USDA ‘Cut Off at the Knees’ by Musk’s Mass Firings

Terminated employees helped farmers build irrigation systems, battled invasive diseases that could “completely decimate” crops that form whole industries and assisted low-income seniors in rural areas in fixing leaky roofs. That work will now be significantly delayed—perhaps indefinitely—as remaining employees’ workloads grow, the employees say.

“It’s really crippling the agency,” says Bryan Mathis, a former USDA employee based in New Mexico.

Caught up in the terminations are single parents and new moms, recent hires and longtime employees, and military veterans. Some had uprooted their lives months ago to start their new career. Justin Butt, also based in New Mexico, says that without the health insurance and parental leave offered by his federal job, he and his wife may hold off on having a child.

Many of the USDA employees were on probationary status, meaning they had worked less than a year (or three years, in some instances) in the civil service. However, several had put in years working for the government and had been permanent employees at other federal departments.

The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” says Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”

The USDA did not return a request for comment. In an interview with Brownfield Ag News on Tuesday, Rollins said her department has done “significant reinstatements” but added new job cuts might be coming. “I do think that moving forward, it will be more intentional,” she said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents farmers and rural communities across the country, says cuts at USDA should be “strategic.” The farm bureau has supported the Trump administration.

“Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” Sam Kieffer, the Farm Bureau’s vice president of public policy, says in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “USDA plays a vital role in ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, from loan officers and disaster recovery experts to food inspectors, animal disease specialists and more.

“We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars,” the statement continues, “but we urge the administration to empower the Secretary to make strategic staffing decisions, knowing the key roles USDA staff play in the nation’s food supply.”

Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email—which promised federal workers a buyout—hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee says.

As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.

The firings were haphazard. 

Many received the same email late at night on February 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, February 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he says. 

Another employee says his job title was listed incorrectly on the termination letter. One says they had received an award days before their termination. Several employees say their supervisors had no idea they were fired.

Mathis, who worked for the Forest Service, received a phone call on Monday, February 17, a federal holiday, from a higher-up, who told him he was fired, he says. His direct supervisor was instructed to terminate him but refused. 

“It kind of went up the chain,” he says.

Doug Berry, who worked for the USDA’s Rural Development agency in Texas, says, when he attempted to get a copy of his performance review last week, it was “mysteriously blank.” He then asked his supervisor to write him a recommendation but was rebuffed. The supervisor mentioned an interview Berry gave to USA TODAY, in which he said his agency “helps the towns that voted for Trump every day.”

“I don’t know who’s watching what, but as soon as they saw my comments, any good will evaporated,” he says.

Another former USDA employee, who requested anonymity to protect job prospects, says the terminations will result in a leadership void. The job cuts affected training intended to give the new generation of leaders a holistic view of the agency.

“It’s just going to create a lot of chaos,” the employee says.

DOGE claims cuts are for efficiency

DOGE’s stated goal is to improve efficiency across the government, but former employees say they were already working on improving government service efficiencies.

When one former employee joined the department six months ago, they faced a five-year backlog. They had worked through three years when they were terminated, says the employee, who is based in a Western state and requested anonymity to protect future job prospects. Now, other workers will “have to pick up the slack,” meaning delays for projects that farmers and ranchers want done.

Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she says. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”

Gaspar, based in Florida, says she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she says. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”

Rural development workers axed

One of the USDA’s many responsibilities is providing financial assistance to rural, low-income communities. For example, a small town in central West Virginia requested USDA’s help to find funding for a new police cruiser. 

Rural Development was also coordinating a plan to help impoverished families access transportation to medical care, says Carrie Decker, a single mom of four children who worked in the West Virginia office. “You have three generations sharing one vehicle, and people have to work and get to school, so finding time to go to a dentist appointment is not high on the priority list,” she says. The project now lacks USDA support, which could delay it.

After the Trump administration took over, she and her coworkers were instructed not to perform community outreach, which was “90% of what we do,” Decker says. Decker worries the lack of investment in rural areas—which Trump largely won in his reelection bid—will have long-lasting consequences.

“We’re going to see less funding into these critical access places that really, really need to have it and have needed it for decades,” she says. “I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.”

Two primary goals of rural development are to provide affordable housing or to help maintain low-income seniors’ homes.

One former USDA employee in the South, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, says they were hired to help expedite environmental compliance reviews, which were required before any funding was dispersed. Before they started, the employee says, another employee performed these duties on top of a full-time job.

The situation delayed help to seniors, the employee says. “Their roof is being covered up by a tarp because it’s been blown off by a storm, and they can’t get their grant money to get their roof fixed until compliance reviews are done,” they say. Former coworkers would “basically hound the guy to get it done. It wasn’t efficient.”

Risks of possible crop disease outbreaks

The USDA also invests heavily in preventing diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply. 

But the department fired employees working to address the bird flu that’s contributing to skyrocketing egg prices, according to NBC News. The USDA said it was trying to rehire them.

Matthew Moscou worked at a lab in Minnesota, where he helped monitor diseases that could wipe out wheat production in the U.S. He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now, he says. 

“They’ve destroyed the institution,” he says.

Without labs like this, crop diseases, such as wheat-killing stem rust, could flourish, he says. 

“Either we’re going to have to rethink how we’re doing this whole thing, or we’re going to have a significant collapse in the long run,” Moscou says. “This current push has really cut us off at the knees.”

Moscou has since been reinstated, at least temporarily, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Sky ChaddeMore by this author →

Sky Chadde has covered the agriculture industry for Investigate Midwest since 2019 and spent much of 2020 focused on the crisis of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants, which included collecting and analyzing data on case counts. He also served as the newsroom's first managing editor.