As we recently learned in New Somalia — a.k.a. Minneapolis — it’s entirely possible to scam the American “safety net” for a billion dollars. Criminals go where the money is, and few organizations are throwing more money around with little oversight but lots of “compassion” than the government via a myriad of income-redistribution programs. Food stamps are a prime example.

Early this year, the Trump administration began focusing on reducing the number of Americans on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — commonly known as food stamps. It’s currently about 42 million Americans (or one in eight) at a cost of roughly $100 billion annually (down from $120 billion in FY2022), which ought to shock and appall every American.

It ought to. Then again, when my wife taught eighth grade in the inner city 24 years ago, one student she mentored was shocked to learn that we bought our own groceries with our own money — the $27,000 she earned teaching while I finished a degree and worked part-time. No one else the girl knew didn’t rely on food stamps.

The Schumer Shutdown put SNAP in the news a month ago, but I’m circling back because Team Trump is working on major accountability measures this year.

In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans expanded work requirements and tightened eligibility rules, and placed more of the onus on states for how money is spent.

The 50 states administer the distribution of federal funds for the program, so, in February, the Agriculture Department asked the states to provide an accounting of all recipients, including names, birth dates, addresses, and Social Security numbers, to weed out ineligible recipients.

As is becoming more common, 29 mostly red states complied, and 21 blue states and DC did not. Moreover, last week, they sued.

Naturally, the Democrats’ rationale for noncompliance was that the data might be used by President Donald Trump’s jackbooted brown shirts Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to detain and deport illegal aliens. Didn’t Democrats just throw a huge tantrum to say that illegals don’t really receive taxpayer benefits? Yes, yes, they did.

Well, a few days ago, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted on X, “NO DATA, NO MONEY — it’s that simple.”

NO DATA, NO MONEY — it’s that simple.

If a state won’t share data on criminal use of SNAP benefits, it won’t get a dollar of federal SNAP administrative funding.

Let’s see which states stand for accountability and which are just protecting their bribery schemes. 🤔💸 pic.twitter.com/Y1UXXDOoao

— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) December 2, 2025

In last week’s cabinet meeting, she added, “We will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer.”

After the shutdown ended and SNAP benefits resumed, Rollins ordered that all recipients must reapply. The data from 29 complying states show why — “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check,” she said. “Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” Given that Democrat states like California, New York, and — ahem — Minnesota are the most “generous” with your money, I can only imagine.

Rollins is not without compassion. Just the opposite, in fact. She wants to ensure that recipients “literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it.” That’s ostensibly the whole purpose of the safety net, right?

It doesn’t work that way in practice. Veteran journalist John Fund notes, “The Government Accountability Office estimates that, overall, the federal government made $528 billion in improper payments involving multiple programs in 2021 and 2022.”

Another area of accountability is not just who gets the money but how they can spend it.

In March, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. encouraged states to ban SNAP recipients from spending that money on sugary drinks and other junk food. After wrangling within the Trump administration, a plan emerged to allow states to apply for waivers to limit what items could be bought with food stamps. So far, 12 states have received those waivers, and more have applied. They take effect in 2026.

The Make America Healthy Again leader rightly insists that paying millions of people to buy junk food contributes to the obesity epidemic and a health crisis, which taxpayers also pay for.

More SNAP money (roughly $13 billion) is spent on sugary drinks than on any other single item.

Think about that for a minute. “We are actually paying for people to get diabetes,” RFK said in August. “Taxpayers should not be financing that.”

Bringing it full circle, he said, “We’re paying again when they get [treated] through Medicaid and, ultimately, Medicare. We are poisoning them with sugars and ultra-processed food.”

The Minnesota graft operation is outrageous, but it pales in comparison to the detrimental effects of SNAP. We’re paying tens of billions of dollars every year to subsidize junk food, which causes obesity and health problems. Then American taxpayers are being shaken down again for $1.9 trillion annually (and rising) for healthcare. How much of that is to treat health problems caused by the junk SNAP recipients buy?

How many of the 186,000 dead recipients died because of how they spent the money?

What in heaven’s name is our government doing?