States Fight Federal Effort To Collect Personal Data Of Food Stamp Users

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A coalition of 21 states and Washington, D.C. is challenging the Trump administration's demands that states hand over the personal data of people who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. We discuss why the administration says it needs the data, and how it fits into a bigger push for states' data.

This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and power & influence reporter Jude Joffe-Block.

This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation,
0:07.4	working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org.
0:14.7	Hello, I'm April C. Taylor, youth faculty at Shawell Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, California. My students and I are just
0:24.2	finishing up our spring semester in all levels contemporary for dancers 8 to 11 years old. This podcast
0:32.1	was recorded at 1.11 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this,
0:41.4	but we will still be jumping, leaping and turning. Because as Alice Walker taught us,
0:49.7	hard time to require furious dancing.
0:55.2	Enjoy the show.
0:56.3	Enjoy the show.
1:02.2	That was so cute.
1:05.1	I feel like my like theater kid trauma was such that I heard the echo of the beginning.
1:10.2	And I was like, she's either in a high school theater or in a studio. I knew it was one of those places. That was great sound. That was good. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Deepa Shivram. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Jude Jaffe Block. I'm on the power and influence team. And today on the show, we're talking about Americans' personal data and the federal government's efforts to collect it from the states.
1:32.9	Jude, you have been covering one of the recent efforts on this by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or USDA.
1:38.6	Explain to us what has been going on.
1:41.0	Yeah, well, USDA told states they had until July 30th to turn over a lot of data about
1:47.2	everyone who has received or even applied for food assistance. The program, SNAP, it used to be
1:54.5	known as food stamps. And so this data, they're requesting social security numbers, names,
2:03.7	birthdays, addresses, how much they've received in SNAP benefits. And this goes back to January of 2020. So five years
2:09.8	worth of data here. And they brought up this data request in May, but then just last week,
2:15.8	the USDA brought in the request to include
2:18.1	even more information like immigration status and information on household members as well.
2:25.0	And then yesterday on Monday, a coalition of more than 20 states led by California and New York
	...

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