President Donald Trump certainly hasn't done Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins any favors — his policies have made her job measurably harder — but that's nothing compared to the damage done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to a new report.

According to a report from CNN, Rollins is widely regarded as one of the more prepared members of Trump's Cabinet, but "things have only gotten worse" since she took over. The native Texan has been saddled with shielding farmers and ranchers from "cascading crises" since taking the helm at USDA in February 2025, when the sector was already reeling.

"Bird flu was ravaging poultry flocks, spreading through dairy herds and driving up egg prices," the report stated. "The flesh-eating screwworm livestock parasite, which had been eradicated from the US decades ago, was creeping north through Mexico. And the agency charged with managing those threats was bracing for budget and staffing upheaval as DOGE cuts began thinning its ranks of tens of thousands of employees."

Sources told CNN her department is "under severe strain from DOGE-driven cuts" and that there has been "inconsistent communication with stakeholders."

Rollins "came under fire" over delays building a facility needed to combat the screwworm outbreak. Critics claim "time was lost while she entertained a proposal from a politically connected construction contractor — time some insiders now say made the outbreak harder to manage". Former USDA officials have pushed back on her characterization of the response she inherited, with one telling Agri-Pulse: "There was a lot being done, and the reality is that when the administration changed, we actually took some steps backwards."

CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss wanted an even more "sensationalized" headline on the story tying Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to Sept. 11, staffers told Zeteo on Thursday.

Three CBS sources described that push to Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona, who reported Thursday that the sources would not say what additional changes Weiss was seeking.

The network published the story Monday, and Zeteo reported that anger inside the newsroom has not let up over either the article or the post the network used to promote it.

"Yeah, it's trash. The article itself is also horribly Islamophobic," a CBS News staffer told Zeteo.

"What the heck does 9/11 have to do with Abdul [El-Sayed]?" another network insider asked, according to Zeteo.

The article went up on Aug. 31, Media Matters reported, under a headline reading, "Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks."

"As the nation prepares to mark 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack," the story began, according to The New Republic.

That same sentence went out from the network's official account on X, The New Republic reported.

Weiss praised the story at the network's daily editorial meeting that Monday and signaled her support for it to the entire network, Status's Oliver Darcy first reported.

She also personally directed that the headline be changed to specifically mention that El-Sayed had deleted tweets referencing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to Status.

The headline had originally read, "For Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, Sept. 11 commemoration invites scrutiny of past remarks," a person familiar with the story told The New Republic. That person said Weiss "strengthened" it and was not "intimately involved in the reporting process."

Three CBS sources went further, telling Zeteo that Weiss suggested the headline be made even more "sensationalized," though they would not describe the additional changes she wanted.

A source familiar with the situation disputed that account, telling Zeteo that Weiss wanted the headline to be "more accurate."

Senior staffers carried their objections to the network's standards department, Status reported, but little came of it because Weiss was so deeply involved in the article herself.

"They took a small nugget of news, forced into something much larger, and messed up," one CBS News employee told Status.

"The racism is overt," a former senior CBS News staffer told Status, who also called the article "shameful."

A person familiar with the story rejected that, telling The New Republic there was nothing "racist or Islamophobic" about reporting on El-Sayed's deleted tweets.

El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary on Aug. 4 by about a point and will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in November, Al Jazeera reported. He would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, according to The Daily Beast.

Rogers has already reached for the same attack, saying after the primary that El-Sayed "believes America deserved 9/11," according to The Conversation.

The posts at the center of the CBS story date to the Covid-19 pandemic, when El-Sayed was a public health official. He compared the rising death toll to the nearly 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11 and argued for a government response on the same scale, Media Matters reported.

He also wrote that the government should "spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty" rather than fight wars in the Middle East, according to The New Republic.

In a third post, El-Sayed mourned both the people killed on 9/11 and those killed in the U.S. war on terror, Media Matters reported. By CBS News's own account, none of the posts showed contempt for the victims of the attacks or defended them.

Comparisons like his were routine in 2020 and 2021, Media Matters reported, including among the Fox News hosts now attacking him over them.

"In that case, this virus is much like 9/11. … So we have to think about this the same way we think about terrorism and thinking about 9/11," Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said at the time, according to Media Matters.

"Yesterday, we had a record number of deaths in this country, more than died on 9/11," former Fox News host Neil Cavuto said, Media Matters reported.

"This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this," President Donald Trump said in May 2020, according to Media Matters. His surgeon general had called the pandemic "our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment" a month earlier.

El-Sayed's campaign had already said publicly that he deleted every post he wrote before 2023, The New Republic reported. He told Politico he had removed all of his posts on X older than July 2023, according to Zeteo.

Fox News host Sean Hannity displayed the CBS News headline on his Aug. 31 broadcast, Media Matters reported.

"El-Sayed seems to be creating a moral equivalency here, thinking that America — what — does far more harm than al-Qaeda?" Hannity said, according to Media Matters.

