Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2025
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by W. J. Lee
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17 Comments
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President Donald Trump understands the simple formula for ensuring the government does a better job of serving Main Street: you move it there.
Following Trump’s April executive order on restoring common-sense office management, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced last month that her department will relocate more than half of its D.C. workforce into the communities it primarily serves. New USDA hubs will open in Utah, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina.
This strategy is not just a shuffling of desks. It is a correction to a long-standing imbalance that concentrated power in Washington and left the rest of America as an afterthought.
Rollins says the realignment will re-center USDA on its core mission of serving farmers, ranchers, foresters, and rural communities. The urgency of this reorganization comes after the Biden administration “[grew the workforce] by eight percent, and employees’ salaries increased by 14.5 percent – including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them,” she said.
The change promises better service, lower overhead, and faster decisions. It also promises something Washington rarely delivers: accountability. When public servants live and work near the people who depend on their services, excuses get harder and results get better.
For years, federal agencies have operated far from the families, small businesses, and seniors who need timely answers. Distance breeds delay and groupthink. A capital city culture that talks mostly to itself cannot understand the daily realities of planting seasons, water rights, grazing permits, or disaster recovery after a bad storm. Moving USDA closer to those realities will improve the work the agency does because it forces bureaucrats to meet real needs.
No longer will farmers be distant afterthoughts for USDA bureaucrats – they will be those bureaucrats’ neighbors and friends.
Additionally, a lower cost of living outside Washington stretches tax dollars and retirement dollars further. Every dollar not wasted on premium D.C. office space is a dollar that can support county field offices, veteran farmers, rural broadband mapping, food safety inspections, and emergency response for droughts and wildfires. Savings and service go together when agencies operate where the work actually happens.
Relocation also widens the talent pipeline. Many of America’s best agricultural minds live west of the Potomac. They raise cattle, cultivate crops, restore forests, and run research labs in the heartland. They often rule out federal service because it requires uprooting families to move to D.C. Opening regional offices removes that barrier and encourages more real-world expertise in public service.
Democrats call this move political. What they really object to is losing a monopoly on influence. For decades, the bureaucracy has grown by centralizing authority in one city. That approach produced bloated rules, slow responses, and little regard for local conditions. President Trump’s approach restores balance. It puts decision-makers near the people who must live with those decisions. That is what federalism looks like in practice.
The logic applies beyond USDA. Interior, Transportation, Education, and other federal agencies could all improve services by placing more jobs and authority where their programs touch real communities. Interior should keep more land managers in the West. Transportation should center safety and permitting staff along freight corridors and growing metros. Education should build relationships with parents, school boards, and state leaders instead of dictating from afar. When agencies are present, they listen. When they listen, they spend better and regulate less.
This logistical reform is part of a larger promise. President Trump pledged to return power to the people and make government leaner and more accountable. Moving agencies out of Washington turns that promise into measurable change. It trims costs without cutting corners. It breaks up the echo chamber that fuels mission creep. It replaces ideology with results.
The media backlash reveals how overdue this shift is. Insiders defend the status quo because the status quo serves insiders. Everyday Americans want something different. They want competence, fairness, and value for their tax dollars. They want a government that works where they live.
Secretary Rollins deserves credit for initiating a complex transition with a clear mission. The vision, however, belongs to President Trump. This is conservative governance at work: less bureaucracy, more accountability, and services delivered closer to the people who pay for them.
A government of the people should not hide behind a Beltway address. It should stand where Americans farm, build, study, worship, and retire. The USDA relocation is a model for that kind of government. It replaces distance with duty and talk with results. The work has begun, and it should continue across all federal agencies.
W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple political campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government. In his free time, he enjoys the “three R’s” – reading, running, and writing.
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