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(Washington, D.C., April 24, 2025) – Today, at the direction of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services John Walk issued guidance to all State agencies directing them to enhance identity and immigration verification practices when determining eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This guidance is one of many steps toward fulfilling President Trump’s Executive Order 14218, which directs USDA and other federal agencies to “enhance eligibility verification systems, to the maximum extent possible, to ensure that taxpayer funded benefits exclude any ineligible alien.” “President Trump has made...

If HHS Secretary and healthy food advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his way, SNAP will stand for Soda Not Allowed Period. On Friday, Kennedy brought his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign to West Virginia, where Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that he will be seeking permission from the Department of Agriculture to put soda on the list of items that cannot be bought through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often referred to by its former name of food stamps, according to The Washington Post.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) proposed legislation on Tuesday, the Nutritious SNAP Act, aimed at reforming SNAP to ensure that those who use it are doing so for healthy food options. Paul’s office issued a release on Tuesday asserting that SNAP has been a contributing factor “in a new public health crisis — obesity and chronic disease — by subsidizing the purchase of junk food with taxpayer dollars.” “SNAP was designed to fight hunger and improve nutrition — not to subsidize soda and junk food,” Paul said. “It makes no sense that taxpayer dollars are being used to fund an epidemic...

As DOGE’s efforts shift to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in social welfare programs including SNAP, Social Security, and Medicaid, The Drill Down podcast welcomes a nationally recognized expert in spotting how those programs are rife with fraud. Andrew McClenahan is, among other things, intergovernmental committee co-chair for an organization called the United Council on Welfare Fraud, and has investigated fraud in the food stamp program, including one bust several years ago that stopped a $100 million fraud scheme in South Florida. The group is made up of welfare fraud investigators from every state. In 2018, GAI published a report...

The American Heart Association is throwing its weight behind soda and junk food—literally. Instead of supporting legislation that would prevent food stamps from being used on sugary drinks and processed snacks, the AHA is fighting it. Why? Because it takes money from the very companies selling these products. Pepsi, Kellogg’s, and other big food corporations pump cash into the AHA, and in return, the organization defends policies that keep their products moving off the shelves, even at the expense of public health. The proposed legislation is simple. It aims to stop Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—taxpayer-funded assistance—from being used...

POV: 3K in food stamps and 7 kids and 7 babydaddies. We listen and don't judge.

Most people watching President Trump’s first joint address to Congress approved of his speech according to snap polls. Seventy-six percent of people approved of the president’s remarks, while 23 percent disapproved as reported Wednesday in CBS News and YouGov survey results. A majority of respondents, 63 percent, said Trump spent a lot of time on issues they cared about compared to 28 percent who said the opposite. Another 9 percent said he spent no time at all on their topics of interest. Respondents also noted that his speech left them with a positive feeling overall, 68 percent said the speech...

proposal that would ban most junk food from being SNAP-eligible is under consideration in Washington, D.C. and in Frankfort. “The overall goal is to say that we recognize that these choices are not and do not provide good health outcomes,” said Rep. Matt Lockett (R-Nicholasville). House Bill 279 seeks to exclude energy drinks, prepared desserts, such as cookies and candy, potato and corn chips and soft drinks from being purchased using SNAP benefits. Rep. Lockett says it is a bill that is part of a larger goal to improve the health of Kentuckians both on and off the program. “In...

South African-American billionaire Elon Musk promoted the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in unambiguous terms in a newspaper column, prompting the publication’s opinions editor to resign in protest. Germany has been failed by its legacy parties and is teetering on the brink of collapse, Elon Musk wrote in an op-ed for the Sunday edition of the national newspaper of record Die Welt. His diagnoses of Germany’s problems came with a suggested solution, voting for the right-sovereigntist AfD. The legacy media and prevailing political opinion in mainstream Germany considers the AfD extreme if not outright dangerous. Moves to ban the party are...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a stunning miracle, congresspeople just emerged from negotiations over 2.3 trillion loaves and fishes, somehow turning the trillions of morsels of food into enough meals for just five people. An exhausted Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) held up the small basket so crowds of unemployed citizens could witness perhaps the most historic event in the history of mankind, in which countless loaves and fishes given by those same citizens were magically transformed into, like, four or five measly meals. "This is significant," noted a sweating Pelosi, surely weary after working nearly 40 hours per...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stated that the Biden administration is “trying to help people deal with the consequences of rising prices, whether it’s increasing the SNAP benefit or whether it’s making sure that the child tax credit is available to folks or whether it’s rebuilding the infrastructure of this economy” to fix supply chain issues. Vilsack said, “I think it’s — the key here is that we’re also trying to help people deal with the consequences of rising prices, whether it’s increasing the SNAP benefit or whether it’s making sure that the child...

