The US Department of Agriculture is moving forward with plans to relocate thousands of staff from Washington, DC, to five hubs nationwide despite pushback from Congress that warns of a “brain drain,” and an ongoing lawsuit to block the reorganization on the grounds that it is a “ruse for forcing employees to quit.”
The agency notified Food Safety and Inspection Service employees in June that they had until June 30 to decide whether they wanted to keep their jobs and relocate by the end of September or be “involuntarily separated” and potentially accept severance pay.
USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture employees also received notifications in June, and employees under the agency’s Natural Resources Conservation Service should receive relocation notifications by the end of July or mid-August depending on where they work, according to media reports.
The notifications are part of a plan unveiled a year ago by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who said the reorganization would bring USDA closer to the people it serves while also providing a more affordable cost of living for USDA, which she described at the time as “bloated, expensive and unsustainable.”
The plan includes moving more than half of the 4,600 positions currently in the Washington region to Raleigh, NC; Kansas City, Mo.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Fort Collins, Colo.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. The agency’s goal is to keep no more than 2,000 employees in the Washington region.
In late April, the USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services clarified that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will move to Indianapolis, Ind.; the Child Nutrition Programs will relocate to Dallas, Texas; the Supplemental Nutrition and Safety Programs will be relocated to Kansas City, Mo.; and research programs will be relocated to Raleigh, NC.
The reorganization was greeted by immediate pushback, including from House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig, D-Minn., who said it risks a “massive brain drain and significant loss of productivity,” and public safety groups, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which described it as an “assault on the federal workforce” that will “make Americans hungrier and sicker.”
USDA’s Food and Nutrition Administration counters on its website that “the reorganization will not just maintain institutional knowledge but also expand it through increased collaboration and coordination” by shifting to a hub-based structure that “will break down current regional silos and allow for greater knowledge sharing.”
It also characterized as a “myth” the concern that the reorganization is a way to shrink the workforce, would disrupt services or result in lost institutional knowledge.
“The reorganization does not include any layoffs,” the website notes. It explains: “While the reorganization does include relocations, as aligned with Secretary Rollins’ goal of bringing USDA closer to the people it serves, there is a role for all existing employees in the new organizational structure.”
USDA also assures on the website that “the reorganization is being implemented intentionally, via a phased approach to ensure continuity. No programs will be eliminated as part of this reorganization, nor will there be a disruption in service in any of the existing 16 nutrition assistance programs.”
Is the reorganization a ‘ruse’ to force employees with different political views out?
A coalition of current and former USDA employees, nonprofits and local governments are not convinced about the agency’s integrity, and are suing to stop it from relocating employees out of Washington.
“The actions of this Administration to reorganize USDA are a ruse for forcing employees to quit because they work on programs – like feeding low-income women and children, protecting our forests, or scientific research – that this Administration opposes for political reasons. That is unlawful. Congress, not the President, still determines the mission and functions of federal agencies created by statute, and Congress has repeatedly drawn the line to say no to workforce reductions,” said Corinne Johnson, a partner with Altshuler Berzon, which is representing the case along with Democracy Forward, Protect Democracy, Public Rights Project, and Democracy Defenders Fund, and counsel for local governments.
This is equivalent to ‘5 million years of expertise’ that have been lost in 18 months.
Toby Cain, Civil Service Strong
Congress did not authorize the reorganization through the fiscal 2026 budget sand directed USDA not to restructure or downsize staff without further congressional approval, according to the plaintiffs.
“The administration is doing it anyway. That is why so many of the partners here today, including Democracy Forward, have taken the administration to court,” said Toby Cain, chief of staff at the Risk Management Agency in the Biden administration, who is now associated with Civil Service Strong, a group set up by Democracy Forward to defend the civil service.
She argued during a briefing last Thursday that “the Trump administration is pursuing the major reorganization of USDA alongside workforce reduction with the express goal of reducing the agency’s workforce by at least 23%.”
She explained that many employees would leave USDA – opting not to uproot their lives and those of their families.
“Nearly one in four of the people who keep this department running will be gone,” she said.
“That is in addition to the 17% of staff who have already left since January 2025, with some agencies – like the Food and Nutrition Administration – having lost almost 30% of their workforce already,” she added.
This is equivalent to “5 million years of expertise” that have been lost in 18 months, she said.
According to staff estimates, she said, the workforce reductions could reach 80% of the Food and Nutrition Administration as the reorganization progresses.
She also noted that there already are more than 2,300 USDA offices nationwide with one in almost every county, and roughly 90% of USDA employees already live outside the nation’s capital. The argument seems to counter Rollins’ claim that the reorg is necessary to bring USDA staff close to the people they serve.
How deep will cuts be?
The cuts to USDA staff will not be as deep as those outlined originally and they will not be done through the organization, USDA Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administration Mary Pletcher Rice said in a court document filed last Friday.
“The Department’s Agency Reduction in Force and Reorganization Plans (“ARRP”) submitted to OPM and OMB in March and April 2025 are not the Department’s reorganization plan and do not reflect USDA’s current plans. The most accurate and up-to-date reorganization plans are set forth in the notifications that USDA has provided to Congress. The Congressional notifications demonstrate that the agency’s plans are fundamentally different than what was originally contemplated by the ARRPs, which assumed further reductions of USDA’s workforce beyond the reductions due to the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP),” she testified.
USDA has not conducted any reductions in force, and USDA has no current plans to conduct any reductions in force across the Department.
Mary Pletcher Rice, USDA Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administration
She added that the fiscal year 2026 annual staffing plan actually forecasts “a modest increase in staffing, with 15,923 employees to be hired in FY 2026 as opposed to any further decreases in staffing.”
She acknowledged that some of these may replace “retirements and limited voluntary early departures.”
She also stressed that the reorganization goes beyond “simply developing a plan to relocate personnel outside the National Capital Region.”
Rather, she said, it is an attempt to ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities.
“Many positions added in prior years were funded through temporary, nonrecurring sources – primarily the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – USDA could not sustain those staffing levels once that supplemental funding diminished. As a result, the Department deployed voluntary separation mechanisms rather than involuntary separations to ensure staffing levels aligned with budgetary resources. This reduction was achieved through voluntary retirements and resignations, voluntary movement of employees to other federal agencies, and the Deferred Resignation Program, through which over 15,000 employees departed the Department. Any further right-sizing will be completed through the use of Voluntary Early Retirement Authority and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments,” she said.
“USDA has not conducted any reductions in force, and USDA has no current plans to conduct any reductions in force across the Department,” she emphasized.
“Instead, any workforce adjustments needed will continue to rely on voluntary programs designed to support employees while ensuring the Department operates within sustainable, long-term funding levels,” she explained.
She reiterated: “All current USDA employees will have a position in the department.”
Next steps
Even as the agency issues relocation notices and employees face tight deadlines to decide whether to relocate or voluntarily leave USDA, the legal status of the reorganization remains unclear.
The US District Court for the Northern District of California is slated to hold a hearing Sept. 1 on whether to block or temporarily pause the reorganization.
