Update: An independent federal agency on March 5 ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate close to 6,000 employees fired since Feb. 13, finding reasonable grounds to believe the agency acted illegally in terminating them.
Original story:
Jeannie Klein-Gordon’s path to landing a job as a plant researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture took her from coast to coast and more than a decade.
The job lasted for a little more than a year.
Klein-Gordon grew up on a dairy farm in Oregon. During her undergraduate years at Oregon State, she became interested in plant pathology – or the study of plant diseases – and spent time assisting with research at the USDA Agricultural Research Services.
“I really appreciated the environment there,” Klein-Gordon said of working at ARS during her undergrad years. “Everybody was super nice, very passionate about science and agriculture and helping growers.”
Then it was onto five years of doctoral work at the University of Florida, before moving to Michigan State University for two shorter post-doctoral stints.
From there, she applied to a position as a research plant pathologist at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois — commonly called the Ag Lab.
“I spent 11 and a half years getting to this position, and I got the position of my dreams,” said Klein-Gordon. “This is my dream job.”
After moving her family from Michigan to Peoria in December 2023, she set to work on research projects.
She recently focused on Red Crown Rot — a disease that appeared in Illinois in 2018 and presents a significant threat to the state’s multibillion-dollar soybean industry. The team’s experiments looked to develop products for farmers to fight the disease.
That ended Thursday, Feb. 13.
Klein-Gordon’s employment was terminated by email at 10:05 p.m. She was 15 months into a standard three-year probationary period for government scientists.
Slashing USDA’s workforce
Klein-Gordon wasn’t alone.
At the USDA’s National Centers for Animal Health in Ames, Iowa, dozens of researchers and other employees lost their jobs.
In Clay Center, Nebraska, at least 17 people at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center were terminated.
About a dozen employees were let go at the newly-built National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, according to a local newspaper in Manhattan, Kansas.
The total number of layoffs across the USDA is unknown.
In response to questions from the reporter regarding the scope of the mass layoffs and the estimated cost savings, the USDA sent a statement. It emphasized that newly-confirmed Secretary Brooke Rollins supports President Trump’s measures to trim the federal workforce:
“Secretary Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people,” the statement said. “We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.”
In the days following the terminations, the USDA scrambled to hire back employees who deal with the government’s response to bird flu.
"I think it's pretty clear that the cuts have been indiscriminate and not particularly well planned out,” said Brian Depew, the executive director for the Center for Rural Affairs.
The non-profit, based in Nebraska, advocates for policies that help rural communities, as well as lending financial support to projects throughout the region.
Depew said through the center’s work, he had heard of significant cuts to local staff in the USDA’s Rural Development Office and the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nebraska. (Similar cuts have been reported in other states, including Iowa and Oklahoma.)
“These are individuals that help communities and producers and individuals navigate federal grant programs and make sure that they're able to get resources to the field,” he said.
Depew said with the significant workforce loss, he expects services to rural communities and farmers will suffer.
Target on probationary employees
The layoffs at USDA were just one part of an executive order issued Feb. 11 called the “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) Workforce Optimization Initiative.” It outlined changes to create a “critical transformation of the Federal Bureaucracy.”
Within days of the order, mass layoffs also took place at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. Some former employees have referred to it as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Reports show the terminations mainly focused on probationary employees, which includes recent hires and those promoted or moved to new positions.
That was also true at USDA, according to the statement from the agency:
“As part of this effort, USDA has released individuals in their probationary period of employment,” the statement said. “Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
Ethan Roberts is union president of the Local 3247 American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 80 employees at the Ag Lab in Peoria. He said probationary employees are more vulnerable.
“[Probationary employees] do not have very many legal protections or appeal protections as to whether or not they can be terminated,” he said. “They can’t be terminated without cause, but their protections are not the same as a permanent government employee.”
Still, Roberts said laying off probationary employees as a whole circumvents the required processes for a governmental workforce reduction – a months-long, complex undertaking.
The AFGE, along with several other unions that represent federal employees, filed suit on Feb. 19 against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The suit, filed in California, claims the OPM acted unlawfully by directing federal agencies to use standardized termination notices claiming employees had performance issues.
‘Slap in the face’
The letter that probationary employees at the Ag Lab in Peoria received on the evening of Feb. 13 read in part: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”
Roberts said the notifications came from the Research, Economics and Education Division, several rungs up the organizational ladder of the USDA. He doubts whether the people sending the emails could have any clear picture of the performance of the employees they were dismissing.
Bri Walker held an administrative position at the Ag Lab and was just two months away from completing her probationary period.
“All of my performance reviews were — we have a binary system, so it’s either fully successful or not,” said Walker. “All of my performance reviews were fully successful, and I received two monetary awards for my performance in my first eight months.”
The day after losing their jobs, employees were given access to the building to clean out their things and say goodbye. Walker said she frantically completed work and uploaded information for her co-workers.
“My biggest concern, honestly, was just the people who are getting left behind and stuck with even more work,” she said. “Our building was already operating on shortages of staff from the previous Trump administration.”
It’s unclear exactly how many employees lost their jobs at the Ag Lab. Roberts knows of 12 union employees and approximately 20 total employees — more than 10% of 168 staff employed at the Peoria facility before layoffs began.
The facility, notable for discovering how to mass produce penicillin, is involved in making corn more disease resistant, improving food quality and value and researching the impact of cover crops on overall crop health.
Roberts said the layoffs will impact that work.
“It’s devastating because these were all new employees. We’re basically losing our future here.” he said. “This was everybody that was replacing retirees. This was everybody starting new projects. It has absolutely destroyed morale here.”
Jeannie Klein-Gordon was filling a role that had been vacated by a retiree five years ago. She was preparing to start an experiment when she was laid off.
Klein-Gordon said it was important that her work help farmers. Now, she’s unsure what will happen to it.
“I put what I felt was my heart and soul into my job and serving stakeholders, serving our growers and their best interests and their needs,” she said, “and it is a slap in the face to be treated this way.”
There are still a lot of unknowns for Klein-Gordon. She isn’t certain when her benefits end, where her unemployment paperwork is, or what pay period her last check will cover.
There are also difficult decisions to be made for her and her family.
“We built a house here,” Klein-Gordon said. “We now have to think about, what do we want to do? Do we want to stay here?”
Harvest Public Media reporter Kate Grumke contributed reporting for this story.
WCBU in Peoria, a Harvest associate partner, published a local version of this story on Feb. 19.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.