SNAP recipients across Georgia are facing a tough challenge, as hackers have reportedly wiped out funds from their food assistance cards, leaving many without essential support. It was nearly $1,000 Branaita Jones says a thief took from her Georgia SNAP account hundreds of miles away. “I called the food stamp people and they said somebody took my food stamps in New York,” Jones told Channel 2′s Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln. The Department of Human Services says recipients like Jones are one of thousands who’ve reported stolen funds from their EBT cards. [snip] The Georgia Department of Human Services announced plans...

The Parliamentary faction of President Emmanuel Macron has been utterly destroyed in the unexpected snap election he called just three weeks ago, with Le Pen’s Party looking to nearly treble its seat holding. Polling has closed in France for the first round of this week-long Parliamentary election. While actual seat distribution won’t be fully known, the exit polls following this knock-out round have given a confident answer that Marine Le Pen’s nationalist-populist National Rally (RN) won the day. Per the exit polls, her faction gained 34 per cent of the vote, while the left-wing coalition founded for the purpose of...

Former French President François Hollande said he will run as a candidate in the snap legislative elections after throwing his support behind the far-left-led “New Popular Front” alliance. Seven years after leaving office from a presidency mired by Islamic terrorism and economic hardship, François Hollande has returned to the frontlines of French politics, throwing his hat in the ring to once again serve as a deputy in the National Assembly. Hollande, a longtime member of the Socialist Party, was nominated by the leftist party to represent the so-called “New Popular Front” in the constituency of Corrèze, Le Figaro reports. “In...

Democrats and Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee sparred over food aid on Thursday at the markup of the chamber’s version of the $1.5 trillion omnibus farm bill. The issue set off partisan fireworks at the contentious session, during which representatives from both sides of the aisle took to the dais to extol the virtues of bipartisanship while accusing their opposite numbers of throwing those values in the trash. “I served for 26 years in the United States military, oftentimes below the poverty level and using these programs,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said. “So I will not be lectured...

An alarming study has spotlighted how 42 million food stamp recipients spend their welfare handouts on ultra-processed junk food. Coca-Cola, Sprite and other soft drinks are the most commonly-bought items via the $135 billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a new study says. Candy, potato chips, frozen pizza, ice cream, cookies, and other ultra-processed food dominates the top 20 items, says a report from the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). Report author Matthew Dickerson says recipients spend 'spend significant portions of their allotments on junk food.' These 'non-nutritious foods' include 'sugary beverages and ultra-processed foods, which can lead to poor...

Steve Moore, from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a free market think tank, says Democrats were to blame for refusing 'to mandate work for welfare.' They 'view food stamps as an economic stimulus and/or virtuous income redistribution,' he said. Meanwhile, the scheme is increasingly targeted by fraudsters. A New York Times investigation spotlighted the scammers who use illegally installed skimming machines to lift payment card data from beneficiaries who swipe their SNAP cards through the devices in stores or at ATMs. Skimming cons picked up in 2022, and that the federal government has spent at least $30 million reimbursing stolen...

A previously private poll found that in the event of a dissolution of the French parliament and snap elections were called, Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally party could win an outright majority in the National Assembly. In yet another demonstration of the growing popularity of the populist right in France, a survey commissioned by the centrist Les Républicains (LR) in December found that the National Rally (RN) of former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen could win between 243 and 305 seats in the National Assembly in the event snap elections were called.

Between 2017 and 2022, the number of farms in the U.S. declined by 141,733 or 7%.. Acres operated by farm operations during the same timeframe declined by 20.1 million (2.2%), a loss equivalent to an area about the size of Maine. Only 1.88% of acres operated and 1% of farm operations were classified under a non-family corporate farm structure. ... USDA defines a farm as an operation that produced and sold, or normally would have sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the census year. While the number of farm operations and acres operated declined, the value of agricultural...

(NEXSTAR) – As the clock ticks down toward a potential partial shutdown of the federal government this week, millions who rely on federal assistance for food could be left in the balance. If Congress fails to reach a deal to fund the government, a partial government shutdown would be triggered on March 1. That partial shutdown would impact several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages SNAP and WIC food assistance. SNAP, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, used to be called the Food Stamp Program. The program helps low-income and no-income families buy groceries...