Agriculture Sec. Rollins Exposes SNAP Corruption
“We have found thousands and thousands of of illegal use of the EBT card. We have been moving people off of SNAP. We’ve got almost 700,000 people…”
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins vowed to reform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), revealing waste on Fox News over the weekend.
Rollins made the comments a few days after two judges told the USDA to use contingency funds to cover SNAP benefits.
Those on SNAP faced no money on November 1 due to the Schumer shutdown.
It sucks that none of us are shocked by this news:
Day One of USDA, February 13, is we sent letters to every governor in America, being very clear that no illegal aliens can use SNAP. Zero. We asked every state, for the first time in history, and this was in February, to send us their data and let us, with DOGE and a war room, actually start going through 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. And since we have asked for that data, 29 states have complied, of course, almost all the red states, couple of the, you know, the couple blue states too.
But in that data, and I haven’t talked about this yet publicly, in that data, we have found, we’ve studied about $100 billion in SNAP.
We have found thousands and thousands of of illegal use of the EBT card. We have been moving people off of SNAP. We’ve got almost 700,000 people, I think, we’ve moved off just since the president took office. We’ve arrested about 118 people. So this has been ongoing.
But Rachel, to your point, what this conversation has allowed is a national spotlight on a broken and corrupt program.
We found one guy in six different states getting benefits. We found about 5000 people that are dead who are still getting benefits.
Like it is time to drastically reform this program so that we can make sure that those who are truly needy, truly vulnerable are getting what they need, and the rest of the corruption goes away and we can serve the American taxpayer.
On my first day @USDA, we told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. 29 states stepped up. 21 blue states refused — and two SUED US FOR ASKING! 🤦🏻♀️
And guess what? In just the states… pic.twitter.com/W7ha0Le1eN
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) November 2, 2025
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Comments
Make every recipient reapply after the shutdown is over. I’ll bet the true number of illegals is over 5 million. It’s also a good way to identify those who need to self deport or let ICE escort them to an immigration judge and send them home with a deportation order and a no entry order.
When you can lie about the kids count and the system never checks, that’s a problem.
msm -to children – hotline>>>>>> patriots of america are racist and want you eliminated
Fix it with ‘in kind’ benefits instead of Cash. Require applicants to show up in person to apply then reapply each quarter. Hand out a weekly food box that mist be picked up in person. Disqualify any Household from participating if they have an illegal alien or other ineligible living there. Permanent ban for the applicant of all federally funded public assistance programs if they fail to disclose an ineligible person or make any misrepresentations by commission or omission about eligibility criteria. It is called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for a reason, it is intended as a supplement to the efforts of the household to sustain itself, not as a replacement for those efforts.
Use the already paid for school kitchens to get ‘the children’ fed. Provide a free breakfast, lunch and a take home brown bag sandwich and an apple. Open it up on Saturday/Sunday with a hot breakfast (oatmeal, grits, toast) and two brown bags. Keep WIC in place. This way the entire ‘the kids are going hungry’ or ‘what about the children’ arguments go out the window.
Jail the fraudsters. Jail the folks approving bogus applications and failing to be diligent with taxpayer funds. At least fire them and make those folks ineligible for employment with any entity handing out federal or federally subsidized program dollars. Same for any 3rd party entity contracted to do any eligibility screening which failed much less was involved in fraud.
My wife teaches now and was a sub for the year prior.
The kids throw most of those free meals away. The teachers often go through the garbage and fish them out.
Meh. That’s on the kid. The secondary goal of handing over the brown bag for take home is to end any additional food assistance for ‘children’. If the kid chooses to throw away what might be their only dinner option… that’s on them. At worst no one can legitimately claim society didn’t put a meal into the kid’s hand which IMO ends the constant blather about ‘hungry children’ not being seen to by society aka taxpayers. The kid had an opportunity for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the taxpayer dime if they turn their nose up at the meals they can go hungry until they figure out how to provide for themselves.
It sounds like you’re expecting people to be responsible. Responsible as in figuring out how to get a picture ID so they can vote. That sounds racist.
/must I?
