Overview

• The department terminated the Household Food Security Report after nearly three decades, calling it "redundant, costly, politicized" and asserting trends were largely unchanged despite higher SNAP spending.
• USDA has not identified specific replacement datasets, while Feeding America and local pantries say losing a standardized national measure will weaken policy evaluation and resource decisions.
• The decision follows passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cut about $187 billion from SNAP through 2034, a shift advocates say will be harder to assess without the survey.
• Fresh data from the Capital Area Food Bank show elevated and deepening food insecurity in the D.C. region tied to federal job cuts and high prices, with the nonprofit preparing to distribute an additional 5–10 million meals annually.
• Some state officials, including Nebraska’s health agency, say they rely on program statistics rather than the USDA survey, underscoring divergent responses to the cancellation.