Trump Sec. Gets Humiliating Fact-Check About Closing Forest Service
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins appeared clueless Monday about the closures of forest research facilities she directed.
During a press conference at Michigan State University, a reporter asked Rollins whether the U.S. Forest Service offices would close in the state, as part of a so-called “commonsense” restructuring that would result in the mass closure of 57 regional offices across the country.
“I don’t have those talking points in front of me, but let me tell you this: the misinformation in the media,” Rollins said. “There is no closing of the Forest Service. We are moving it out of Washington, D.C. We are re-headquartering it in Salt Lake City, where it can be closer to the forests that it actually serves, and the people that those forests serve, most importantly.”
Rollins claimed it made no sense to have “thousands upon thousands” of USDA employees based in Washington, but made no mention of the dozens of regional facilities she was planning to shutter.
BROOKE ROLLINS: That's incorrect. There's no one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that's getting reassigned to the East Coast
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 13, 2026
REPORTER: There's a Forest Service office that's closing in Houghton, Michigan
ROLLINS: I don't have that one in front of me. Any offices that are… pic.twitter.com/q7ll8aOnOh
Another reporter pressed Rollins about whether USDA employees in the Upper Peninsula would be potentially reassigned to the East Coast. The U.P. is home to two national forests, the Ottawa and Hiawatha National Forests, that account for nearly two million acres of land.
“That’s incorrect. There is no one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that’s getting reassigned to the East Coast,” Rollins said.
“There is an office that’s closing in Houghton, Michigan,” the reporter said.
“So, any offices that are closing, I don’t have that one in front of me, but any offices that are closing, it’s usually because they are, the rent is way too high, and there is so much work that needs to be done,” Rollins said.
But in Houghton, rent has nothing to do with the closure.
“This particular facility is paid for,” MTU College of Forestry Professor Evan Kane told TV6 Upper Michigan Source. “We rent the land from Michigan Tech for a dollar a year. It doesn’t cost the forest service very much in comparison to some of the other units that did get shuttered.”
That’s not the only part of Rollins’s logic that doesn’t add up. If the Trump administration wants the Forest Service to go where there’s a forest, why wouldn’t Rollins relocate to Alaska, which has approximately 21.9 million acres of forest, the most of any state? Or how about California, which has the highest number of individual forests? Or why don’t they keep a number of research facilities in forests across the country instead of cutting short years of research to consolidate thousands of workers to a single site in Colorado?
Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, has alleged that the dramatic reshuffling was actually illegal because congressional funding for the fiscal year 2026 included a stipulation that funds could not be put toward relocating offices or employees, or reorganization.