I expect most folks to be grossly irresponsible when using other people’s money. Handing over in kind food boxes and putting meals directly in a kid’s hand as a practical matter eliminates the ability of program recipients to defraud taxpayers with the most common scams.
Food boxes definitely works at the local food bank. I am 100% for commodities (which I grow at home in addition to the bread that I donate), but I doubt that they can replace SNAP — only supplement the supplement. It’s also a cost issue. I am in favor of low cost, and wonder if distribution of commodities as the main event would be cost effective.
When considering the impact of:
1. Elimination of fraud as a practical matter
2. Those who were eligible due to quirks in guidelines but don’t truly need it deciding they don’t want rice/beans and won’t apply except for cash or cash equivalents or just decline the hassle of picking up a food box
Then yeah no question there’s gonna be cost savings overall for the program. Don’t forget the added impact of eliminating eligibility and benefit calculation for infants and school age children b/c under this proposal their food benefit comes from WIC as ‘infants’ then K-12 at school.
Sure the bank that has the contract to issue the EBT and SNAP benefit cards and process the financial transfers will tell us the opposite but if they didn’t they’d be arguing against their own financial interests. Then there’s the basic common sense idea of having local food storage in communities for crisis events/natural disasters. Keeping 2-3 months worth of dry goods on hand in a decentralized local storage has its own virtues.
I would just run it like WIC. You have a card that allows you to get X cans of approved brands and styles of beans at the local grocery store, Y gallons of approved milk, Z loaves of approved bread, etc.
I’ve never understood the supposed financial and logistical inability of presumably unemployed mothers to give their kids a bowl of cereal in the morning before they leave for school, let alone the inability to make a pb&j or bologna sandwich to take to school. The do-gooders continue to lower the bar for parental responsibility.
Agreed yet we’ve already built the kitchens and cafeteria facilities in our schools. Given the amount of fraud, actual and perceived, in cash based food assistance programs and the unyielding politically charged cry to ‘do something for the children’ it seems kinda Cray Cray not to use facilities we’ve already paid for to actually produce and put a nutritious meal in a child’s hands to solve the ‘problem’ of children going hungry. Same.for in kind food boxes. Use the local neighborhood schools as distribution points on Sat/Sun as.twofer; hot breakfast for the kids+ brown bag meals and Adults pick up the weekly food box.
Looked at as a choice between continuing our current broken system or a less costly, more secure, less fraudulent and much more effective way to ensure children and the truly vulnerable get nutritional meals/food into their hands directly it seems kinda obvious. Unfortunately telling everyone to pound sand and ending food assistance entirely is not a realistic option…not yet anyway.
To be fair, some percentage of SNAP recipients are disabled or too elderly to go get a food box or even to cook. Any reform should be careful to keep those people in mind. Past that, those are reasonable ideas. I also think that SNAP cards should include the name of the recipient(s) and caregivers if appropriate, and that photo I.D. should be required to use the cards.
Like 2%
33% of SNAP recipients are elderly, and 18% are non-elderly disabled. This is not to say that half the recipients are too old to pick up a food box or cook, but that there’s probably a non-trivial subgroup of people in those straits.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/snap/characteristics-fy23
Wouldn’t a person with such a severe disability or became too elderly/frail to travel a relatively short distance to their local neighborhood school to pick up their box also be unable to go to the grocery store? If unable to cook no food source is gonna solve the issue.
Not for nothing but as a 100% disabled Vet I qualify for all sorts of programs I don’t use. I can still manage to get to the grocery. Then there’s the seemingly forgotten role of Family in caring for their own elderly or disabled. Beyond Family is the role of a ‘friendly society’, a congregation and local community.. IMO, only after those have made their best good faith efforts to provide for the needy in their orbit should the Municipal, County and finally the State govt step in. If the local and State efforts leave a.shortfall then maybe the Federal government can step up…if private charitable orgs can’t meet the need.
You make reasonable points in rebuttal. Look, half of the SNAP recipients are either elderly or non-elderly disabled. I am a weekly donor to my local food bank, and am thinking of those who are too frail to get there and who don’t have the family or social support. Not a lot of people, and maybe they can be mostly taken care of by Meals on Wheels — but not everyone, especially in deep rural areas.
