone from receiving assistance. Others point out that policing purchases can be intrusive and that the main priority should be preventing theft and identity fraud, not micromanaging beneficiaries’ private choices. The coming policy moves will test whether the administration can reduce fraud without cutting off legitimate help for families who actually need it.
As the USDA continues collecting data from states that have not yet complied, those numbers will shape the next steps on reform and enforcement. Lawmakers and administrators will face decisions about funding for fraud detection, cross-state identity systems, and whether to standardize eligibility processes nationwide. For now, the newly released figures have put a spotlight on fraud and set the stage for policy fights over the future of SNAP.
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