Was this USDA survey really “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous”?

Joshua Brooks writes: I know you’ve posted on the topic more generally but don’t recall if you’ve discussed this in particular. Given the timing in relation to cuts in food assistance, It seems a particularly egregious example of the politicization of data. The news article, published in late 2025 by an organization called Food Tank (“The Think Tank for Food”) is titled, USDA Ends Key Food Security Report, Leaving Advocates in the Dark, and it begins: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced it will terminate its long-running Household Food Security annual report. The resource is one of the country’s most comprehensive tools for measuring hunger and food insecurity. The USDA justified the decision as a cost-saving measure, claiming in a statement that the survey is “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.” . . . Produced for the past three decades by the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), the report offers insights used by researchers, policymakers,…