Trump administration puts hunger researchers on leave after canceling food insecurity report

By Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — Days after announcing it was ending the government’s annual food insecurity report, the US Department of Agriculture placed about a dozen researchers, supervisors and administrators on paid administrative leave on Monday.

The employees, who include top officials with the USDA’s Economic Research Service, which produces the longstanding report, were told the reason was “unauthorized disclosure,” said Laura Dodson, vice president of American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 3403, which represents five of the workers.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the report’s cancellation on Saturday, citing people who attended meetings where the decision to end the hunger survey was announced. It also first reported the employees being placed on leave.

All the workers who were placed on indefinite leave were at the meetings, Dodson said. They were escorted out of their offices, and their laptops were taken. However, they were told the move was not a disciplinary action.

The union has not been given any information about the USDA’s decision to place its members on leave, she said.

“The general public deserves honesty and transparency in data and reports,” Dodson said. “Retaliating against workers who provide that data is not in the public’s best interest.”

The USDA said that the research service’s employees are “trusted with confidential information.”

“An unauthorized disclosure of non-public information shows questionable judgment and any employee willing to break that public trust undermines the integrity of the agency,” the USDA said in a statement.

Canceling the report

The Trump administration said Saturday that it is terminating the food insecurity report because it had become “redundant, costly and politicized” and noting that “extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”

“For 30 years, this study — initially created by the Clinton administration as a means to support the increase of SNAP eligibility and benefit allotment — failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder,” the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement Saturday, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps.

The USDA said Saturday that it still plans to issue one final report in October. That report will cover hunger in 2024, the last year of the Biden administration.

The decision comes as President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress passed a sweeping domestic agenda package earlier this year that will enact massive cuts to the food stamps program.

Some 2.4 million fewer Americans, including families with children, are forecast to receive food stamps benefits in an average month after lawmakers expanded work requirements to some parents, older enrollees and others, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released in August.

And other recipients are expected to see their monthly assistance shrink – at a time when grocery prices remain high and food banks are trying to cope with increased demand.

Nearly 42 million people received food stamps, as of May, according to the USDA. The average monthly benefit was just over $188 per person.

In 2023, some 13.5% of households were food insecure at least at some point in the year, according to the most recent USDA report. That share was higher than it was in 2022, when it was 12.8%.

Advocates for low-income Americans have voiced concerns about the administration’s decision.

“This research is pivotal, and without it, we cannot evaluate whether policies are effective or responsive to community needs or document the impact of harmful policy decisions, such as the recent historic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said in a statement.

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