Secretary Rollins Takes Bold Action to Stop Wasteful Spending and Optimize USDA to Better Serve American Agriculture
Washington, D.C., Feb. 14, 2025—Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins addressed more than 400 USDA staffers, stakeholders and friends and pledged to bring greater efficiency to USDA to ensure it better serves American farmers, ranchers, and the agriculture community. She reviewed findings from the Department of Government Efficiency and welcomes the opportunity to optimize the USDA workforce and stop wasteful spending.
“I welcome DOGE’s efforts at USDA because we know that its work makes us better, stronger, faster, and more efficient. I will expect full access and transparency to DOGE in the days and weeks to come,” said Secretary Rollins.
Since January 20th, USDA has begun a comprehensive review of contracts, personnel, and employee trainings and DEI programs. In many cases, programs funded by the Biden administration focused on DEI initiatives that are contrary to the values of millions of American taxpayers.
Today, USDA is announcing the first tranche in a series of bold reforms.
Contracts
USDA terminated 78 contracts, which totaled more than $132 million. Additionally, more than 1,000 contracts are currently under review for potential termination. Here are just 10 examples of the frivolous Biden-era contracts USDA recently terminated or proposed procurements that were discontinued before they went into effect:
- Media contracts, including Politico subscriptions: $2.77 million
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Onboarding Specialist: $374,000
- Diversity Dialogue Workshops: $254,000
- International Development for Historically Underrepresented Communities: $298,000
- Brazilian Forest and Gender Consultant: $229,000
- Women and Forest Carbon Initiative Mentorship Program: $121,000
- African and Middle Eastern and Latin America and Caribbean Regions for training, education, and access to professional and economic opportunities for women and increasing their participation in climate change adaptation activities: $91,000
- Central American Gender Assessment Consultant: $29,000
- Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Utility Van: $33,000
- Hawaii conference room rental for 100-person USDA Meeting on Biodiversity: $11,000
Employee Trainings and DEI Programs
On Day One, Secretary Rollins issued a memo to officially rescinded of all Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programs to reprioritize unity, equality, and meritocracy.
To this end, USDA has identified and canceled 948 employee trainings, 758 of which focused on DEI alone. Other canceled trainings include Environmental Justice and gender ideology.
Workforce Optimization
USDA is pursuing an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary, bringing its workforce back to the office, and relocating employees out of the National Capital region into our nation’s heartland to allow our rural communities to flourish.
This is just the beginning. Over the next few days and weeks, Secretary Rollins will have the opportunity to review thousands of contracts, grants, cooperative agreements and spending across the agency to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.
Per the President’s directives, Secretary Rollins will lead a new era of USDA to ensure that it is the most efficient, nimble, and innovative department to serve American Agriculture since it was Established by President Abraham Lincoln.
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USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.
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