MAZON Statements

Following an apparent last-second change of heart, President-elect Donald Trump announced this weekend that Brooke Rollins, one of the architects of his first term’s domestic policy, is his nominee for the 33rd Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, the leading national organization advocating to end hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds, noted with alarm the threat Rollins represents to the 47 million Americans facing food insecurity and urged members of the Senate to press the nominee on her views on key issues impacting hunger nationwide.

Abby J. Leibman, MAZON’s President & CEO stated:

“Donald Trump’s domestic policies during his first term were disastrous for the tens of millions of low-income Americans facing food insecurity, so it is deeply alarming that he would select one of the architects for those blueprints to lead USDA moving forward. We are facing a growing hunger crisis in our country, and we have strong reason to believe that Rollins would use this perch to make poverty and hardship significantly worse. The fact that this was President-elect Trump’s final Cabinet appointment, one that comes after an apparently erratic change of nominees at the last moment, demonstrates his misjudgment of the importance of the agency and the overall chaos of the transition. 

“Rollins has already proven herself deeply antagonistic to those in need, proposing additional, ineffective work requirements on Americans receiving federal assistance and furthering the false stereotype that benefit recipients are avoiding work to commit ‘fraud’ against the government. These assertions strike very real fear and shame into the millions of people already struggling to keep food on the table. We will have an opportunity during the nominee’s confirmation hearings to discern how she intends to address America’s food insecurity crisis, and we urge members of the Senate to vote accordingly.”