I am resolutely anti-fraud of all kinds, and think it’s time to take a close look at SNAP fraud once this funding snafu gets sorted out. I’d hate to see the program become so restrictive that people wind up falling through the cracks, that’s all.
I am pretty conservative on most things, but I have a soft spot when it comes to food. Again, go after the fraud. The stuff the Ag Secretary has mentioned needs to be reckoned with, and I want that to be crystal clear. But look, by definition, half the population is below average, and that would include just about every deserving, non-fraudulent SNAP recipient.
I’m seeing too much junk in this thread aimed at the poor, I’m not talking about the layabout who begs for meth money at the freeway ramp, but the people at the small town food bank where I will drop off 20 loaves of home made bread tomorrow. These people wouldn’t be caught dead begging, and I worry about the people who can’t make it down there and have no one to get the food, and for whatever reason can’t cook it even if they got it.
This is a big country, with 340 million people. There are some very rough situations in America, people who need help. Call me names, but that’s who I’m thinking of,
I think we agree far more than we disagree. You are telling us you personally perform exactly the role I advocate local communities (and Families) should be doing instead of always looking to Uncle.Sugar. I live in a very rural County with the 4th or 5th highest age in Alabama. I get it, lots of people have lots of individual problems. To be fair, many of them also mostly created the conditions that led to their current problems. Doesn’t mean we should refuse to help but it also means they don’t have an automatic claim to assistance that a 6 year old kid with leukemia may have.
Family, congregations, friendly societies, neighbors, unions and local community should be the first places folks look to for assistance.Then local charities. Only then to municipal govt, then County govt, then Statewide charities and State gov’t. Last should be the Federal gov’t. Someone in Idaho doesn’t need to be asked to pay ‘welfare’ costs for someone in Alabama as the.first resort. Way past time more folks put that into practice, as you do.
I was having similar thoughts. Food pantries go a long ways and though I’m not close to it, they also have the ability to weigh in when it’s being abused. Dependence on the government is yet another destructive force of the community helping the community.
My dad who worked as a mechanic/machinist died at 40 and left behind a full time mom with 5 kids from 2-12. No life insurance. Modest savings and a house with no mortgage
For the first year or two Social Security over paid. Guess what? They demanded that money back. We went freaking hungry so many times during that era. Many days us kids ate mostly just toast with sugar and cinnamon on it. The kicker was the toaster was busted and often caught on fire. It left a burn mark on the formica on the wall that was there until I replaced it when my oldest brother bought the house when mom down sized. Finally it caught on fire so bad one of us threw it in a bucket of water outside to put it out. Imagine the high light of your year being getting a toaster that didn’t catch on fire.
Food: Garden veg, pasture beef, and raw milk from when my other brother got a job milking at a nearby dairy.
Mom was working as a substitute teacher and getting her teaching cert. A year later the second youngest ~5-6 was hospitalized suffering from a stomach tumor which had to be removed. Children’s Hospital covered the expense and mom donated to them every year after that until we were square for the bill. She got her cert and then coached every sport she could for extra cash. I didn’t see her until 7:00 most nights.
In those early years, we more than qualified for food stamps. Many encouraged her to enroll. Nope. Not a freaking dime.
Although the brother with the tumor died at 48 (it was a rare genetic disorder where his body could not fight cancer) Every one of the kids grew up to be a multi millionaire. Two were recently honored by the UW school of business for small biz owners of the year.
So I have very little sympathy for SNAP ending. That hunger build drive. I hated not having money and if I pass before my time, my family is taken care of.
!!!!!
wont go into my own personal sh…..but good for your family that courage was in abundance
welfare is the downfall of all /any civilized society though we are taught differently
it wont change and america is barley on life support and we are riding it out
debt currently at $36 trillion…………….its just a matter of time as the msm works relentlessly to “prove” that capitalism is racist etc
An inspiring personal anecdote — thank you for sharing it.
Thank you for sharing!!! Most people today do not know true hardship, and the dive it can instill in people to change their situation, You have my respect!!
For clarity’s sake, what did you mean to convey with this: “I have very little sympathy for SNAP ending. That hunger build drive.” Those words could be legitimately interpreted in more ways than one. Could you please try again? Thanks.
