Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 6, 2025.
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Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
In the testimony of Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins confirmed that the American department of agriculture now sought to fill critical positions, after agreeing to pay more than 15,000 wages and benefits of employees until September in exchange for their resignations.
“We are actively looking for and recruiting to fill the positions integrated into the efforts and the main front lines,” Rollins told members of the Senate Credit Committee on Tuesday.
The USDA is one of the agencies that have invited employees twice to leave their jobs through the delayed resignation program – once at the end of January, when the agreement was presented to almost all of the federal workforce, and another short window in April. The Trump administration has relied heavily on the delayed resignation program while it seeks to considerably reduce the federal workforce.
But the need to provide positions so shortly after leaving people to leave raised questions, including Senator Patty Murray from Washington, the best democrat of the Senate credits committee.
“So you let people leave and are looking for new people to fill the positions in which they had experience?” Asked Murray.
“We have these discussions at the moment,” replied Rollins, while noting that 15,000 employees represent less than 15% of the USDA workforce and that the ministry loses 8,000 to 10,000 employees each year by attrition.
However, Rollins invited some of those who took the delayed resignation offer to return.
“If they want to come back, and if they were in a key position, we would like to have this conversation,” she told legislators.
Earlier, NPR reported that one day after the employees of the Inspection Service on the Health of Animals and Plants of the USDA (APHIS) had left their job through the delayed resignation program, human resources sent an email to remaining employees offering them the possibility of applying for 73 open positions, including those newly vacant.
An employee who had concluded the delayed resignation agreement was furious to learn that his job was on this list. They did not want to resign from their work, but felt forced to do so after repeated warnings of mass license to come. The employee asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals for having spoken with the media while being on paid administrative leave.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Rollins admitted that certain errors may have been made along the way, but insisted that the people occupying key positions were not accepted in the second round of the delayed resignation program.
“We are very intentionally approaching this. Have we done perfectly? No. Any type of scale change and the big efforts to realize essentially an entire government agency is difficult,” she said. “We work every day to resolve for many things, and I think we are making a lot of very good progress.”
On Wednesday, Rollins went further, denying that anyone at Aphis was authorized to accept the resignation of resignation, or DRP, in April.
“In the last round, we have not accepted any DRP of anyone in offices (agricultural service agency) or aphis offices or state veterinarians,” said Rollins during a budget of the Credit Commission of the Chamber.
His assertion is in contradiction with another account of an aphis employee whose separation agreement was seen by NPR. NPR has agreed not to appoint this employee because he also fears reprisals for having spoken with the media during his paid administrative holidays.
He described seeing the stressed IT staff dealing with lots of laptops and mobile phones given by those who left the government last Wednesday. He added his to the battery.
Armando Rosaro-Lebron, vice-president of the National Association of Agriculture of Employees, which represents employees of the Protective and quarantine of Aphis plants, believes that several hundred of its members of the negotiation unit could have accepted the delayed resignation offer in April.
The USDA did not immediately answer NPR questions about the gap between the testimony of Rollins and the accounts of these employees.
