Defend Your Government:
January-July 2025
Paul VanRaden
The
Internal Attack on the United States Government
As recorded
by 1 worker who experienced the following while working in the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s Animal Genomics and Improvement Lab (AGIL) in Beltsville, MD.
January
24, 2025
All AGIL
staff and all federal employees were asked by Human Resources to resign by the
next week. Employees could get paid until September 30 for not working instead
of continuing to work and risk being terminated before September. No AGIL
workers resigned.
February
10
An executive
order terminated all telework by federal workers. Supervisors were required to
be in their offices 5 days per week beginning February 10 and all other
employees by February 18.
February
10
All
performance standards were deleted with a statement that they would be replaced
by better performance standards. All access to the Employee Performance
Management System was blocked so that supervisors could not document employee
performance while the government was illegally firing employees. The email from
Human Resources Division quoted a January 20 Executive Order titled “Ending
Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, and Reforming
the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service.” The
email subject was “System Changes to eHR Apps, Enterprise Remote and Telework
Application” beginning with this summary “To inform supervisors, managers, and
administrative personnel of temporary changes in eHR Apps…” and these details
“The ability to create or modify existing Remote or Telework agreements in
Enterprise Remote and Telework Application (ERT) has been disabled. Current
agreements, attachments and notes can be viewed. No other actions are available
currently. An update will be issued once
these features become available again.”
As of July
27, 2025, no Performance Standards or other performance management features
ever became available. That web page still says “Updates will be provided once
the Department has received guidance from OPM on the future of nonexcecutive performance.” HR and OPM only
destroyed the existing system but did not provide any replacement. USDA has
openly violated the law for 6 months of FY25 but OPM
expects to create a plan for FY26. The memo implies too many end-of-year
bonuses but nobody in USDA received any in recent years. Removing Performance
Standards was another illegal tool to demoralize employees and supervisors.
February 12
All changes
to websites of the USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS) were blocked while
words and phrases no longer permitted (see Appendix 1) were removed from all
Federal reports. This caused a delay in announcing changes to type trait
composites by splitting that section from the Net Merit document so that each
document could be updated separately, and the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding
(CDCB) had to post the updates instead. Since
March 10, ARS web pages can be updated but only with individual approval for
each page from ARS headquarters, causing further, lengthy delays. Also on
February 12 all employee names and contact information were removed from ARS
websites.
February
14
AGIL
employees Jason Graham (Animal Scientist) and Nayan Bhowmik (Postdoc) were
fired on Thursday by an email sent at 2am Friday along with all ~800 new
employees of ARS hired within the last year and some who were promoted to a new
job within the last year. Tens of thousands of other new employees across the
US government were also fired. On March 14, 2 federal courts ordered that such
terminations were illegal because they were not based on performance.
Terminated employees started getting back pay and administrative leave but were
not allowed to return to work until weeks later. Before the court decision was
announced, Jason Graham had already started work on a 6-month contract with
CDCB.
February
22
All AGIL
staff and all federal employees at 5pm on Saturday received an email from Human
Resources asking “What did you do last week? Please reply to this email with
approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links, or
attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.” Elon Musk announced that
weekend on X that any employee who did not reply would be fired. The Department
of Agriculture at 1pm on Monday announced “Please know that any response to
the HR@OPM.GOV is
voluntary and not required.” One week later at 9pm on Friday, HR sent a second
email saying “Going forward, please complete the above task each week by
Mondays at 11:59pmET” and USDA said on that Monday that this task is required
each week but nobody ever sent any friendly reminders. That policy was
discontinued in early June when Elon Musk left his pretend government position.
February
26
ARS
restricted any further funding of ORISE postdoctoral positions which were
previously used at AGIL when permanent positions were unfilled. AGIL had funds
to extend Dr. Bailey Basiel’s ORISE agreement beyond April but was prevented
from using our funds to do research. In June, Bailey won the 2025 Graduate
Student Paper Publication Award from the American Dairy Science Association,
demonstrating the top quality of our research staff. AGIL’s previous ORISE
postdoc Juan Nani published methods to include discovered maternal grandsires
and great grandsires in pedigrees, and recently CDCB added > 2 million
grandsires to pedigrees based on his USDA research.
