Sierra Club Statement on the Trump Administration’s Reckless Reorganization of USDA

The Trump administration has announced a controversial reorganization of a critical federal agency.

In an announcement, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the administration would move around 2,600 employees out of the department’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and into five regional hubs located in Fort Collins, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Salt Lake City; and Raleigh, North Carolina. The administration is also planning on shuttering research facilities and eliminating the U.S. Forest Service’s nine regional offices.

The move has received pushback from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who objected to the administration’s decision not to inform Congress of its plans before the announcement. The announcement is another blow to the Department of Agriculture, which has been significantly affected by budget and staffing cuts stretching back to the “fork in the road” memo issued by DOGE. Some estimates calculate the department could lose nearly one-third of its staff under Trump’s proposed FY26 budget, including nearly 90 percent of wildland fire management staff and 70 percent of national forest system staff.

In response, Alex Craven, Sierra Club’s forest campaign manager, released the following statement:

“This isn’t a reorganization – it’s the continued dismantling of an essential department. This administration’s approach since January has been ‘fire first, ask questions later,’ and the U.S. Forest Service has suffered some of the worst consequences. The more the agency is cut, the harder it is for them to fulfill their critical responsibilities, and the easier it is for Donald Trump to claim it’s broken and pursue his ultimate agenda – privatization.”