Who is Lynda Blanchard, Trump’s pick for the top UN food agencies post?

Lawmakers are weighing President Donald Trump’s nominee to represent the United States at the three United Nations food agencies in Rome: Lynda Blanchard, a self-described “Christian conservative,” “business builder,” and “proud member of the MAGA movement.” The Alabama native — who served as the U.S. ambassador to Slovenia during the first Trump administration — spoke in a thick southern drawl before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, telling lawmakers that “the need for change and reform within the United Nations is more urgent than ever.” Now, Blanchard awaits a committee vote. And if successful, her nomination will move to the Senate floor for full confirmation. “If confirmed, I will bring everything I have to ensure that the U.N. organizations the United States chooses to engage with are efficient and effective stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” said Blanchard, speaking at her nomination hearing last week. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations agencies for food and agriculture isn’t always a household-name post. But the role is a quietly powerful one, sitting at the intersection of humanitarian diplomacy, food security, and U.S. soft power. By representing U.S. interests at three major U.N. food agencies — including the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, the World Food Programme, WFP, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD — the ambassador helps set priorities on famine response, food aid operations, and hunger alleviation, balancing U.S. interests with humanitarian needs. The U.S. is the world’s largest donor of food aid, spending $4 billion annually, and though the Trump administration has shunned multilateralism and planned to cut its contributions to the U.N., it continues to hold a great deal of sway. “Over the years, the United Nations and its associated agencies have continued to grow and expand their mandate beyond original intentions,” Blanchard told lawmakers last week. “With this growth, a proliferation of bloated bureaucracies has taken hold, distracting the U.N. from its core principles.” The appointment would be Blanchard’s first official post with the U.N., as she currently serves as a vice president at Ascent Residential LLC, a Montgomery, Alabama-based real estate company. Blanchard also founded another real estate firm, Benham Management Company, and a faith-based nonprofit called the 100x Development Foundation. While the website for the foundation is defunct, it had a revenue of just over $500,000 in 2023, according to the latest publicly available tax filings. The foundation works to “glorify God through the care of orphans and the sharing of the good news of Christ around the world,” the filing states, by supporting charitable projects implemented by “local residents or missionaries” across China, Guyana, India, Malawi, Moldova, Russia, Tanzania, Turkey, the United States, and Zimbabwe. “She is a force of nature,” said Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican from Alabama, in the Senate hearing. “Lynda has a proven record of international experience and leadership, and she is ready to translate that longtime service in food, agriculture, and hunger issues to excel in this position.” Blanchard and her husband have long been Republican donors: since 2015, NBC News reported that the two had given more than $2.6 million to the party, including $250,000 to Trump’s political action committee in 2018. Two weeks after Trump’s first election, Blanchard said she was asked to apply to become USAID administrator — but instead, she was nominated to become the U.S. ambassador to Slovenia, where First Lady Melania Trump was born and raised. “[Trump and I] both wanted to reel in that foreign aid just like a good conservative Republican does, bring the spending back in, and bring it back to the states, and so I filled out an application,” said Blanchard, speaking in a promotional video. “God had a different plan, and the different plan was for me to serve as ambassador.” Trump’s departure from the White House brought Blanchard to politics: She ran unsuccessfully for both governor and senator of Alabama in 2022. In her campaign videos, Blanchard described herself as “a Christian conservative and business builder, a mother of eight wonderful children, and proud member of the MAGA movement.” Her official YouTube channel paints a colorful picture of the likely U.N. rep, showcasing Blanchard shooting guns in a red “TRUMP WAS RIGHT” hat, and highlighting Blanchard with her eight children, five of whom were adopted from Peru, China, and India, and two of whom have died, according to Alabama state media and Blanchard’s campaign videos. “I never thought about serving in public office until President Trump asked me to, when he offered me the chance to serve as our ambassador to Slovenia,” Blanchard said in a campaign video from 2021. “That calling lit a fire in me to continue the cause as a public champion for the values we hold near and dear: free speech, the right to bear arms, religious freedom, the sanctity of life for all of God’s children, born and unborn, lower taxes, a secure border, the belief that America is the greatest nation that the world has ever known.” The U.N. post would take on quite a different focus, especially after the Trump administration hollowed out the U.S. Agency for International Development and began withdrawing support from U.N. agencies, committees, and processes across the multilateral system. Emergency food assistance — a category of aid that, in theory, was meant to be saved from the Trump administration’s cuts — has not been spared, creating a sharp break from years of bipartisan U.S. support for FAO, WFP, and IFAD. For years, the U.S. has been the largest donor to those organizations. But earlier this year, programs across all three institutions have suffered the blows of USAID cuts, often being canceled, un-canceled, and re-canceled in the span of weeks. Today, WFP is facing a 40% funding shortfall, and the organization expects to slash between 25%-30% of its workforce next year, totaling some 6,000 employees. FAO has lost nearly 400 staff members, with 600 total expected to be cut. And in the president’s 2026 budget request, support for IFAD — a specialized U.N. agency that supports small-scale farmers — is zeroed out entirely. Rodney Hunter, the former interim head of the U.S. mission to the U.N. agencies in Rome, has backed up those cuts, stating earlier this year that the agencies’ priorities will need to be “adjusted” to better align with U.S. priorities. That means removing any work related to “gender ideology and extremism,” diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and climate change. “The United States is no longer going to dole out money with no return for the American people,” Hunter told the executive board of WFP in February of this year. “As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, ‘Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?’” On paper, Blanchard differs from Hunter — a 20-year State Department veteran — in nearly every way. Despite that, she quoted the exact line from Rubio in her confirmation hearing, adding that it was “wonderful” that the Trump administration was reevaluating its relationship with the U.N. “As we all know, food security is bipartisan, we’re all in agreement of that,” she told Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, when he asked how the cuts to USAID would affect her work. “But I do think we are in agreement, as well, for accountability of our checkbooks.”