March 5
USDA had
previously given written approval for the trips of Dr. Asha Miles and our
supervisor Dr. Randy Baldwin to meet with National Dairy Herd Improvement
Association in Louisville, KY but then canceled their trips 1 day before that
meeting. Asha presented AGIL’s research remotely. Asha Miles and Jason Graham
were also scheduled to present research at CDCB’s April meeting in NV, but USDA
canceled Asha’s trip and fired Jason. Asha appealed that trip denial and it was
one of very few that were ever approved. Paul VanRaden was scheduled to give a
final talk “Future
directions for animal breeders” at the University of Georgia symposium on
single-step genomic evaluation methods in April but USDA cancelled his trip.
The Georgia hosts agreed to let him speak remotely to this in-person only
event. All 16 other speakers were at the conference in person.
“Travel has
been restricted to Mission Critical only (essentially HPAI, National Security)
across ARS until further notice. Best advice from ARS leadership is to
not attend these events in-person in any capacity (not even as your personal
decision) as the perception may be that you are trying avoiding a direct order
and anyone could report you.
Also note
that travel credit cards will have their spending limit set to $1.00, basically
keeping them open, but unavailable. Where you have already paid registration
and there is a virtual option, you are allowed to attend/participate at your
office. The ability to register and pay for future conferences (in-person
and/or virtual) is also on hold until further notice.”
March 11
AGIL
scientists were asked to help the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
justify why any research should be done at Beltsville with a 1-day notice to
respond. The previous Trump administration in 2019 moved other parts of USDA
(Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture) from
Washington, DC to Kansas City, causing about half of those workers to resign.
March 14
Congress passed
a Continuing Resolution budget for the entire fiscal year thru September 30,
2025. Republicans pretended to fund the US government at the 2024 level while
the administration refused to allow the allocated funds to be spent. The budget
from Congress is almost meaningless.
March 14
The National
Agriculture Library was instructed to cancel journal subscription contracts to
reduce costs by 40% with < 1 day notice. This equated to a $2.6 million
cut. Many journals previously available are no longer available.
March 19
Government credit
cards were taken away from 81 employees who had purchased the needed supplies for
their funded projects within the Beltsville Agriculture Research Center. Only 5
employees (6%) still had access to their cards, but their credit limits were
too low to be able to order supplies for many other projects. Instead of doing
research, those 5 employees were demoted to doing only clerical work. The other
cardholders were told “You should contact any vendors where you have recurring
charges to cancel future charges and/or move those charges for emergency
response or mission critical functions to a cardholder identified as an active
cardholder.” The approval process and the rules for spending, monitoring, and
reporting already had been very strict. The new restrictions demanded by the February
26 Executive Order 14222, Implementing the President’s
‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative (Section
3f) made spending allocated funds nearly impossible, which was the actual goal.
The cards were supposed to be frozen for 30 days, but as of July 29 those 81 cards
are all still frozen.
March 24
My employee
Jason Graham was asked by the courts to return to work after wrongful
termination by USDA. He later decided instead to resign and accept pay until
September 30 for no work because of the very uncertain future of research at
USDA.
April 10
Dr. Asha
Miles, who I worked with closely for the last 4 years, was offered a new job as
Manager of Dairy Records Management Systems, the largest of the 4 data
collection centers that help farmers manage their cows and also provide data to
the national genetic evaluation, thus proving that our research group had top
quality employees before the government pushed them out.
April
All USDA
employees were asked again to resign and get paid for 5.5 months of doing no
work. The advantage of resigning was that employees who remained working could
be terminated at any time or forced to relocate to other areas of the country
for less pay or poorer jobs.
April
Three of my
closest coworkers (Asha, Dan, and Jason) resigned because doing research within
the government became very difficult with no ability to spend money. My
research group had a $2.3 million budget from the taxpayers plus outside
funding of $25,000 to support our travel and our computing needs but we were
restricted from using the funds that Congress had appropriated in March for our
research.
