Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the Trump administration will withhold federal funds for SNAP benefits from Arizona and several other states that refuse to turn over data about the recipients of the welfare. Arizona Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes and several other Democratic attorney generals had sued the Trump administration over the request, which was issued in order to root out fraud in the program.
X owner Elon Musk posted about the refusal on X Wednesday, “Massive fraud is happening, aided by the state governments themselves.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) annual Quality Control report found that 10.9% of SNAP payments in 2024 weren’t legitimate, equating to about $10.2 billion. In Arizona, the error rate was 8.84%. Nationwide, there was up to a 55% increase in fraudulent transactions between the last quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, according to the USDA. In contrast, in 2012, only 2% of payments were illegitimate.
One of the ways fraud is committed is SNAP recipients sell their food stamps at a higher price to others for cash, then use the cash on non-food items such as illegal drugs. Since statistics on this rely on sampled investigations such as undercover buys, it is impossible to determine how much fraud is committed this way. About 10% of the country is on SNAP benefits, and according to the Center for Immigration Studies, almost 50% of noncitizen households receive them.