I’ve seen what’s in those carts. The program could be slashed by 95% and the country would be better off. No middle class or lower income family ate like that before 1990.
Go back to the 30s, 40s and 50s and my childhood would seem like a gravy train in comparison.
For Genx, food stamps was a badge of shame. I’m not sure when the shame first ended, but I know it was long gone the minute they could swipe that card just the same as someone paying with debit.
I know a few who are worthy of it. A single mom with a deadbeat dad and a kid on the spectrum. My daughter befriended this kid in preschool as a “scholarship” kid (which ended up bankrupting the preschool) but by the 5th grade, the mom was self sustaining and off it.
Any kid that grew up under that poverty level and didn’t take welfare saw what was going on in those houses that took welfare. The government stole any future for those kids. It is literally why you have multigenerational poverty. Look no further than the black communities for proof.
So I’ll rephrase that… I have no sympathy for 95%.
Andy,
Thanks for that story. There’s an abundance of people who’ve at one time or another been through some hard times, buckled down, tightened their belt and come through on the other side motivated not to repeat the experience. Far more stories than many want to recognize, especially in this age of forced empathy where the productive seem to viewed as an unending financial resource to be tapped by the parasitic class and the bureaucracy that impose/collect taxes then dole out the benefits in a symbiotic grift.
Anyone who grew up remembering the 70s at all knows damn close to what I’m talking about. If you weren’t pounding the pavement for a job by 14, you probably weren’t going to ever see the inside of a movie theatre, swimming pool, or having a coke nor candy bar.
Adam Corolla was not the exception. We were all as poor as he was.
Definitely. In the South outside oil production areas the 70s and 80s were tough. Lots of industry and manufacturing downsized, consolidated or closed up in that period, followed by off shoring in the late 80s and 90s. Most of us Gen X folks had some kind of job in our early teens even if off the books as a babysitter or cutting grass. I got my first on the books job at 15. Joined the Army and got the old version GI Bill to pay for College expenses my scholarships didn’t cover. Early adult years eating lots of Raman till I got my financial feet underneath me.
lets try it again:
wont go into my own personal sh…..but good for your family that courage was in abundance
welfare is the downfall of all /any civilized society though we are taught differently
it wont change and america is barley on life support and we are riding it out
debt currently at $36 trillion…………….its just a matter of time as the msm works relentlessly to “prove” that capitalism is racist etc
and one more time
lets try it again:
wont go into my own personal sh…..but good for your family that courage was in abundance
welfare is the downfall of all /any civilized society though we are taught differently
it wont change and america is barley on life support and we are riding it out
debt currently at $36 trillion….its just a matter of time as the msm works relentlessly to “prove” that capitalism is racist etc
You and dozens others have similar stories. While is sucked my dad died, very few of my friends were much higher on the economic ladder. If Frosted Flakes entered the house, you were wondering if your parents had won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. By comparative standards 7 in 10 households were poorer than those taking benefits now.
I do have thoughts on the cost of raising a family now and people delaying having kids because of the cost, but I don’t think SNAP or other handouts are the issue. All you are doing is breeding freeloaders with that solution. I am very much teaching my daughter to set her mind to starting a family in her early 20s. I had a long discussion with her on what a good death looks like for a woman… (96 with stable/productive kids, grand kids, great grandkids in hand and more on the way). You don’t get a great death by starting a family at 40.
correction … I don’t think handouts are the SOLUTION.
raise the kids correctly just to try and defeat any part of leftism we can
same here
Exposing SNAP Corruption is like removing a pane of clear glass to see what is on the other side.
Put the EBT and snap people back on commodities and surplus. They will soon learn the honor and dignity of work.
I have seen many videos from tik-tok that say they will just steal it all going forward.
JD Delay posted a “short” on YouTube showing mostly The Protected Demographic looting a store. I noticed someone going out the door with cases of beer. To feed his kids of course.
“They will soon learn the honor and dignity of work.”
That’s a joke, right Yogi?
No, BooBoo.
Must be sarcasm then. That was my second guess, Yogi.
