The National WIC Association, the nonprofit education and advocacy arm of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, serves nearly 7 million people across the U.S., providing critical health and nutrition services for low-income families. But despite its reputation as one of the most successfully federally funded nutrition programs, WIC is bracing for unwelcome change as a result of the Trump administration’s reorganization plan for USDA.
To learn more about what’s ahead for the nutrition program, The Packer sat down with National WIC Association President and CEO Georgia Machell on Tuesday.
What concerns you most about the USDA’s plans to close its food and nutrition headquarters in Alexandria, Va., and relocate staff outside the D.C. metro area?
Machell: What ultimately concerns us most is the negative impact this is going to have on families. We’re always thinking about the end user and the folks who participate in the program to access healthy food and fresh fruits and vegetables, breastfeeding support, nutrition education — and [we’re concerned about] the disruptions to service that we know this is going to present.
And we’ve been through this before. In the last Trump administration, we saw the Economic Research Service get moved out of Washington, D.C., and as a result, they lost about two-thirds of their staff, and that had a really negative impact on the output they had and what they were able to continue doing.
You’ve said relocating key staff and dismantling regional offices is not about efficiency and that it will in fact “sever decades of institutional knowledge, weaken quality control, delay critical services and create unnecessary barriers for state agencies and families who rely on WIC.”
We know this isn’t about efficiency, even though that’s how it’s being framed. It’s about politics. And our concern is that this is actually going to be the opposite of efficient, because we know that services will be impacted.
The relationship between federal staff, regional staff and state staff is intrinsic to making WIC work on the ground, and if that gets disrupted, we can anticipate that there are going to be disruptions to how WIC functions on the ground.
There will be delays. There will be issues. The troubleshooting that happens between the state, the regions and the federal workforce is really, really important, as are the decades of institutional knowledge that are at risk if these moves actually happen. So, when we heard that this was being proposed, we were deeply concerned about the impact that this was ultimately going to have on how WIC services will function and how families will be able to access WIC services.
Even before the announcement of this plan, the administration’s dismissal of probationary employees and deferred resignation programs had already undermined the agency’s capacity to deliver timely support to state WIC agencies, including the distribution of congressionally appropriated funds. These are not cost-saving measures or efforts aimed at streamlining. They are politically motivated acts of bureaucratic disruption, designed to erode USDA’s ability to function.
Is there a timeline in place for how quickly the reorg is happening?
One of the things we are learning is that there’s a lack of details on what this plan includes. We know high-level that the aim is to move people out of D.C. and to close the FNS [Food and Nutrition Service] office in Alexandria, but in terms of what the specifics actually are, I don’t think there’s that level of clarity yet, which, as you might imagine, is creating a lot of deep concern for the folks who work at USDA and FNS.
Is part of your concern not only the inefficiencies this is going to create, but also that they might be letting people go from their positions?
I think it’s a roundabout way of letting people go. And again, going back to what we saw with the ERS move in the last Trump administration, we saw the impact that had on folks leaving.
This is restructuring in a very roundabout way because there are folks who simply cannot drop everything and move to a completely new region. I think the other thing that’s important to be aware of is that there has already been a significant reduction in staff at FNS, simply through the voluntary redundancy programs, and as a result of everything else that’s happened this year.
They’ve already been reduced from a staff of 1,500 to 1,000, which is significant. And that’s before the restructuring plan. So, I think the questions that we’re left with is: How far is this going to go and how many more people is the service going to lose? And again, what will the impact be on families and how disruptive is this going to become?
We’ve already lost 500 people from FNS, and states are reporting that it is taking them longer to receive their federal funds. So, there’s already disruption. There’s already delays, and we can only expect those to get worse should more people leave as a result of this announcement.
If this isn’t a move toward greater efficiency, as the administration says, what is it?
In a nutshell, it’s in alignment with a lot of other things we’ve seen come from the administration. It’s reducing the size of government. It is reducing who can access the programs. It is all about making sure that they’re completely turning on its head what we’ve known for decades to be successful and impactful programming.
So, it is confusing and difficult to make sense of why this is being framed as an efficiency move, where when you actually pause and think about what the impact truly will be is anything but efficient.
In terms of access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other nutritious foods, as well as providing nutrition education, how might the reorg impact WIC’s ability to serve?
I think it’s a case of services being disruptive. And I think you have to put in context that, over the last few years, WIC has made tremendous strides in improving the experience that families have participating in WIC.
We have done extensive research with over 40,000 WIC participants, and what they value most about the WIC program — what keeps them coming back — is the fruits and vegetable voucher and the value that that brings to them and their families.
Our concern is that if the ability to approve vendors and get people in the WIC program is disrupted, then the experience participants have is also impacted. So, our primary worry here is that implementing WIC and the Cash Value Benefit is going to get slowed down.
Ironically, our concern is also efficiency and about making sure that services are provided at the pace that people are used to, and not taking any steps backwards. And we want to ensure that families who are eligible can access WIC services in a way that works for them.
The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) contained some pretty significant cutbacks to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. What has the indirect impact been to WIC as a result?
One of the things that came out of the One Big Beautiful Bill was significant cuts to SNAP and significant cuts to Medicaid. And yes, WIC wasn’t mentioned explicitly. But there’s an interconnectedness of things, and this is an area where that is very true.
Many participants access WIC through what’s called adjunctive eligibility, which is where you are eligible for another program which automatically makes you eligible for WIC. And if folks are no longer eligible for those programs, we risk losing a significant number of people who would be eligible for WIC.
According to a June 2025 policy brief the National WIC Association sent to The Packer, an estimated 8,252,425 pregnant women, postpartum women, infants and children are adjunctively eligible for WIC in a given month in 2025 due to their participation in Medicaid or SNAP and could be impacted by the policies in the OBBB. Of those, 3,076,968 women and children would lose their income eligibility for WIC entirely should they lose access to Medicaid.
Our deep concern here is about how people access the program and how people are used to accessing the program. That’s something we’ve been paying a lot of attention to and raising flags about. There is some interconnectedness between these programs, and if you mess with one, then that does have a knock-on effect and impact WIC as well.
Where does WIC go from here?
Congress needs to be included in this conversation. There is going to be a hearing [July 30] to inform and allow folks to ask more detailed questions. So, we would urge Congress to use their oversight authority to prevent any kind of move.
And we’re hopeful that [the relocation] doesn’t happen, because a move would be incredibly detrimental in terms of what’s next for WIC. We are continuing to move forward with appropriations and continuing to make sure the program gets the funding that it needs to continue to provide services to every eligible family.
We’re also as an association working to modernize and be participant focused. So, I’m hopeful that over the next year you will see more on opportunities around online ordering in WIC. We want WIC to be a program that is easy for folks to access and helpful to them in the way that they can participate.
What’s the latest with WIC funding?
We did have concerns a couple months ago when the president’s budget came out, specifically related to the cash value voucher, because there were some really nasty cuts proposed to that. The House budget proposed less cuts. But we are going to oppose anyone cutting any aspect of the fruit and vegetable voucher, because we know just how important it is.
And then the Senate came through and has protected it, but it all still needs to pass.
We are hoping that it will, but I think we also anticipate there could be continuing resolutions come September. So, we’re just trying to keep our eye on the ball and keep a finger on the pulse to make sure that folks on the Hill are educated as to how important WIC is to families.
