Courts reverse DOGE’s USDA staff cuts
The AP and other news outlets reported that two judges handed down judgments to re-instate laid off employees including USDA staffers. “In San Francisco, U.S. District Judge William Alsup found Thursday morning that terminations across six agencies were directed by the Office of Personnel Management and an acting director, Charles Ezell, who lacked the authority to do so,” said the AP story.
“In Baltimore, U.S. District Judge James Bredar found that the administration did not follow laws set out for large-scale layoffs, including 60 days’ advance notice. Bredar, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ordered the firings temporarily halted and the workforce returned to the status quo before the layoffs began,” reported AP.
The AP story said “Alsup’s order tells the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer job reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14. He also directed the departments to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the agencies complied with his order as to each person.”
Background – USDA layoffs
President Donald Trump signed an executive in late January that required all federal employees to report to the office full-time. This came almost five years after COVID sent employees home and working remotely became commonplace. While COVID didn’t create remote positions, it made it clear that many workers could adequately function out of office. Mandating that government employees report to their office five days a week proved impossible for some individuals who no longer lived in the area where they were hired. It appeared to be a strategic move by the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, who made sure the nation knew his plans were hyper focused on reducing the labor force of the federal government.
Musk determined that reducing the labor force was the most efficient way to reduce government spending. According to the Office of Management and Budget, an estimated 228,000 federal civilian employees had fully remote positions.That’s about 10 percent of the total federal labor force. Improving efficiency and trimming the fat is the simplified way of explaining the intended function of the DOGE.
Federal Employees
According to USA Today, approximately 3,400 probationary workers under the Department of Agriculture umbrella have been laid off so far. An estimated 92,000 people work under this department’s heading but it’s only the ninth largest federal government employer. The top spot goes to the Department of Veterans Affairs which employs over 486,000 people. “Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” said Vice President of Public Policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, Sam Kieffer. “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.” The long-lasting ripple effects of this situation will likely hit America’s most vulnerable populations the hardest. It’s impossible to know if the ramifications will be positive or negative but it’s safe to say that elected officials are earning their keep this year. “We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars, 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,” Kieffer added.
Cathy Harris, the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a week ago ruled that the recent dismissals of more than 5,600 probationary employees may have violated federal laws and procedures for carrying out layoffs, said Politico. The ruling blocks the USDA from implementing the firings for 45 days while the merit systems board continues to review the issue, said the Politico story.
But 45 days isn’t very long in the big picture.
“I wasn’t concerned about my job until I got an email asking me to list the five things that I had accomplished that week,” said a 10-year employee of the South Dakota Farm Service Agency (FSA) who wishes to remain anonymous. “The state office held a conference call, and it was basically decided that we didn’t need to reply to that email. We did, however, begin tracking our activity through a program. I had to log everything I was doing in 15-minute increments for my nine-hour workday.” If the DOGE wants to improve efficiency, they’re missing the mark. Discussions around the topic assume that the DOGE is searching for employees who are no longer essential in their role and the ones who truly do not exist.
Lack of clear communication is likely contributing to the turmoil and chaos of the current circumstances. “Nobody seems to know anything, it took almost two weeks to get my off-boarding paperwork figured out,” said BreAnn Nelson who was only three months into her position as a soil conservation technician with the National Research Conservation Service in Bison, South Dakota, when she was let go. “It doesn’t seem like anyone knows what’s going on. The higher ups don’t even have a list of people who were terminated in their state.” The most difficult aspect of the termination was that Nelson could not find anyone who could tell her if she still had insurance coverage while she looked for a new job. This was important because she’s a mom of twins and one of them has very specific medical needs. “I don’t want to say that we’re just a number to them but that’s definitely the way I feel going through all this,” she added.
With a population of only 303, the rural community of Bison, South Dakota, is sustained by the farmers and ranchers in the area. That NRCS office only had four employees until February 14 when a mass email was sent out. “We thought we had a steady job and then it was ripped away in one second through an email,” Nelson said. “We were there to help producers improve their operations and then our lives got turned upside down. Now there are only two people left to do the job of four and I think that’s going to hurt the producers the most.” The body of the email told Nelson, and thousands of others just like her, that termination was based on performance. Only three months into her position, Nelson had yet to reach her quarterly review. Working for a government agency, like any entity, has its benefits and drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is the probationary period every employee endures. Generally, the probationary period is 12 months, but some agencies differ on this length. It didn’t matter if an employee was on day 364 of their probationary period, on February 14, they received a termination email just the same.
Government Funding
Some might be surprised to learn that government funding is also the backbone of innovation and research in the U.S. Roughly 40 percent of all research conducted in the nation is, in some shape or form, funded by the government. Many land grant universities are the locale for this type of research which is responsible for groundbreaking discoveries. Research and development drive innovation and if those budgets are cut too far, the U.S. will no longer be on the cutting edge of anything. “I don’t think people realize how much research the government is funding,” said Sam Howe Catron who received a post-doctoral fellowship from the USDA for her research on the bovine microbiome and possibly developing a probiotic to prevent bovine respiratory disease. “We’re still in the very beginning stages of research; we haven’t been able to do any animal studies yet which is why the government funding is so important because there is no guaranteed return on investment,” Catron said. “In the early stages of a project like this, there’s no return on investment and so companies don’t want to get involved until there’s enough data to show that they could have a product on the market and make their money back some day.”
When Catron graduated from Oklahoma State University in 2019, she applied for an assistantship at the University of Arkansas to pursue a PhD in microbiology. “My boss, a professor here, applied for two USDA grants which provided a set amount of money to conduct research and part of that money is set aside to pay graduate students,” Catron explained. “Last spring I applied for this post-doctoral fellowship through the USDA so I could continue this research. It lasts for two years and it’s a very specific amount of money for my salary and the project itself.” As of mid-March, Catron still had funding for her salary and project. While nothing specific to Catron or her project has happened to make her think her funding will get pulled, a lot of projects are crashing around her in the research community. “I’ve heard of people who had a grant and then their funding got paused because something happened at the agency it came through,” Catron said. “When a branch of government initiates a spending freeze, that can affect student salaries.”
Social media buzz has made it abundantly clear to Catron that most people don’t understand how important government funded research is for the general population. “The ultimate goal of most research projects is to get a product on the market and back into the hands of the taxpayers who funded it in the first place,” Catron said. “Eventually, when this product is on the market, you’ll buy it with a company logo on it, but it started at a university where most non-biased, government funded research begins.” If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then the way to optimal cattle health is through the microbiome. As the most common and costly disease in the entire cattle industry, BRD research should be top of mind for most agricultural pharmaceutical companies. Working with the university’s Technology Transfer Office, Catron is looking for a company to buy the license for the product her research will likely create. “The goal is to reduce our reliance on antimicrobials and improve cattle health which will naturally increase profitability,” she said. The significance of Catron’s research cannot be emphasized enough as it will positively affect all 86.7 million head of cattle in the U.S. “I understand that a lot of people don’t understand what scientists do and all the work that goes into it, but it’s disheartening when people don’t see the value of government funded research,” Catron said.
