President Donald Trump’s U.S. Agriculture Division plans to fireplace an worker within the Supplemental Diet Help Program after she gave a media interview during which she raised considerations about Individuals going hungry because of the program’s disruptions.
Ellen Mei, a SNAP program specialist and native union consultant, appeared on MSNBC on Oct. 2 to debate how the federal government shutdown was impacting federal staff and the USDA’s meals help operations. She mentioned that staff administering the SNAP program had been feeling “overworked and exhausted” as a result of company cuts and defined how funding might run out if the shutdown dragged on.
The Trump administration ultimately started withholding meals stamp advantages from states, utilizing the prospect of meals insecurity to efficiently stress Democrats into caving within the funding struggle. Tens of millions of Individuals depend on this system to purchase groceries and feed their households.
The day after her MSNBC interview, the USDA knowledgeable Mei, who relies in Boston and was furloughed on the time, that she could be fired for publicly speaking about program availability with out prior approval, in accordance with correspondence reviewed by HuffPost.
Mei mentioned she was merely exercising her First Modification rights by discussing what the shutdown might imply for the SNAP program.
“I didn’t leak secrets or share anything confidential,” she mentioned in an announcement by the Federal Unionists Community, a federal worker group that counts Mei as an organizer. “I told the truth about what’s happening to hungry families and the people who serve them. I took an oath to serve the public – not to stay quiet while our government turns its back on the American people.”
Mei is president of the Nationwide Treasury Staff Union Chapter 255, which represents meals and diet staff throughout the USDA.
Elected union officers are sometimes the one federal workers prepared to talk to the media as a result of they’ve been educated on how to take action in accordance with federal guidelines. They usually begin out the dialogue by clarifying they’re talking of their private capability or as a union official, not as a consultant of their company.
A USDA spokesperson mentioned that the company doesn’t touch upon particular person personnel issues. “During a lapse in appropriations, furloughed USDA employees are not authorized to perform any official duties, including speaking on behalf of the Department,” the spokesperson mentioned in an e mail.
In preventing for her job, Mei is more likely to dispute that she was talking “on behalf of the department” or performing an official obligation when she spoke to MSNBC.
Supporters started calling for Mei’s reinstatement on Friday, with a rally scheduled in Boston.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) known as on the USDA to reverse the “retaliatory” firing and put Mei again on the job “immediately” when federal staff return following the shutdown.
“While communities scrambled to mitigate Trump’s attempts to deny families their SNAP benefits despite court orders, Trump and the USDA were working around the clock to stifle Ellen’s voice and dissuade others from standing up and speaking out,” Pressley mentioned in an announcement.
Pressley and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) despatched a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, on Friday in regards to the matter.
The Federal Unionists Community says that 18,000 USDA workers have left the company this 12 months since Trump started pushing federal staff out by early retirement packages and layoffs. Mei mentioned in her MSNBC interview that about half of her workplace had been let go in April.
“What we really want to do is to be at work helping feed people who rely on SNAP to feed their families and put food on their tables,” Mei mentioned on the time. “We feel angry at being treated as political pawns so billionaires can have more money while the people that we serve are being strained further and have to worry about their benefits.”
