Federal Agency
Appears in 9 stories · Last updated Nov 9, 2026
Reorganization blocked by court injunction
The Agriculture Department has cut its workforce by about 20% since December 2024, from 91,000 employees to 73,000. It also wants to move about half its Washington-area staff to offices around the country.
Updated 2 days ago
Plan blocked; asking judge to lift stay
won a court-ordered pause this week It also bars moving employees outside their local commuting area and enforcing relocation letters across eight department components, including the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland. In early November, USDA asked the judge to lift that pause, saying it "significantly hinders" operations across the department.
Updated 5 days ago
Administers SNAP and publishes the participation data
More than five million people lost food stamp benefits in the year after the One Big Beautiful Act took effect in July 2025. USDA data shows enrollment fell from 41.6 million to 36.5 million by June 2026, a 13% drop. State data shows the decline continuing: Texas had 2.8 million enrolled in September 2026, down 20.8% from a year earlier.
Updated Oct 27
Announced and will administer the initiative
The U.S. national seed collection holds more than 600,000 samples across 16,000 species, stored in 22 repositories. About 10% of that material has been genetically described in any detail.
Updated Oct 26
Confirms export sales to China in daily announcements
Chinese state-owned trading firms booked 10 to 13 more Panamax cargoes of US soybeans on Wednesday night, the second large purchase this week and the first since President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping met in September. The two batches total 18 to 23 cargoes, roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million metric tons, shipping between December and March.
Updated Oct 19
As of September 2026: Administers SNAP and school meal programs
Miami-Dade, the third-largest school district in the country, stopped serving free breakfast and lunch to all of its 300,000 students this fall. Only 121 of its 500-plus schools still qualify for the federal program that pays for those meals.
Updated Sep 6
As of May 2026: Active
In 1900, 41 percent of Americans worked on farms; today, fewer than 2 percent do—yet agricultural output has more than tripled. Tractors, combine harvesters, and chemical fertilizers triggered the largest peacetime migration in American history, sending tens of millions from fields to factories and reshaping the nation's economy, culture, and landscape.
Updated May 22
As of May 2026: Suspended $129 million in federal awards to Minnesota on January 10, 2026
On January 5, 2026, Governor Tim Walz announced he would drop his bid for a third term. The reversal came just two days before a contentious January 7 House Oversight Committee hearing where Republican state lawmakers testified that Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison ignored widespread fraud and silenced whistleblowers.
Updated May 21
As of May 2026: Designs and administers farm aid and trade mitigation programs
Since 2018, U.S. farmers have been caught in Trump-era tariff battles—first the U.S.–China trade war, now tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico, and others. To counter lost exports and depressed prices, the Trump administrations funded large farm aid through the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corporation: $12 billion in 2018, $16 billion in 2019.
Updated May 10
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