Trump admin. threatens to withhold $460M in food-stamp funding if Pa. doesn’t share personal data

“Ann Sanders, who leads the Pittsburgh-based anti-hunger group Just Harvest, said there are already mechanisms in place to ensure benefits only reach those eligible to receive them.  ’USDA is already evaluating program integrity, so … the data request seems very spurious,’ she said.

Pennsylvania currently shares SNAP data with the feds through an interstate data-matching system used to prevent people from receiving benefits in more than one state. (The state also has an agency dedicated to public-benefit fraud.)

‘Redundant data is just usually a data security no-no,’ Sanders said, adding the government should “try not to store people’s personally identifying information in bunch of different places, [because] that just creates more opportunities for security leaks.”

Publish Date: 09-17-2025

News Outlet: WESA

Author: Tom Riese