April 30, 2025 – This week, the Trump administration marked 100 days in office with a deluge of rallies, messaging, and fanfare.
During a visit to a Texas agriculture research center and farm with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said that President Trump “has given us a platform to change America for the better.”
Since January, Civil Eats has been following the flood of White House and agency announcements and actions to keep track of the most important changes that impact food and agriculture. We’ve been regularly talking to members of Congress, government employees, farmers, food bank employees, school food pros, researchers, and advocates to stay up to speed.
Here, we offer our own 100-day (and in no way comprehensive) review of our coverage of the biggest stories to date.
1. Quick action on political priorities. President Biden prioritized climate action and creating equity across the federal government, including at the agencies that work on food and agriculture; Trump made quick work of undoing those policies and programs. The term “climate change” was scrubbed from the USDA website and farmer grant programs that prioritized climate goals were frozen for review and targeted for cancellation.
The rooting out of what Trump calls “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA)” programs included throwing out the USDA’s report on historic discrimination and recommendations for course correction, shutting down the EPA’s environmental justice offices, and canceling grant contracts to farm groups that had identified working with groups such as Black or LGBTQ farmers in their proposals.
Under Rollins, USDA has also engaged in political disputes that don’t impact agriculture: the agency threatened to withhold funding from universities in Maine and California based on policies that supported transgender rights.
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