April
USDA did not
allow AGIL to fund the outstanding research of my postdoc (Bailey) for a second
year by using unspent salary from vacant positions as we had done for many
previous years.
I retired in May 2025 as I had planned to do 3
years ago. I no longer work for an idiotic, hostile President who hates
scientists because scientists decide what to do and what is true based on
reality instead of repeating lies told by a criminal con man. Government
scientists can no longer even use the words or phrases below in Appendix 1
until the President changes his mind, is overruled by the courts, or is removed
from office and replaced by a President who obeys the law, allows free speech,
and respects hard-working employees who do their jobs well and keep government
services running smoothly as our Laboratory did for 117 previous years. Our
project started in 1908 when the government hired immigrant Helmer Rabild to
collect dairy cattle data in the United States as he had learned to do in
Denmark. For more history on data collection and analysis see:
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80420530/AIP%20centennial/AIPL%20history_ARR%20HIST1.pdf
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUSERFILES/80420530/PRESENTATIONS/2008/HISTORY_PVR.PPT
June 12
Dr. Jason
Graham, who I hired in 2024 but was illegally fired in 2025, found a new job as
Director of Research for the Holstein Association, thus also proving that our
research group had top quality employees before the government pushed them out.
June
21-23
Travel
policy forbid USDA employees from attending the global Interbull annual meeting
held this year in USA. At least 1 employee of USDA attended all 43 previous
Interbull meetings plus the 1981 organizational meeting in Leningrad. I
attended from 2003-2024 and much of my research used Interbull’s global data
files supplied from > 30 countries. Interbull routinely applies my programs
and methods to that global data. The world’s dairy genetics researchers came to
USA but USDA administrators showed that they now hate science and international
cooperation.
July 3
Congress
passed a budget for fiscal year 2026 that pretended to increase the Agriculture
Research Service budget by 4% for next fiscal year, but the administration
prevents researchers from spending the funds that Congress budgets. Congress
giveth, but the administration taketh away, which used to be illegal and
probably still is. Next year most positions and my own will remain vacant or be
abolished, as 2 of our scientist positions were during Trump’s first term. The
administration by executive
order refuses to do the research required in my
highly rated 5-year plan regardless of Congress’s budget or the law.
July 10
“Effective
immediately, all USDA employees and affiliates are prohibited from… authoring
or coauthoring a scholarly publication, in their official capacity, along with
a foreign national without a USDA agreement in place prior to the initial
drafting or editing of the publication. Failure to comply with these requirements
will result in disciplinary action, which may include removal from Federal
service.” Of the 10 papers I coauthored in 2025, 7 papers included foreign
national coauthors. USDA had formal agreements with the lead author’s
organization but not with 6 other authors from Canada, Netherlands, Spain,
Finland, or Lebanon chosen by lead authors to contribute to the research. Many
of my publications on global data from Interbull included foreign coauthors who
met as formal committees each year at USDA-approved Interbull meetings but
without a separate agreement for each committee member. This requirement will
make such international research nearly impossible.
July 24
USDA will shut
down the Beltsville Agriculture Research Center where I worked since 1988.
Since 1910 Beltsville is the largest and most famous center in the Agriculture
Research Service. Some stated reasons are “Over the last four years, USDA's
workforce grew by approximately 8% and employees' salaries increased by 14.5%.
Many of these salaries were funded by temporary funding. As part of this
reorganization, USDA is not conducting a large-scale workforce reduction. To
make certain USDA can afford its workforce, this reorganization is another step
of the Department's process of reducing its workforce. Much of this reduction
was through voluntary retirements and the Deferred Retirement Program (DRP), a
completely voluntary tool.” The workforce grew by 8% because permanent positions
left vacant by Trump were filled by Biden, as Congress intended and funded.
