The Majority Whip and the highest ranking Black in terms of a leadership role in the House of Representatives, Clyburn said that the country's next agriculture, who would lead a $150 billion agriculture department, secretary should be Black.
“We — our forebears — were brought here to develop rural America, the plantations,” said Clyburn to the New York Post.
Both Fudge and Clyburn are Black, and both are former chairperson's of the Congressional Black Caucus, which, along with along with three unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, is also pushing the congresswoman for the cabinet position.
There has been one Black agriculture secretary, Mike Espy, a Democrat like Fudge, Clyburn and Biden, a former vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, and a former Mississippi congressman and former president Bill Clinton appointee who served from 1993-1994, Clinton's first year in office.
The secretary of agriculture is responsible for providing "leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science, and effective management."
Chair of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition, Oversight, and Department Operations, Rep. Fudge has publicly announced that she is open and ready to assume the agriculture secretary position if she is selected by Biden and cleared for the job, outgoing President Trump, of whom had no Black women in his cabinet during his entire tumultuous four-year term.
Sources say she is a finalist, along with former U.S. senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, though critics say Heitkamp voted with Trump nearly 70 percent of the time, and that Trump nearly picked her in 2017?
A former Warrensville Heights, Ohio mayor, the outspoken Fudge, a trained lawyer and member of Congress since 2008, said that Black women put Biden in office in November and he owes the Black community, and women, a diversified cabinet of qualified public servants.
She said it's time that the White House looks more like America.
“As this country becomes more and more diverse, we’re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in,” Fudge told Politico. “You know, it’s always ‘We want to put the Black person in labor or HUD.'”
Also a former national president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a prominent Black sorority for progressive women, she chaired the Congressional Black Caucus during the 113th Congress after being unanimously elected by her colleagues
Her largely Black congressional district includes parts of Cleveland, mainly its majority Black east side, and several of its eastern suburbs of Cuyahoga County, and a Black pocket of neighboring Akron and staggering parts of Summit County.
The lawmaker and women's rights advocate endorsed Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in her failed bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination that Biden ultimately won.
Fudge, 68, is a seasoned member of the House Agriculture Committee and has been persistent in her role as chair of the Nutrition Subcommittee, which provides oversight over USDA regulations.
And she is supported by farmers and agriculture policy makers who say her support for both rural and underrepresented minority farm populations is admirable.
In addition to farmers, her advocates also include organized labor across the board and environmental and food safety organizations who say she has effectively fought USDA against speedy meat inspections and food and safety regulations harmful to minority populations in particular.
She continues to demand an increase in SNAP benefits under the Farm Bill to poor people during the coronavirus pandemic and has had her arms around a host of other Congressional initiatives impacting the nation's farmland community from the perspective of a lawmaker determined to push legislative measures as to farmland preservation, quality water supplies and food nutritious programs for low- income Americans such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
No doubt, the congresswoman is sometimes a nuisance to the corporate wing of the agricultural industry and to current Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue, whom she has accused of pushing conservative policy agendas that undermine minorities and other disenfranchised groups.
She led the House’s filing of an amicus brief, among others, in support of a lawsuit filed by 18 states and the District of Columbia, including the city of New York, that seeks to reverse the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rule to strip Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (food stamps) benefits away from able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs).
The Trump administration, though on its way out when Biden officially becomes president next year, wants to tighten work requirements for some food stamp recipients, a move that comes as more than 40 million Americans are unemployed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and a measure that impacts benefits for some 688,000 adults.
The new rule makes it more difficult for states to waive a requirement that able-bodied adults without children work at least 20 hours a week or else lose their benefits.
President Trump says able-bodied adults without dependents should be stripped of SNAP benefits even if they cannot find work during a pandemic that, by all accounts, has crippled the nation.
“Despite countless reports showing hunger and unemployment rising together, pointing to a long and tough economic recovery from the pandemic, the Trump administration has decided now is a good time to make it harder for people to buy food if they can’t find a job," said Fudge.
House Democrats, and even some Republicans, oppose the measure.
The congresswoman said that even though the rule has been stayed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia while the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, the Trump administration is hellbent on going forward with stripping these affected SNAP recipients of benefits during a public health crisis.
"As tens of millions of Americans are without work, the administration, with equal parts arrogance and ignorance, continues its ideological crackdown on SNAP recipients,” said Rep. Fudge. “And while House Democrats passed legislation to freeze these callous rules for the duration of the public health emergency—and a U.S. District Court wisely stayed the rule nationwide—the White House is intent on pursuing implementation of this bogus rule."
Supporters of the congresswoman for the position of Agriculture secretary say she will help mend the department's fragile reputation, a department that has shelved out millions of dollars to settle discrimination lawsuits against the agency brought by Black farmers, women, the Latino community, and other a host of others.
