USDA is moving forward with various reorgs despite legal questions and bipartisan concerns

The Agriculture Department told lawmakers on Thursday it is moving forward with various restructurings despite some bipartisan skepticism over the legality and wisdom of those moves.

The overall USDA reorganization will help streamline a “runaway bureaucracy,” Secretary Brooke Rollins said in her prepared testimony before the House Appropriations Committee. The department is already selling buildings and relocating the headquarters of some of its components, she and other officials said Thursday, despite Congress placing roadblocks on various aspects of those changes.

In a separate hearing, for example, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said the Trump administration is taking steps to prepare to move all wildland firefighters into a new centralized agency within the Interior Department. Congress blocked that shift from proceeding until a third party assesses the potential change. Schultz said USFS is in the process of contracting out and hopes to complete this fall, but in the meantime is getting ready for the offloading of its firefighting responsibilities. 

“There’s a lot of progress we can make before the study is done,” Schultz said. Interior has already stood up the U.S. Wildland Fire Service. 

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who chaired the USFS appropriations hearing, said he had reservations about the plan. 

“This might be the best idea since sliced bread, I don’t know,” Simpson said. “But there are just a whole bunch of questions I need answered.”

USFS, meanwhile, recently announced a reorganization of its own. It will shift around 260 employees to its new headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, and move around a to-be-determined number of employees in soon-to-be-shuttered regional offices. The reshaping of the agency is part of a larger USDA reorganization that will see 2,600 employees shifted from the capital region into new regional hubs around the country. 

USDA’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill blocked the department from reorganizing or relocating any offices or employees unless Congress authorizes it. Asked about his authority for the changes, Schultz said he consulted with the Office of General Counsel in his agency and was told he could move forward. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, the top Democrat on the Appropriations panel that held the USFS hearing, said she disagreed with that assessment but said attorneys would have to hash it out. 

While Schultz said USFS had “too many people,” he vowed not to lay off any employee as part of the reorganization. Some employees will see their offices close, he said, but the agency will work to find new roles for those staff. 

Pingree said she could not trust Schultz’s word on that as USFS has not yet shared sufficient details on its plan.

“We haven’t seen this organizational chart, so I have no way to know we’re not going to lose a lot of employees, just as we did last year with the misguided [Department of Government Efficiency] effort,” Pingree said. “We’ve lost a lot of expertise and people who were on the ground and knew what they were doing because this has been so poorly handled by this administration.” 

Schultz suggested those details were still fluid and asked the lawmakers to “bear with” USFS, though admitted the agency “will make mistakes.”  

Rollins said in her hearing that the Trump administration inherited a department that was “significantly overstaffed,”—USDA shed more than 15,000 employees last year—though she and Schultz vowed to continue and add workers in several areas. She acknowledged that some county offices of the Farm Service Agency are understaffed, but she is working to address the shortfalls. Still, she said, USDA has rolled out technological advancements that will make it easier to absorb a reduced workforce. 

The department’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal moves it toward a “younger generation” of farmers with more technological literacy and “a system that requires less headcount.” Rollins said she is working on determining how to ensure each of her offices has the right number of people to complement the new technologies. 

Schultz, meanwhile, said USFS has hired around 9,400 firefighters for the upcoming fire season, putting it ahead of its pace for each of the last two years. He plans to have 11,300 on staff before the season begins. The Forest Service shed 5,000 employees last year. 

“We’re gonna be prepared,” he said. 

He also noted his agency will hire another 2,000 seasonal employees this year and already has offers out to 1,600 of them.