Washington D.C. is the capital of a vast federal bureaucracy, much of it useless, and completely out of touch with the people it rules over.
The USDA is one of the best examples. How much non-drug agriculture happens in D.C.? Not a lot.
So the Trump admin is proposing to move a bunch of USDA functions to farm country.
USDA announced on Thursday that the Food Safety and Inspection Service will move about two-thirds of its D.C. metro area workforce out of the region to relocate them to “mission-critical locations,” including new facilities in Iowa and Georgia.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement that this reorganization ensures FSIS “is positioned where it can best support American agriculture and protect public health.”
“These changes reflect our commitment to modernizing the department while staying focused on delivering results for the American people,” Rollins said.
Last year, USDA said it would relocate more than half of its DC-based workforce to five hubs across the country — Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. More than 2,000 USDA employees in the D.C. area will be asked to relocate. In February, the USDA announced plans to sell one of its D.C. headquarters buildings.
The Forest Service is planning to move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The local bureaucrats and their selected representatives are taking this about as well as expected.
Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents Maryland’s 4th District which includes BARC, said lawmakers are disappointed by the decision involving the Beltsville facility, which potentially impacts several hundred people.
He said the state’s congressional delegation believes the action is illegal and lawmakers are willing to go to court if necessary to challenge it.
“We don’t understand the logic behind the move,” he told WTOP. “Certainly, from a scientific standpoint, you’re disrupting decades of research that’s being done and can’t be replicated.”
Democratic lawmakers from Maryland issued a statement in support of the Beltsville center and its mission.
The lawmakers said “it will only end up wasting taxpayer dollars while jeopardizing the success of farmers across the country.”
The ‘logic’ of the move is that it moves the USDA closer to where farmers actually are.
But Maryland Dems are preparing to sue and I’m sure they’ll find a friendly Obama or Biden judge who will invoke the APA to explain why, for the hundredth time, a freely elected administration can’t be allowed to do anything Democrats don’t like.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Daniel became CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2025.
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