Deep Dive: Trump’s Ten Search Terms to Cancel American Farmers

The United States Department of Agriculture was established in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, who called it “The People’s Department.” USDA is supposed to support America’s farmers and build a resilient food system, including through the grants it awards to farmer and nonprofit groups. In 2025, USDA abandoned farmers by recklessly terminating millions of dollars in grants, all to fall in line with the Trump administration’s crusade against DEI, environmental justice, and climate action.

These cuts have thrown the livelihoods of farmers across the country into turmoil. Without these funds, farmers have lost access to markets to sell their goods, educational programs for new farmers have been cancelled, and fields have gone unplanted and unharvested. In short, much of the progress we’ve made towards a fair food system has been undermined and undone by the USDA’s actions.

Before their grants were suddenly ripped away, the farmer organizations impacted went through a robust application and approval process to win these grants in the first place, spending hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages justifying their grants to the government.

When we sued USDA and DOGE over these grant cancellations alongside Earthjustice and Farmers Justice Center, we had good reason to believe that the government hadn’t spent nearly as much time deciding which grants to cancel and instead hastily and unlawfully terminated hundreds of grants without individualized consideration. One big clue was that the cancellation notices were clearly from a template used en masse. Some even had the file name “Full Termination Letter Template.”

We suspected that the “process” for finding grants the administration found worthy of termination was hardly more than a simple search through grant documents for words it associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate change. Now we can prove it.

We won preliminary relief to the tune of $34 million for our plaintiffs whose grants were cancelled, but we’re still arguing in court that the broader policy that resulted in over 600 grant terminations is unlawful. Through the suit, we are forcing the government to show its work — whether it went about these cancellations lawfully, or, as we believe, with callous, corner-cutting methods to achieve the administration’s political ends: boosting Big Ag and shutting down progress towards a fair food system.

The government has now produced the administrative record in this case. An administrative record is supposed to be the complete collection of documents that the government considered when making a decision — in this case the decision to terminate these grants. While the government has so far failed to give us a complete administrative record in this case, what the government has given us thus far reveals just how careless and unlawful these terminations were.

In early 2025, the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders targeting DEI, climate, and environmental justice initiatives. Soon after, USDA officials issued a memo directing staff to identify and eliminate activities that it considered “DEI,” including anything to do with environmental justice, underrepresented producers, and socially disadvantaged producers, and even “gender preferences.”

The appendix to the memo lays out clearly which words landed on USDA’s hit list:

That’s it. Ten search terms to decide if the government will honor the grant it already made you, or if your project is on the chopping block.

A month after the first USDA anti-DEI memo and list, Secretary Brooke Rollins issued two more, targeting DEI again and now also climate change efforts as part of what she calls a “return to American principles” at USDA:

Brooke Rollins is trying to frame it as an American principle for the government to promise grants to organizations supporting farmers, and then to rip those grants away because some of those farmers are refugees, LGBTQ+, or concerned about climate change.

We call B.S. USDA’s sudden policy change doesn’t serve any of America’s farmers. It only serves the Big Ag corporations that are ruthlessly monopolizing our food system, degrading our land and water, and running America’s small farmers out of business.

Trump’s USDA is making a scapegoat out of DEI and climate initiatives for the problems plaguing farmers and rural communities. But efforts to lift up beginning farmers, farmers of color, and farmers adapting to the realities of climate change aren’t what’s causing the hurt. For that, look to the handful of Big Ag corporations that will do anything to pad their profits at the expense of farmers and our climate.

The emailed list of search terms for climate related funding that followed Rollins’ climate memo is more detailed but just as ludicrous as the DEI list:

It’s hard to imagine arguing that “climate adaptation and resilience planning,” “workforce training,” and “sustainable construction” are threats to American farmers and their way of life. And yet that’s how USDA is treating them. As far as we can tell, USDA terminated hundreds of grants just for the use of these descriptive phrases having to do with climate.

Climate change might be a scary phrase for Trump. But it’s a scary reality for farmers. Farmers can’t just wish away the word with a memo — they know that more extreme storms, droughts, floods, and heat will only make farming harder and that the time to adapt is now. USDA should be supporting them with the funds necessary to prepare their farms and develop sustainable practices. Without these critical funds, farmers and our entire food system are left more vulnerable to climate chaos.

At FarmSTAND, we’re fighting to dismantle the structures that enable the consolidation of corporate power in our food system and to support the people building a food system that is regenerative, humane, and owned by independent farmers.

Independent farmers, including BIPOC farmers, LGBTQ+ farmers, new farmers, and everyone else targeted by the Trump Administration’s cuts, are doing the critical work of building the food system we want to see. Farming is never easy, and in today’s food system dominated by a handful of powerful, rich corporations, independent farmers are fighting a David-and-Goliath-level battle.

The least USDA could do is keep its word and deliver the grants it has awarded to help independent farmers and start to even the playing field that USDA itself has stacked in favor of Big Ag.

Restoring the cancelled grants at issue here is an important step for justice. Brooke Rollins’ supposed “color-blind” campaign to eliminate DEI funding won’t right USDA’s long history of wrongs — including decades of racist discrimination in USDA programs and lending—it will just further entrench racial injustice in our food system.

The programs USDA is targeting as DEI aren’t the bogeymen Trump wants us to fear. They’re programs like Agroecology Commons that make it easier for aspiring farmers to access land, farmers markets, and training. Or our client Providence Farm Collective’s Incubator Farm Program, which helps farmers get started, increase their yields, and sell more produce at markets.

Another of our clients, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, had a grant cancelled that supported a community outreach project that aimed to better include voices from underrepresented groups who are often left out of food policy decisions. These are the kinds of programs our food system needs. If USDA wants to go after real monsters, it should turn a critical eye on some of Trump’s Big Ag buddies for alleged child labor abuses, price-fixing, and destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

On-the-ground organizations like our clients are building sustainable, fair, local food systems every day. When they come under attack by the Trump Administration and Big Ag, FarmSTAND is in their corner. We’re using litigation like USDN v. USDA to hold USDA and DOGE accountable and make sure farmers are getting the resources they need.

Trump’s USDA illegally cancelled hundreds of grants to preserve the status quo of Big Ag domination — not to protect any American principles. At FarmSTAND, we’re using legal expertise to defend what we believe in: that our government belongs to the people, that we have a right to a livable climate, and that our food system should nourish our communities and the earth.