 In June 2019, Gillibrand and Republican Lisa Murkowski announced the Summer Meals Act of 2019, legislation altering the Summer Food Service Program of the Agriculture Department to grant more children access to summer meals in addition to providing transportation for children in rural and hard-to-reach areas to aid their access of summer meals along with imposing flexibility to the program so children can have more than one meal.In June 2019, Gillibrand and eighteen other Democratic senators sent a letter to USDA Inspector General (IG) Phyllis K. Fong with the request that the IG investigate USDA instances of retaliation and political decision-making and asserted that not conducting an investigation would mean these "actions could be perceived as a part of this administration’s broader pattern of not only discounting the value of federal employees but suppressing, undermining, discounting, and wholesale ignoring scientific data produced by their own qualified scientists.