President Donald Trump’s U.S. Agriculture Department plans to fire an employee in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program after she gave a media interview in which she raised concerns about Americans going hungry due to the program’s disruptions.
Ellen Mei, a SNAP program specialist and local union representative, appeared on MSNBC on Oct. 2 to discuss how the government shutdown was impacting federal workers and the USDA’s food assistance operations. She said that workers administering the SNAP program were feeling “overworked and exhausted” due to agency cuts and explained how funding could run out if the shutdown dragged on.
The Trump administration eventually began withholding food stamp benefits from states, using the prospect of food insecurity to successfully pressure Democrats into caving in the funding fight. Millions of Americans rely on the program to buy groceries and feed their families.
The day after her MSNBC interview, the USDA informed Mei, who is based in Boston and was furloughed at the time, that she would be fired for publicly talking about program availability without prior approval, according to correspondence reviewed by HuffPost.
Mei said she was simply exercising her First Amendment rights by discussing what the shutdown could mean for the SNAP program.
“I didn’t leak secrets or share anything confidential,” she said in a statement through the Federal Unionists Network, a federal employee 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 National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 255, which represents food and nutrition workers within the USDA.
Elected union officials are often the only federal employees willing to speak to the media because they’ve been trained on how to do so in accordance with federal rules. They often start out the discussion by clarifying they are speaking in their personal capacity or as a union official, not as a representative of their agency.
A USDA spokesperson said that the agency does not comment on individual personnel matters. “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 said in an email.
In fighting for her job, Mei is likely to dispute that she was speaking “on behalf of the department” or performing an official duty when she spoke to MSNBC.
Supporters began calling for Mei’s reinstatement on Friday, with a rally scheduled in Boston.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called on the USDA to reverse the “retaliatory” firing and put Mei back on the job “immediately” when federal workers 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 said in a statement.
Pressley and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, on Friday about the matter.
The Federal Unionists Network says that 18,000 USDA employees have left the agency this year since Trump began pushing federal workers out through early retirement programs and layoffs. Mei said in her MSNBC interview that about half of her office 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 said at 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.”