The Brief

When Julliana Samson signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help afford food as she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, she had to turn in extensive, detailed personal information to the state to qualify.

Now she's worried about how that information could be used.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made an unprecedented demand to states to share the personal information of tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients by July 30, as a federal lawsuit seeks to postpone the data collection.

USDA is requiring states turn over identifying information on all SNAP recipients and applicants since 2020, "including but not limited to" names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers, as well as the dollar amount each recipient received over time. States that do not comply with USDA's data demand could lose funds.

Samson is one of the more than 40 million people who receive SNAP benefits each month. Their personal data has remained within their states' control, but the USDA's demand would change that.

She and three other SNAP recipients, along with a privacy organization and an anti-hunger group, are challenging USDA's data demand in a federal lawsuit, arguing the agency has not followed protocols required by federal privacy laws. Late Thursday, they asked a federal judge to intervene to postpone the July 30 deadline and a hearing has been scheduled for July 23.

"I am worried my personal information will be used for things I never intended or consented to," Samson wrote recently as part of an ongoing public comment period for the USDA's plan. "I am also worried that the data will be used to remove benefits access from student activists who have views the administration does not agree with."

Some senators share her concern. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday, 13 Democratic senators, led by California's Sen. Adam Schiff, slammed a public notice the USDA issued that grants itself broad authority for using SNAP recipients' data.

"This policy would turn a program that feeds millions of Americans into a tool of government mass surveillance," the senators wrote. They called on the agency to reverse course and warned otherwise the USDA "will be at serious risk of violating federal law."

When asked for comment on the senators' letter, an unnamed USDA spokesperson responding from a media email account wrote the agency's public notice for its proposed SNAP database "is open for comment until July 23."

Data and deportation efforts

The USDA's sweeping data demand comes as the Trump administration is taking wide-ranging and novel steps to collect personal data on people living in the U.S. and link data sets across government agencies for immigration enforcement, identifying potential fraud and waste, and other purposes that are still unknown.

A new federal agreement, for example, allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access Medicaid recipients' personal information, including ethnicities and addresses, to locate immigrants who might be subject to deportation. The agreement, which was first reported by the Associated Press and was later confirmed by the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, on CBS, follows the revelation that federal health officials shared Medicaid enrollees' data from a handful of states with the Department of Homeland Security without notifying states or seeking consent.

Federal agents detain a man after his court hearing in immigration court at a federal building in New York City on July 9, 2025. The federal government's push to collect data on nutrition assistance recipients has advocates worried that the government safety net programs will be harnessed for immigration enforcement.

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The USDA first publicized its data request in early May, saying the information would be used to ensure program integrity. The agency cited President Trump's March 20 executive order that calls for "unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding" including from "third-party databases" to stop waste, fraud and abuse.

The agency has since stated the plan also relates to Trump's February 19 executive order aimed at ensuring immigrants without legal status do not receive public benefits, and has said it will use the data to verify enrollees' immigration status. Some categories of noncitizens who used to qualify for SNAP no longer do after Trump's tax and spending bill that passed earlier this month.

Though immigrants living in the country without legal status are ineligible for SNAP, they can apply for benefits for their U.S. citizen children.

NPR asked USDA if the agency would make SNAP recipient data available to ICE for immigration enforcement.

In response, an unnamed USDA spokesperson referred to a provision of the Food and Nutrition Act, the federal law that created SNAP, that says information shall be shared with local, state or federal law enforcement to investigate SNAP-related violations.

A legal debate over privacy protocols

The USDA temporarily paused its data request in late May after the federal lawsuit challenging it was initially filed. The agency then issued a Systems of Record Notice, or SORN, on June 23 for the proposed new data set, a step required by the federal Privacy Act of 1974 that allows the public to comment on the agency's plan.

Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit submitted public comments and argued in court filings that the USDA's notice is unlawful, since they say the agency's description for how it intends to use SNAP recipients' data is incompatible with the Food and Nutrition Act that created the food assistance program.

The personal information of more than 40 million people currently use federal nutrition assistance programs administered by states, including addresses, Social Security numbers, and more could be collected by the federal government soon.

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The USDA's notice asserts broad authority to share SNAP recipients' data with other agencies and law enforcement. But the law that created SNAP says records shall be shared with law enforcement only to investigate SNAP-related violations, with an exception for locating fugitives.

"Congress, when they were passing the Food and Nutrition Act, understood how sensitive this information is," Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy, and one of the attorneys behind the lawsuit, told NPR. "And the bottom line is that this administration can't attempt to basically override that by issuing this overbroad SORN."

Samson, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in her public comment that the federal government is proposing to use her data in ways that she never consented to when she signed up.

"I shared my sensitive information with California with a clear understanding that it was only to determine my eligibility for SNAP and make sure I didn't break any of the rules of being on SNAP," she wrote in her public comment. "Now, this notice from the federal government says they plan to share my data with other federal agencies for reasons that have nothing to do with finding errors and fraud in the SNAP program. I never agreed to that, and it scares me."

She and other plaintiffs in the case argue the notice is defective because it does not spell out the full extent of the data the agency intends to collect.

Another plaintiff, Catherine Hollingsworth, a 76-year-old SNAP recipient in Alaska, wrote in her comment that she has shared extensive personal information with the state, including scans of IDs, medical records and bank information, and she wondered if the federal government might ultimately get those records, too.

"I am very worried that with each additional data transfer data [sic], it will be less secure and that my information will be severely compromised," she wrote.

An unnamed USDA spokesperson told NPR the agency does not comment on litigation, and referred to the Department of Justice, which did not return a request for comment.

States deciding how to respond

Earlier this month, USDA announced its data collection would begin July 24, the day after the comment period for its SORN is slated to close.

Plaintiffs argue the USDA's timeline has not left any time to consider public comments and incorporate feedback.

While several states have indicated they plan to comply with USDA's demand, others have expressed concerns.

"We will protect Marylanders' personal information by following the law," Maryland Department of Human Services press secretary Lilly Price told NPR in an email. "We are currently reviewing the USDA letter."

The lawsuit over the SNAP data collection is one of more than a dozen lawsuits pending over the Trump administration's efforts to access and aggregate Americans' sensitive data.

Last week, twenty states sued over the Medicaid data disclosure to DHS.

In response to an NPR inquiry about the agreement to share Medicaid data with ICE, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement, "With respect to the recent data sharing between CMS and DHS, HHS acted entirely within its legal authority – and in full compliance with all applicable laws – to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them."

The statement went on to criticize California for offering health benefits to immigrants without legal status through a state-run program.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who is leading the lawsuit to stop the federal government from sharing Medicaid data, said this week he was "deeply disturbed" to learn of the new agreement that gave ICE access to the data.

"The President's efforts to pull personal, private, and unrelated health data to create a mass deportation machine cannot be allowed to continue," Bonta said in a statement.
Copyright 2025 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”