I am strongly in favor of commodities when possible, with one caveat: There are people who are poor, hungry, and too elderly or disabled to pick up the commodities or to cook for themselves. They should be accommodated.
Agreed.
Corruption in a government-funded handout program??
Whoda thunk? 🤬
I upvoted my own 3 comments that are being censored for whatever that “reasoning” is on the web admins part
It is a fuzzy thing that wears slippers. She no likey a counterpoint, and has done the same to me.
I call her the resident Karen.
Is she still around?
I’ve no idea where she went. We were corresponding via email and then…. poof! Gone.
News did an interview with a woman who was on the program for 30 years.
30 YEARS….
Screw that. Get a job, you lazy bintwaffle.
Wait until these free loaders get a check that covers, retroactively, any payment that they missed. Because that will happen. The payments are only on hiatus.
If they make it through without snap for a few weeks, they shouldn’t get money retroactively because they obviously didn’t starve during that period.
How did people eat before food stamps? Somehow they managed. To my knowledge, we never had mass starvation in the US. People were far more inclined to work before the welfare state. Today one can put together a basket of benefits and live without ever working. One of the many reasons that explain how we got a national debt of $38 trillion. That’s big number. A billion seconds takes us back to 1994. A trillion seconds takes us back to 30,000 (rounding) BC! The federal government spends $7 trillion on revenues of $5 trillion. The interest payments grow exponentially. Exponential growth looks linear at low levels, then it explodes.Time to terminate the welfare state before it terminates us.
How did people eat before food stamps? When World War II started up and the U.S. started drafting men into the military, one-third of the recruits were malnourished.
I have no problem with the basic idea of SNAP, I dislike the idea of people going hungry. What I have a problem with is its execution and the possibility for fraud.
I’m fine with SNAP being a electronic card that is restricted to only certain stores and to certain items in those stores. No cash. Heavy liability for store owners that abuse the program. No ability to sell or transfer the card. Only US citizens and valid ID for registration. No immediate replacement upon loss. No ability to accrue more than 2 months balance. Policies like these will cull out much of the abuse.
I’m not in favor of the commodities approach mention above. Too expensive, Too labor intensive. A restricted electronic card should be sufficient.
Part of the problem has been those hunger activists (activists – that word again) who fight every effort to restrict the program, the benefits, or how the benefits are delivered. Gee I wonder why???
I have to question how hungry they are when snap recipients can use their card to pay for an 8 buck Frappuccino at the starbucks kiosk in a grocery store.
Not all SNAP recipients are alike. What you purchase with a card should be severely restricted but activists always push back against that.
IMO the cash or cash equivalents lends itself to fraud. Far too much getting cash back at purchase from dishonest merchants who take a cut or selling of cards for cash. No real way to prevent those things with the debit card like function.
A food box eliminates that. It also requires more personal accountability to go pick it up in person each week. The pain in ass of doing so for the recipient and any sense of guilt/shame is part of deterrence for those who don’t truly need it.
Use local neighborhood schools as distribution centers on Sat/Sun. Have a local warehouse with 2-3 months of dry goods on hand. Semis to the warehouse and smaller box trucks to the schools. Having the stocks on hand locally in a decentralized manner also provides a source for response to natural disasters and/or national security event.
Cokes, chips, ice cream
Just a note: The judges’ orders to fund SNAP are unconstitutional.
I am from the late 50s from my home state of California. My folks were poor when I was born and I was the last by 6 years. By the time I graduated HS in the mid 70s they were doing better but they showed me the door when I graduated as they had done with my brother and sister. My folks never took any government money.
I worked my way through college in the mid 70s in south central Los Angeles (Black Slums) on a multiracial crew for the phone company. The area was dangerous and we got hazard pay. I found all the people on welfare and food stamps, but living with more then I grew up with.
I met my wife in college and we moved to Northern California after college. We bought a house and had two sons, Near us was a family on welfare and food stamps that had a larger house. The family continued to have children because it gave them more money from the state each month for every child. The parents were both very obese.
I believe the answer to fixing Welfare is to limit time on it plus no change in growth and then limit a person to reapply by years. To fix Food Stamps (SNAP) is to 1) have all people reapply and only citizens can get it, 2) limit time on it and limit people reapplying by years, 3) Families are limited for growth, 4) limit items that can be bought so all things must be made.
