The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.

“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.

The numbers that Rollins used come from the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank out of Florida that has been working to demolish the social safety net—programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Social Security—since launching in 2011. The USDA, which administers the SNAP program, confirmed in an email to Mother Jones that FGA (and a New York Post article written by an FGA staffer) were the sole sources used for their data, but would not comment further on the record.

Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money........

© Mother Jones