President Donald Trump certainly hasn’t done Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins any favors — his policies have made her job measurably harder — but that’s nothing compared to the damage done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to a new report.
According to a report from CNN, Rollins is widely regarded as one of the more prepared members of Trump’s Cabinet, but “things have only gotten worse” since she took over. The native Texan has been saddled with shielding farmers and ranchers from “cascading crises” since taking the helm at USDA in February 2025, when the sector was already reeling.
“Bird flu was ravaging poultry flocks, spreading through dairy herds and driving up egg prices,” the report stated. “The flesh-eating screwworm livestock parasite, which had been eradicated from the US decades ago, was creeping north through Mexico. And the agency charged with managing those threats was bracing for budget and staffing upheaval as DOGE cuts began thinning its ranks of tens of thousands of employees.”
Sources told CNN her department is “under severe strain from DOGE-driven cuts” and that there has been “inconsistent communication with stakeholders.”
Rollins “came under fire” over delays building a facility needed to combat the screwworm outbreak. Critics claim “time was lost while she entertained a proposal from a politically connected construction contractor — time some insiders now say made the outbreak harder to manage”. Former USDA officials have pushed back on her characterization of the response she inherited, with one telling Agri-Pulse: “There was a lot being done, and the reality is that when the administration changed, we actually took some steps backwards.”
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