Wisconsin is among the Democratic-led states that could lose federal food assistance payments, after threats from the agency that oversees the program.
On Tuesday, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said during a cabinet meeting that the Trump administration will withhold payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known nationwide as SNAP and in Wisconsin as FoodShare — from states that do not share personal data about the program’s participants.
“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,” Rollins said at the cabinet meeting.
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The USDA previously ordered that states hand over data about SNAP recipients — including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, immigration status and SNAP transaction records.
In July, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul joined a multistate lawsuit against the data sharing demand, arguing that sensitive information should be protected.
Twenty-one other states and the District of Columbia also signed onto that lawsuit, which argued the data collection attempt amounted to an unlawful violation of people’s privacy.
The threatened states have until Dec. 8 to either comply with the data sharing demand or provide an explanation for why they won’t, according to a letter sent by the federal government.
It’s unclear whether that funding freeze is lawful. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction in October that said the White House can’t withhold SNAP funds from states that don’t provide the data. The USDA has until Dec. 15 to appeal.
A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers did not immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment. Evers previously told reporters he’s confident in the FoodShare program’s efficacy and integrity.
“That system is analyzed every single year and we feel confident in it,” Evers said on WISN-TV.
Nationwide, USDA data shows about 11.7 percent of SNAP payments are “improper,” which can refer to a range of errors, including overpayments and underpayments by the state. Research indicates that, of those errors, administrative mistakes are more common than purposeful fraud.
In Wisconsin, about 700,000 people use the federal food assistance program. Although the exact cost of the program has fluctuated in recent years, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wisconsinites received about $1.5 billion through the program in 2023.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health Services, which is the state agency that administers the federal program, didn’t immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment.
The Trump administration’s threats come weeks after SNAP payments were paused for the first time in U.S. history during the federal government shutdown.
That meant uncertainty for recipients during the first few days of November as courts weighed the legality of that funding withdrawal. Wisconsin restored the state’s payments in the first week of the month, after a federal judge ordered the White House to release the money.
The end of the shutdown on Nov. 12 functionally suspended that court case.
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