The Trump administration has decided to discontinue the federal government’s yearly report on hunger statistics in the United States, citing concerns that the report has become “overly politicized” and “filled with inaccuracies.”
This decision follows a legislative move two and a half months prior, where President Donald Trump signed a bill that significantly reduced food assistance for low-income individuals. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this tax and spending cut legislation passed by Republicans in July is expected to disqualify 3 million people from receiving SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps.
The decision to scrap the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Household Food Security Report was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
In a press release Saturday, the USDA said the 2024 report, to be released Oct. 22, would be the last.
The USDA expressed that the survey questions are “entirely subjective” and fail to accurately depict the state of food security. They argue that the data is distorted to craft a misleading narrative that doesn’t align with current realities, which, according to them, include decreasing poverty rates, rising wages, and job growth during Trump’s presidency.
The Census Bureau reported earlier this month that the U.S. poverty rate dipped from 11% in 2023 to 10.6% last year, before Trump took office.
Critics were quick to accuse the administration of deliberately making it harder to measure hunger and assess the impact of its cuts to food stamps.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, remarked on social media that “Trump is cancelling an annual government survey that measures hunger in America, rather than allow it to show hunger increasing under his tenure.” He likened this action to strategies used by non-democratic regimes that suppress or alter reports that would otherwise present unfavorable outcomes.
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