Attorney General Chris Kobach has announced that the Kansas SNAP program has lost over $10 million in federal funding because Governor Laura Kelly would not to provide basic information about SNAP recipients to the USDA. The USDA sent a letter to the Kelly administration seeking basic information, like the names, addresses and dates of birth of SNAP recipients, after President Trump issued an executive order to gather the information to limit fraud in the SNAP program. On September 8th, Kobach filed a lawsuit to compel Kelly to release the information as required by Kansas law, which says the government “shall” provide “any” report required by the federal government.
Over the weekend, the USDA carried out its threat and took the funds away from Kansas, and Kobach says the food and nutrition service will continue to disallow future payments every three months until Kansas provides the requested information. The only other state in the country to be penalized for failure to provide the information is Pennsylvania.
