Not every wrong food stamp payment shows up in the numbers the federal government uses to judge a state. Buried in a footnote of USDA’s own fiscal year 2025 accuracy report is a dollar line: if a case reviewer finds an error smaller than that amount, it is excluded from the state’s official payment error…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture closed the books on fiscal year 2025 food stamp accuracy on June 24, 2026, and one state stood far apart from the other 49. Alaska’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payment error rate came in at 23.15 percent — the highest of any state in the country, and more than double…

Every October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture resets the floor under food stamp benefits, and the new numbers for the year ahead move in opposite directions depending on where a household lives. In the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia, the smallest possible monthly benefit for a one- or two-person household is going…

A change tucked into last year’s federal tax and spending law quietly rewrote one of the more obscure levers that decides a household’s monthly food stamp amount: the heating and cooling standard utility allowance. Until now, a small energy-assistance payment was often enough on its own to unlock a bigger shelter deduction and a higher…

A White House order signed this month tells the Department of Agriculture to spend the next three months deciding whether grocery shoppers should be able to see where their beef was born, raised and slaughtered. The directive does not put a new label on a single package of ground chuck or ribeye today. It instructs…

Two changes to Canadian trade rules land on different dates this month, and both trace back to the same legal authority. Import bans on certain Canadian alcoholic beverages and dairy products take effect September 29, 2026, turning what has been a steep tariff into an outright prohibition on those goods entering the United States. A…

For the first time in three years, the egg aisle is moving in the direction shoppers stopped expecting: down. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that its price index for eggs was 23.0 percent lower in August 2026 than in August 2025, one of the largest twelve-month declines recorded for any major grocery item this…

Grocery shoppers are seeing two very different stories play out in the same coffee aisle. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released this month show the price of instant coffee climbed 11.0 percent over the past year, easily the fastest-moving item inside a coffee category that, taken as a whole, actually got a little cheaper last…

At the meat case, some sale tags moved this summer while the ground beef sticker did not. Government inflation data released this month track the item precisely: uncooked ground beef cost 7.2 percent more in August 2026 than a year earlier, and on a seasonally adjusted basis its price did not move at all during…

Diesel fuel in California averaged $8.039 a gallon for the week ending September 14, 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail price survey. That figure sits well above both the national picture and the wider West Coast region the state belongs to, and the distance between them has been widening for more…