Overview
- USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins set a Dec. 8 deadline and warned that states refusing to share SNAP recipient databases would receive “not a dollar” of federal administrative funding.
- Roughly 21–22 states and the District of Columbia have sued, a federal judge in California temporarily halted the original order, and the USDA issued a new letter again linking compliance to administrative funds.
- USDA statements and media tallies report that most states have complied, with about 28–29 counted as having submitted data, while holdouts include large states such as California, New York and Michigan that risk losing administrative money.
- Local reporting in Michigan describes a freeze tied to noncompliance that has spurred fear among immigrant families and increased requests for home-delivered food assistance from nonprofits.
- Separate policy changes are already tightening eligibility: Texas now requires at least 20 hours per week of work or approved activities and a new federal rule targets 80 hours per month, with the CBO projecting about 2.4 million fewer average monthly SNAP participants over 10 years and possible knock-on effects for Lifeline phone and internet benefits.