The head of the US Department of Agriculture said Monday that she is “proud” to be part of a Trump administration initiative purportedly aimed at promoting maternal health and wellbeing.
But President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year would do the opposite by deeply cutting fruit and vegetable benefits for new and expecting mothers. If enacted, the White House’s budget would reduce monthly fruit and vegetable aid from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) from $52 to $13 for low-income mothers.
“Your budget proposal would slash WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefit, leaving low-income pregnant women and new moms with only $13 per month to buy fruits and vegetables,” Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), wrote in response to a social media post by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who said she is “proud to be part of the Trump administration’s major push delivering REAL support for expecting and new mothers.”
Rollins, who has an estimated net worth of roughly $15 million, was among the top administration officials and lawmakers who took part Monday in a White House event touting “what the Trump administration has done to advance maternal health and support motherhood.”
Absent from the event was any discussion of the administration’s ongoing assault on food aid, which has had a direct impact on mothers across the country. NBC News on Monday reported the story of an Arizona mother of two young children who “should be exempt” from the 2025 Trump-GOP budget law’s expansion of work requirements for recipients of federal nutrition assistance.
“She described being caught in a monthslong paperwork back-and-forth with state employees since February, when her benefits failed to arrive,” the outlet noted. “Unable to reach anyone by phone, she finally decided to show up in person at the office in Surprise. On the morning she arrived at 7 am, her second visit that week, she had a backpack full of paperwork she was told she needed to provide to verify her income and expenses to have her benefits restored. But after waiting for four hours to speak with someone, she was told she needed more documentation.”
“This administration is taking healthy foods away from children and mothers most at risk for nutritional deficiencies.”
The budget proposal that Trump released in early April would strip around $1.4 billion in fruit and vegetable benefits from roughly 5.4 million parents and young children, according to a CBPP analysis. The new White House budget marks the second consecutive year the president has pushed for cuts to WIC fruit and vegetable benefits.
Congressional Republicans are attempting to enshrine the White House’s proposed WIC cuts into law through the annual appropriations process, calling for $200 million in total reductions in WIC spending—with most of the cuts coming from fruit and vegetable benefits.
Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the National WIC Association, said last month that “these cuts break with the Trump administration’s support for WIC during the 2025 government shutdown and directly contradict the administration’s stated goal to ‘Make America Healthy Again.’"
“WIC is a proven public health investment during the most critical developmental stages: pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood,” said Machell. “By slashing the fruit and vegetable benefits and not ensuring sufficient program funding, this administration is taking healthy foods away from children and mothers most at risk for nutritional deficiencies.”
“This plan is short-sighted, hypocritical, and, if passed by Congress, will harm American families,” Machell added.
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