Wow.
I remember when this was whispered, teased, and threatened and talked about quietly years ago. And it made perfect sense, you know.
So they took that first baby step to try it, and a pissy-hissy fit ensued.
…The first Trump administration moved USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Missouri, triggering an exodus of staff. That relocation was later reversed by the Biden administration.
But to see it actually happening on a large scale now?
HOLY COW PATTY
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will move most of its Washington, D.C., employees out of the capital and closer to farmers, ranchers, and producers.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made the announcement on Thursday, which noted that the USDA’s workforce increased by 8% pic.twitter.com/0p8HTrWhLc
— DL (@DonLancaster8) July 25, 2025
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced this morning that she is reducing the Washington D.C. area workforce by more than half, and hopefully not through a reduction in force. Sec Rollins hopes to relocate as many current employees who are willing to do so to five different hubs across the country. They’ll be landing in states and cities where agriculture happens. That puts the USDA where the farmers are and saves the government a ton of money in expenses for employee overhead at the same time.
What a concept!
The Agriculture Department on Thursday said it will relocate more than half of its Washington, D.C., workforce to primarily red-state farm areas as it works to shrink its workforce under the Trump administration.
A memorandum signed by Secretary Brooke Rollins said that the reorganization is being conducted in lockstep with the department’s effort to get smaller, having already offered employees deferred resignations, voluntary early retirement and voluntary separation incentive payments.
…The USDA employs approximately 4,600 people in the area around D.C., which carries federal salary “locality rate,” of nearly 34 percent, an adjustment for the cost of living. The department plans to retain no more than 2,000 employees in the region.
“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” Rollins said in a statement. The memo notes that in past four years, the department grew by about 8 percent with employee salaries increasing 14.5 percent.
“To ensure USDA is located closer to the people it serves while achieving savings to the American taxpayer, USDA will relocate much of its Agency headquarters and NCR staff from the Washington, D.C. area to five hub locations,” it said.
The five hubs employees will be dispersed have lower cost of living adjustments: Raleigh, N.C., has a rate of 22.2 percent; Kansas City, Mo., has a rate of nearly 19 percent; Indianapolis has a 18.2 percent rate; Fort Collins, Colo., has a 30.5 percent rate; and Salt Lake City has a 17 percent rate.
Naturally, there’s pushback from entrenched Washington office workers.
…But several USDA staffers told POLITICO that the move will further hurt morale.
“This administration [isn’t] interested in supporting staff or even really in the jobs we do,” said one employee granted anonymity in order to speak publicly without fear of repercussions. “If they cared about either of those things, if they cared about serving farmers and ranchers, they wouldn’t have taken away all the staff, tools, and resources we use to serve them.”
A second employee, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, warned that relocating staff out of the Washington area would make oversight more difficult.
“[This] is just going to create an inner circle of powerful employees with access to people in high places and send everyone else out to ‘hubs,’” they said. “They are concentrating power and want fewer witnesses to what they are doing.”
The second employee suggested that moving would be costly for employees and for USDA, and it could force some workers to make the difficult choice to quit.
I’m not really seeing where this is going to engender much sympathy on the part of regular Americans who are losing their jobs with nothing and no one to help them.
Expensive? The government will pay the bulk of their moving costs, and they’re moving to a less expensive city, no matter where they move.
They still have a big, fat, government job and all the benefits.
Now, granted, they might have a tough time unloading their D.C. real estate and I know that has to be a concern.
But is everything a tinfoil hat conspiracy? They’re moving employees to *checks notes* Indianapolis and four other cities to ‘concentrate power’?! Freakin’ nutjobs like that do not need to be working for the government to begin with.
No wonder nothing gets done.
They probably are seething that Rollins is hammering so many sacred cows. The USDA has directed states to begin turning over the ‘sensitive’ information required for monitoring the SNAP benefits programs, and teeth are gnashing in prog-ville.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is telling states to begin turning over sensitive data on applicants to the food assistance program previously known as food stamps. The agency has recently expanded the scope of the data demand to include immigration status and information on household members.
In new guidance publicized Thursday, USDA told states to share information on applicants to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the last five years, including “all household group members names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, residential and mailing addresses used or provided, as well as all data records used to determine eligibility or ineligibility.”
A Privacy Impact Assessment the agency released Wednesday indicates the additional information USDA is seeking includes SNAP applicants’ immigration and citizenship status, as well as education, employment and marital status.
The broadened SNAP data request comes as the Trump administration is taking steps to share Internal Revenue Service and Medicaid records with immigration enforcement agents to locate people who may be subject to deportation.
While immigrants without legal status are ineligible for SNAP benefits, they can apply for any of their children who are U.S. citizens or could be part of a mixed status household.
Illegal immigrant advocates are wailing that there are already procedures in place to verify such eligibility information without ‘centralizing’ applicants’ information, so why do they have to do this now?
The rampant fraud and abuse in the system certainly hadn’t bothered anyone before, waah!
They tried suing to stop the collection but, for once, a judge refused to act on it.
…The plaintiffs suing over the USDA’s data collection asked a federal judge to issue an emergency ruling to postpone the data collection period, but the judge declined to intervene. The legal case continues.
States that do not comply with the data request could stand to lose federal funds. It is not yet clear if states will have the capacity to compile the massive volume of data the Agriculture Department wants by its July 30 deadline.
Another positive is the collaboration between Rollins’ USDA and the MAHA Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr.
Those SNAP cards no longer buy junk food crap.
YEAH, BUDDY
#2 – Woman on food stamps is stunned to find out that she’s no longer able to buy soda with taxpayer dollars.
The RFK Jr. effect is kicking in.
Everything else in her cart was approved, but the soda was declined because states can now restrict food stamps from covering sugary… pic.twitter.com/jGtW3G84go
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) June 27, 2025
I think this is all tremendously good news and all in the right direction.
Get those bureaucrats out there in the clean country air, and good riddance to the ones who don’t want to move or are allergic to hay.
Let them stay in the swamp where they’re comfortable.
People have work to do out here in the rest of the country.
Happy Friday!
