Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers Tuesday that she is planning to hire replacements for key roles across USDA after allowing more than 15,000 employees to leave through a Trump administration resignation program.
“Whether it’s [the Farm Service Agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service or] wildlife firefighters … we are actively looking and recruiting to fill those positions that are integral to the efforts,” Rollins said at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the White House’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal for the Agriculture Department. “We’re having those discussions right now.”
Rollins assured lawmakers that “our firefighters are operationally ready for wildfire season” despite the departures of more than 4,000 Forest Service employees, many of whom are trained to battle wildfires.
The resignations are part of two different programs that are the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has pushed for a drastically smaller federal government and to slash hundreds of government programs, grants and contracts. Rollins defended the administration’s staffing decisions and said that USDA loses 8,000 to 10,000 employees a year through attrition. Those positions typically have been backfilled.
