Alaska and North Dakota were the only two states where food stamp enrollment rose between June 2025 and June 2026, according to USDA’s state-by-state SNAP participation table. Every other state, the District of Columbia and every territory listed in the table recorded fewer people receiving benefits in June 2026 than a year earlier. The pattern…

Executive Order 14426 sets a six-month deadline for VA to build something it does not currently have: a digital application system that uses artificial intelligence to help veterans apply for benefits. The order, signed Sept. 8, gives VA until 180 days from that date to “create and deploy new digital tools using artificial intelligence and…

Executive Order 14426, signed Sept. 8, gives the Pentagon a fixed window to fix a problem that has quietly slowed veterans’ benefits for years: military records that do not reach VA until long after a service member has already left. Within 30 days of the order, the Department of War must put in place a…

Federal regulation gives a veteran 60 days to respond before the Department of Veterans Affairs can reduce, discontinue or otherwise cut disability compensation. That window only works if the letter starting it tells the veteran, accurately, what is being proposed and why. An inspector general report released August 31 found cases where the letter did…

Seventy-five point six days: that is the average the Department of Veterans Affairs now reports for deciding a disability compensation claim, down from 141.5 days on January 20, 2025. The agency published the figure in a September 22 update timed to a milestone: more than 3 million disability claims completed in fiscal year 2026, edging…

USDA’s newest accuracy count for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program found that 19 states and Washington, D.C. posted payment error rates of 10 percent or higher in fiscal year 2025. Add Guam, and 21 of the 53 SNAP jurisdictions the agency measures cleared that mark. Nationally, the two kinds of mistakes counted together, benefits paid…

The Department of Veterans Affairs will exempt more than 457,000 policyholders from three months of Veterans’ Group Life Insurance premiums this winter, and the agency says veterans who already paid those months in advance will not lose the benefit. VA estimates the three-month holiday is worth an average of $330 per policyholder, and it applies…

Sixteen months of full disability payments kept arriving after a Department of Veterans Affairs employee proposed cutting a veteran’s rating for lung cancer from 100 percent to 30 percent, citing improvement. The proposal never turned into a final decision. Before the case could be resolved, a different claims processor canceled the paperwork tracking it —…

USDA gave states one calendar day. On Oct. 31, 2025, the agency issued guidance telling states how to remove certain lawful permanent residents from SNAP rolls; the compliance deadline attached to it was Nov. 1, 2025. A federal judge in Oregon has now ruled that timeline, and the fines the administration threatened over it, permanently…

Food stamp households fell below 20 million in the United States for the first time in the four years covered by USDA’s monthly participation table. In June 2026, 19,807,327 households received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, down from 22,388,730 households in June 2025, a drop of 2,581,403 households, or about 2.6 million, over twelve months.…