News update
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is ending the federal government’s annual report on hunger in Americastating that it had become “overly politicized” and “rife with inaccuracies.”
The decision comes two and a half months after President Donald Trump signed legislation sharply reducing food aid to the poor. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the tax and spending cuts bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July means 3 million people would not qualify for food stampsalso known as SNAP benefits.
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 questions used to collect the data are entirely subjective and do not present an accurate picture of actual food security,’’ the USDA said. ”The data is rife with inaccuracies slanted to create a narrative that is not representative of what is actually happening in the countryside as we are currently experiencing lower poverty rates, increasing wages, and job growth under the Trump Administration.’’
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.
“Trump is cancelling an annual government survey that measures hunger in America, rather than allow it to show hunger increasing under his tenure,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said on social media. “This follows the playbook of many non-democracies that cancel or manipulate reports that would otherwise show less-than-perfect news.”
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