I have two problems with this.
1. The Ag Secretary’s accusations are credible and disturbing, but they are anecdotal. I am VERY receptive to the idea that SNAP is rife with fraud and needs reform, but that effort needs to be a lot more organized and comprehensive than what I’ve been from her.
2. Her timing sucks. And timing does count, because it’s essentially a political question. Her message implies that a sudden and complete interruption of SNAP for everyone is a legitimate method of dealing with the fraud. That’s “collective punishment,” and it’s a terrible way to handle problems, and even worse when it involves food for poor people, even if some aren’t poor.
I am 100% for going after the fraud. I am not one bit soft about it. But this is NOT the specific point at which to raise that issue. Do that AFTER this current insanity is corrected.
Both problems you see are self-inflicted due to a distorted point of view.
1. The credible and disturbing accusations are backed up by criminal prosecutions, in a process that has just barely started. She’s barely been in her position a half-year.
2. That ‘message’ is an ongoing process, it does *not* say or imply (other than POV bias) that shutting down SNAP for everybody is a good solution for dealing with the fraudulent portion of the problem.
Glad to see some prosecutions, but at most they support the idea that there is some fraud. They do not lend much insight into the systematic fraud. If she and others really want sweeping reform (I’m very receptive), then they need to be comprehensive about the issues and what they want to do about it.
Right, she did say that she wants to shut down the program, but by highlighting fraud while there is a shutdown (which looks like a half-shutdown per news today), the implication is there. She and other should raise this SEPARATELY from what’s going on now. The way to do it is for her to say that she intends to make a major anti-fraud effort after the current funding issue is straightened out.
I definitely WANT to see them go after fraud. I do not think that pointing to fraud now is the way to go. By analogy, it’s like talking about fire extinguishers when a 5-alarm fire is burning.
Oops, she did NOT say she wants to shut down the program. My mistake.
The cries of “think about the children” are hard to believe when you watch these TikToks of fat tub-o-lards with nail jobs and eyebrow/ eyelash whatever bitching about not getting their 4g or whatever in food stamps.
I only have empathy for the people who truly need it, like elderly people or disabled trying to stretch their SS payments.
The fat whales can go without for a few dinners and let their kids eat something other than Little Debbies and Cheetos – it’ll do them some good.
I am willing to bet that the majority of those going batsh!t crazy over not getting food stamps are in reality upset that they can’t sell them for cash so they can get their nails done, buy booze and smokes, or whatever the hell they’re doing to game the system.
Agreed. Change the benefit to ‘in kind’ food box of rice, beans, govt cheese, canned vegetables/fruits maybe some SPAM and you’d have far less fraud b/c the opportunity for it would be greatly reduced. It would also save $ both from reduced fraud but probably a good many folks would decide not to participate if there was a set preselected food box and instead go without or even get a dang job/side hustle to pay for the foods they want.
Food Stamps: A topic where I have opinions, facts, and experience!
Fun Fact: I married the smoking hot cashier that took the last food stamps I used. That was in 1982. She is around here somewhere.
Last time I had this discussion, after doing some research I found there were 14 different programs that provided either food or money for food for “the poor”. Too many programs. Three might be too many. Can we eliminate 12 programs and fix the two that remain? The department of redundancy department will send out a memo.
Malnutrition is “bad eating”, either too little or too much. Yes, at the start of WWII, there was malnutrition, and the result was the school lunch program. Now that WWII is recently concluded (!) can we please end this WWII emergency program? If not now, then when can the shutdown of this be scheduled? Yeah, the same time as the weekly deduction of taxes from pay (“withholding”, another WWII-era emergency provision).
Today in the US, the 14 food programs cause more malnutrition than was a problem in WWII. Today, children in the US are more likely to suffer from fatty malnutrition than the “starving children” in rural Afghanistan are to suffer from malnutrition due to lack of food. Food programs have become the source of failure they were designed to eliminate.
Cumulatively, since WWII, the “food programs” in the US have caused more disease and death in the US than the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan did in Japan. Think about that for a few hours.
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