A grant made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is an $18.5 million expenditure of taxpayer dollars that was given to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Hawai’i Pacific University, University of Guam, Arizona State University to “build a diverse pipeline” of new federal workers for the USDA.
The grant was made during the Biden Administration and is intended to build out the federal workforce with those who have been groomed into a certain ideology.
Now, the Trump Administration is working hard to cut the federal workforce dramatically — and without delay.
In fact, on Thursday, President Donald Trump’s Office of Personnel Management notified agencies they must lay off most of their probationary employees who have not yet worked long enough to obtain civil service protection.
The grant’s project start date was May, 2023, with an end date of June, 2028. Over five years, the grantees will focus on educating and preparing the next generation of “food policy leaders” for careers in the USDA and related federal agencies. Over the grant lifespan, 9,000 young people in Alaska, Arizona, Hawai’i, and Guam are to be put into the pipeline of food policy jobs.
Key activities in the program include role-playing simulations, “curated” internships, a “talent pipeline ladder,” USDA service gap analysis, and climate and food symposia. A trip to the nation’s capital for the young people in the program’s first year culminated in a professional photo of them taken with the Capitol Dome in the background.
The project seeks to demonstrate the importance of federal service in addressing climate and equity challenges and to strengthen the USDA workforce by increasing the number of diverse, food, agriculture, and nutrition-knowledgeable employees.
Although 9,000 “NextGen” students are to go through the program in five years, after the first year, only 91 had done so.
One of the courses offered in this program is “How to Land a Federal Job,” attended by 71 students.
From the grant report, it appears this grant is actually about climate and equity and recruiting into federal service a certain kind of federal worker — one who adheres to a certain ideology.
