The Trump administration continues to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse in federal welfare programs, as the Secretary of Agriculture revealed that over the past year, hundreds of thousands of instances of alleged SNAP fraud have been uncovered across the country. The majority of those instances, she said, have come from red states that have been eager to partner with the federal government to help ensure fraud is rooted out of their systems. Blue states, on the other hand, have been more reluctant to allow the federal government to review their programs.
She went on to say that, in her experience, red states do their best to put guardrails in place to prevent fraud, and even then, individuals still manage to take significant advantage of the system, diverting resources away from those who truly need them. She suggested that the fraud the federal government may uncover in blue states once they comply with federal requests could be astounding.
🚨 The fraud we've uncovered so far is only the tip of the iceberg. 🚨
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) June 18, 2026
In states that agreed to work with USDA, we found:
🪦 186,000 deceased individuals tied to benefit rolls
🔁 More than 400,000 duplicate benefit recipients
And that's before we've yet gained access to data… pic.twitter.com/cehvJx6BfD
"Just in that data collection over the last year, we found 300,000 dead people, people using deceased individuals' social security numbers. We found over half a million people getting more than one benefit, so getting the same benefit twice, for example," the Secretary of Agriculture said. "And these are in the red states. Can you imagine when we begin to partner with California, New York, Illinois, when we get that data, once we get through the litigation, what we're going to find in those states?"
"I'm from a red state. I worked in state policy. Texas has guardrails. We do more than almost every other state to make sure that there isn't a lot of fraud. And I would argue that many of the other red states do the same," she said. "But yet what we found is stunning. What we're going to find in these blue states is going to blow everyone's mind."
She went on to praise Vice President JD Vance’s leadership in the White House Fraud Task Force, as the Trump administration has made rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse a central priority.
"The vice president has done a remarkable job of leading the fraud task force. And he and our other senior team has said the more fraud we can root out, the more we can protect those who really need these programs, but also protect the taxpayer and ensure that we're doing everything we can to finally balance the budget," Rollins added. "The federal government's footprint has significantly shrunk. I read that the government is about the same size today as it was in the 1960s, which is a remarkable achievement as we move people from welfare to work. But this fraud is a really big component of that."