Department of Agriculture

Gavin Kliger detailed from OPM to USDA

Gavin Kliger is granted basic access to 2 systems at USDA.

Elias Hernandez, the associate administrator for the Office of Veterans Business Development at SBA, emails the director of the National Finance Center (NFC) asking for immediate admin access to the mainframe for “all SBA Personnel Office Identifiers (POIs)”. NFC is a shared service from USDA that handles payroll for roughly 150,000 federal employees across 170 agencies including the SBA.

A large contingent of DOGE staff from multiple agencies meet at GSA HQ. It is unclear if they are representing their specific agencies or if this is a DOGE all-hands gathering. It is also unclear how many DOGE staffers in GSA are in attendance.

Michael Cole starts as Senior Advisor on Government Efficiency at USDA.

Michael Cole is granted basic access to 2 systems at USDA.

Representing DOGE and OPM, Noah Peters finalizes mass layoffs at the USDA just before Secretary Rollins is to be sworn in that evening. When asked later by Congress about the layoffs, she deflects and says it happened before she started.

In a speech, the Secretary of Agriculture says DOGE has been at the agency for “a few weeks” already.

“Does the following blurb encapsulate what Gavin is looking for?” is what a USDA policy lead writes to the agency’s chief financial officer about proposed agency-wide guidance to find and report grants that related to climate change. She then emailed to Gavin for his direct approval.

In emails with USDA staff to identify climate-related terms to look for and cancel in grants, Gavin Kliger also alludes to DOGE developing LLM models that would analyze grant descriptions in response to a USDA staffer suggestion to use AI more.

USDA Secretary Rollins posts a photo of a grant-cancellation session on the @DOGE_USDA account. None of the participants are identified, but it looks like Gavin Kliger is in the picture.

The Chief Human Capital Office of the Department of Agriculture testifies to Congress that OPM ordered the firing of all probationary federal employees at the agency.

Jeremy Lichtman starts as Advisor on Government Efficiency at USDA.

Michael Cole promoted to Senior Team Leader on Government Efficiency at USDA

Jordan Wick detailed from DOGE to USDA

Timothy Ronan starts as Special Advisor at USDA.

Federal staff at the USDA are sent an email offering them another chance to do a deferred resignation if they enroll within the next week or so from this date.

Samuel Berry starts as Special Advisor at USDA.

In a response to a FOIA request from American Oversight, the USDA returns a list of known DOGE members at the agency at the time.

Luke Farritor uses his admin access to lock out all government officials at multiple agencies from using grants.gov to issue new grants. Instead, all grants must now be sent to a new email address which will be reviewed by DOGE staffers before grants can be posted.

Joshua Fox detailed from DOGE to USDA

Akash Bobba detailed from SSA to USDA

A letter is sent to all USDA staff informing them that DOGE staffers would be reviewing all farm loans above $500,000 as well as loans of any size to “formal entities,” which could mean everything from small farms to large corporations. Loans are already reviewed by highly qualified and experienced loan officers at the USDA.

Jordan Wick is granted elevated access to NPS at USDA.

Jordan Wick is granted high-level access to the National Payment Service (NPS) system, which would allow him to see and alter payments or even cancel loans to farmers and other agricultural producers. Concerningly, his activities are not logged or recorded.

USDA reports to Congress that 15,000 of its employees (15% of its workforce) have taken one of the two deferred resignation programs

The Department of Agriculture sends a letter to the state directors of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program citing EO 14243 which grants DOGE unfettered access to federal and state data and demanding they turn over data on recipients dating back to 2020-01-01 or face consequences.

Jeremy Lichtman emails USDA officials to inform them that GSA (likely Josh Gruenbaum) had directed them to review several agency grants for termination. These terminations were reportedly “awaiting final greenlight from the White House.”

Conor Fennessy detailed from Ed. to USDA

Samuel Berry converted to permanent paid position as Senior Advisor on Government Efficiency at USDA

Over 200 loan recipients have their birth date voided and their accounts closed in the National Payment Service (NPS) system. This action was likely taken by Jordan Wick in response to discovering that some number of loan recipients had “1900” as their birth years (DOGE presumed similar circumstances at SSA indicated fraud when it was really issues with data entry). It is possible that this action was a pretext for closing other accounts.

In an email to agency partners, the operators of grants.gov declare that the revised mechanism added in April that routed all Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) through a DOGE email address has been reversed. Instead, agencies are to return to using the tool like that did previously. This doesn’t necessarily mean that DOGE or political appointees will not be reviewing grants, but they have no longer locked other users out of the system.

A USDA staffer (and USDA spokesperson later confirms) that the DOGE team in the agency is now referred to as the USDA Efficiency Team or “E Team.”

A USDA employee tells Wired that they have been told to refer to the DOGE team at the agency as the USDA Digital Service instead.

Despite claims by USDA leadership that they had met 99% of their hiring goals, more than 4500 (approximately 27%) firefighting jobs in the US Forest Service are unfulled, according to an internal staffing tool at the agency. This rough assessment is supported by anecdotal accounts of firefighting offices in states facing a challenging year for forest fires.

Michael Cole leaves role as Senior Team Leader on Government Efficiency at USDA (exits govt. service)

Samuel Berry promoted to Chief Information Officer at USDA

In an email to all staff, USDA announces that the existing Chief Information Officer for the agency will now be moved to a new role named Chief Innovation Officer and that DOGE team member Samuel Berry will be the next CIO for the agency.

An advocacy group, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, releases a report that notes the US Forest Service is 38% behind its usual pace in forest-thinning and other preventative measures. The group directly blames DOGE for all of its staff-reduction and cost-cutting efforts.

Posting from her personal account on X, the USDA Secretary asserts that the agency had uncovered massive fraud in the personal data of SNAP recipients that it had collected from 27 cooperating states. In an appearance on FOX News, she claims the administration had eliminated 700,000 people from SNAP benefits and had arrested 118 people. She provided no other details to verify her claims.

Months after DOGE first illegally fired probationary employees, the National Forest Service continues to endure poor morale and disruptions to service due to low staffing numbers

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins threatens to withhold SNAP aid from all states currently engaged in litigation against the data sharing orders from USDA.

Jeremy Lichtman leaves role as Advisor on Government Efficiency at USDA (exits govt. service)