The head of the US Agriculture Department on Thursday celebrated that millions of people have lost federal nutrition assistance under the second Trump administration, declaring that families who have seen their modest aid disappear are closer to realizing “the American dream.”
Speaking at an event in Arizona, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins—who has an estimated net worth of around $15 million—said that the Trump administration has “moved about 4 million off of SNAP,” referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Rollins suggested, without evidence, that some of those who have lost SNAP benefits were receiving them fraudulently.
But others, claimed Rollins, are “moving into the American dream and off of welfare.”
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), wrote in response that “unless the Trump administration has redefined ‘the American dream’ to mean ‘losing the help your family needs to afford groceries because of federal cuts,’ I have some bad news for Secretary Rollins.”
Watch Rollins’ remarks:
Brooke Rollins: “As we’ve moved about 4 million off SNAP, we don’t have the exact data of how much of that is fraud, how much of that is people moving into the American dream and off of welfare.” pic.twitter.com/oSFkCtS79I
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 28, 2026
Trump administration officials, including President Donald Trump himself, have repeatedly used euphemistic language to describe the large-scale loss of food aid following passage of the Republican budget reconciliation package last summer. That measure contains $186 billion in SNAP cuts over the next decade—the largest in the program’s history.
During his State of the Union address in February, Trump boasted that his administration has “lifted” millions of Americans off SNAP, falsely suggesting that the mass loss of benefits was attributable to stronger economic conditions rather than deliberate policy changes designed to boot people from the program.
“Economic conditions haven’t been improving as the number of people receiving SNAP has plummeted in recent months, representing the sharpest decline in decades,” CBPP noted in a recent analysis. “The last time there was such a steep decrease in participation in such a short period of time (other than temporary spikes following natural disasters) was nearly three decades ago, after Congress enacted very deep cuts to SNAP (then the Food Stamp Program) in 1996.”
“SNAP participation has fallen in every state,” the think tank added, “and in some, the drop is particularly alarming.”
“The government hasn’t ‘lifted’ Americans facing food insecurity; it’s simply decided to kick them down the elevator shaft.”
Arizona, the state Rollins visited on Thursday, saw a roughly 50% decline in the number of people receiving SNAP benefits between January 2025 and February of this year, with hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits.
“We certainly are not seeing a drop in the number of folks that are participating because we’ve solved hunger,” Adrienne Udarbe, executive director of the nonprofit group Pinnacle Prevention, told AZFamily earlier this week.
One Tucson, Arizona resident, a single mother of three, told the Unrig Our Economy coalition on Friday that “even working full-time, I’ve been unable to access SNAP benefits since March thanks to Republicans’ cuts.”
“Costs are already rising everywhere because of Republicans’ tariffs and their war in Iran, and cutting food assistance is pushing families like mine over the edge,” said the mother, identified as Angelica G. "It’s difficult to work so hard to make ends meet just to watch Republicans in Congress give even more tax breaks to billionaires while cutting food services that families like mine rely on.”
In Kansas, more than 21,000 people have lost SNAP benefits since July. Haley Kottler, senior campaign director at the advocacy group Kansas Appleseed, said in a statement Thursday that “these are not just abstract numbers.”
“These are Kansas kids losing access to food,” said Kottler. “This has real implications for Kansas children to access the nutrition they need to learn, grow, and thrive.”
Rollins’ comments Thursday came amid a flurry of data showing the weakness of the US economy and the struggles of working-class families under Trump’s leadership, from rising inflation to falling personal savings rates.
Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released an analysis showing that the US has seen “a remarkable increase in food insecurity” in recent months, “particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children.”
Political analyst Steve Benen wrote in a column for MS NOW on Tuesday that “Republicans seem to think this is worth bragging about.”
“Trump’s routine use of the word ‘lift’ makes it sound as if struggling families were put onto an elevator that carried them to a stronger and more secure position,” wrote Benen. “That turns reality on its head: Thanks to the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the government hasn’t ‘lifted’ Americans facing food insecurity; it’s simply decided to kick them down the elevator shaft, depriving much of the public of food aid.”
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