Salaries increased due to inflation adjustments, as Congress intended. Almost
no new positions were added. Trump’s 2025 policies of allowing no telework, no
travel to meetings, no hiring, no ability to spend the funds budgeted, and no
ability to even mention the words and phrases in Appendix 1 are not “completely
voluntary” tools. They destroy employee morale and make them quit. Illegally
firing all employees hired during the last year and forcing people to move a
thousand miles away reflect that same hostile attitude toward science.
Appendix
1. Forbidden words and phrases in USDA scientific agreements, sent March 21,
2025
The
following list of key words must be used when evaluating all urgent and
critical agreement submissions before including them on the Exceptions Request
to the Agreements Moratorium List. When evaluating the
agreements, those entries
that include these terms or similar terms cannot be submitted.
This review will ensure that we maintain compliance with the Administration’s
EOs.
DEI:
search
terms: equity OR DEI OR DEIA OR equitable OR inclusive OR BIPOC OR "people
of color" OR disadvantaged OR "social justice" OR
"environmental justice" OR underserved OR underrepresented OR
justice40 OR "justice 40" OR lesbian OR gay OR bisexual OR pansexual
OR transgender OR "non-binary" OR "two-spirit" OR queer OR
QT OR (diversity AND equity) OR (diversity AND accessibility) OR (diversity AND
DEI) OR (diversity AND DEIA) OR (diversity AND inclusion) OR (diversity AND
equitable) OR (diverse AND equity) OR (diverse AND accessibility) OR (diverse
AND DEI) OR (diverse AND DEIA) OR (diverse AND inclusion) OR (diverse AND
equitable) OR inclusion OR accessibility OR accessible OR black OR indigenous OR
asexual OR intersex OR "non-conforming" OR trans OR vulnerable OR
gender OR gendered OR *gender OR *gendered
CLIMATE:
climate OR
"climate change" OR "climate-change" OR "changing
climate" OR "climate consulting" OR "climate modeling"
OR "climate models" OR "climate model" OR "climate
accountability" OR "climate risk" OR "climate
adaptation" OR "climate resilience" OR "climate smart
agriculture" OR "climate smart forestry" OR
"climate-smart" OR "climate science" OR "climate
variability" OR "global warming" OR "global-warming"
OR "carbon sequestration" OR "GHG emission" OR "GHG
monitoring" OR "GHG modeling" OR "carbon cycle" OR
"emissions mitigation" OR "greenhouse gas emission" OR
"methane emissions" OR "environmental justice" OR
"green infrastructure" OR "sustainable construction" OR
"carbon pricing" OR "carbon markets" OR "renewable
energy"
ENVIRONMENT/HOUSING:
Clean
Energy: "clean
energy" OR "clean power" OR "clean fuel" OR
"alternative energy" OR "hydropower" OR
"geothermal" OR "solar energy" OR "solar power"
OR "photovoltaic" OR "agrivoltaic" OR "wind
energy" OR "wind power" OR "nuclear energy" OR
"nuclear power" OR "bioenergy" OR "biofuel" OR
"biogas" OR "biomethane" OR "ethanol" OR
"diesel" OR "aviation fuel" OR "pyrolysis" OR
"energy conversion"
Clean
Transportation:
electric vehicle, hydrogen vehicle, fuel cell, low-emission vehicle
Affordable
Housing: "affordable housing" OR "affordable home" OR
"low-income housing" OR "subsidized housing" OR
"transitional housing" OR "housing affordability" OR
"housing efficiency" OR "prefabricated housing"
Pollution
Remediation:
"runoff" OR "membrane filtration" OR
"microplastics" OR "water pollution" OR "air
pollution" OR "soil pollution" OR "groundwater
pollution" OR "pollution remediation" OR "pollution
abatement" OR "sediment remediation" OR "contaminants of
environmental concern" OR "CEC" OR "PFAS" OR
"PFOA" OR "PCB" OR "nonpoint source pollution"
Water
Infrastructure:
"water collection" OR "water treatment" OR "water
storage" OR "water distribution" OR "water management"
OR "rural water" OR "agricultural water" OR "water
conservation" OR "water efficiency" OR "water quality"
OR "clean water" OR "safe drinking water" OR "field
drainage" OR "tile drainage"