Hannity went on to say El-Sayed "doesn't love America" and "has regularly attacked this country," Media Matters reported.

Fox News host Jesse Watters told viewers El-Sayed was "scrambling to delete tweets from 9/11," was "hiding a lot" and wanted to "knock America down to size," according to Media Matters.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said El-Sayed "was never really vetted" and faulted Democrats for not making "a big deal about his 9/11 tweets where he showed such utter disdain for American suffering," Media Matters reported.

CBS News has changed the story several times since publication, Zeteo reported. Compared with an archived version, the updated piece added El-Sayed's explanation to Politico about the deletions and answers he gave a CBS News Detroit reporter after the article ran.

Baragona's sources said not to expect an editor's note, and staffers told Zeteo they have heard nothing from management beyond Weiss's enthusiasm at Monday's meeting.

Weiss founded the pro-Israel site The Free Press and wrote opinion columns for The New York Times before Paramount installed her atop CBS News late last year, The New Republic reported. She had never worked in broadcast news and had never run a major news operation.

Under her leadership the network has killed critical stories to spare the Trump administration embarrassment and has lost "60 Minutes" executive producer Bill Owens, anchor Anderson Cooper and correspondent Scott Pelley, according to The New Republic.

Pelley, who was fired from the program earlier this year, later accused Weiss's management team of instructing him to "inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story," Common Dreams reported.

Over the “strongest possible” objections from the federal prosecutor handling the case, leaders at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., quashed plans to bring civil rights charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant and then lying about it.

The agent, 52-year-old Christian Castro, allegedly shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in Minneapolis this January during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration blitz that sent thousands of federal agents into the state. The incident was one of three shootings by immigration agents in the city, the other two of which were fatal.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota had been preparing to charge Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law for the shooting of Sosa-Celis, according to several people familiar with the case. Those charges are similar to the ones leveled against Minneapolis police officers accused in George Floyd’s killing and can carry hefty prison sentences.

Late on Tuesday, Matthew Evans, the assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota in charge of the case, told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims to prepare for Castro to be charged “only with False Statements,” according to an email that was reviewed by ProPublica.

That charge would likely carry a far less severe punishment if he were convicted.

“This is being directed by the Main Justice and the US Attorney,” Evans wrote in a remarkably candid account of internal deliberations. “I objected in the strongest possible terms and fought it as hard as I could. It wasn’t enough.”

He wrote that the false statement charges could come soon and would likely be filed under seal.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to try to get justice for your clients,” Evans concluded the email.

A DOJ official said civil rights charges require consultation with the civil rights division in Washington, and “any charging decisions that come out of such investigations are collaborative and deliberative and adhere to the facts and law of that specific case and controversy.”

The agency “has not yet reached a conclusion on this matter and will never rush an investigative process and the thorough review of all evidence,” the official said.

Evans and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota declined to comment. An attorney for Sosa-Celis did not return phone calls from a reporter. Castro, who has an outstanding warrant in Minnesota for this case, could not be reached for comment.

Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has been thinned and has dropped some Biden-era oversight of law enforcement agencies. This move by the DOJ is likely to fuel further concerns that the department is operating more in support of President Donald Trump’s political agenda than to preserve the rule of law. Earlier this year, a ProPublica analysis found that in almost every instance of immigration agents shooting people, Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead within hours of the incident. In many of those cases, federal or local police declined to investigate the agents.

Castro, who was put on leave by the Department of Homeland Security, is also facing multiple state felony charges in Minnesota, including assault with a dangerous weapon. After he left Minneapolis and returned to Texas, Minnesota officials had requested state officials there extradite Castro to face the charges, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to cooperate. Castro had been held for 90 days in jail while the two states fought over the extradition. He was released last week.

Sosa-Celis was shot on Jan. 14, as Castro and another ICE agent chased Alfredo Aljorna, an immigrant from Venezuela, after a traffic stop. Aljorna ran to his home, which he shared with Sosa-Celis. The two men made it inside after a brief scramble, and Castro fired through the closed door, “knowing [the home] was occupied by several people,” according to state charging documents. One witness said there were two children in the house when Castro shot into it. Sosa-Celis was hit in the leg.

ICE agents then deployed tear gas into the home and took the men and their partners into custody, according to the documents and other court records.

DHS originally said Castro and the other agent were ambushed by the men and beaten with a shovel or broomstick, making Castro fear for his life and fire in self-defense. DHS called Sosa-Celis and Aljorna “violent criminal illegal aliens,” and federal prosecutors charged them with assault.

The next month, however, they dropped the charges against both men, and the DHS backed off its narrative in a rare admission of possible wrongdoing of its officers. “Video evidence has revealed the sworn testimony of the two agents appeared to be false,” then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons said in a statement.

After Castro’s release from jail, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is leading the state’s prosecution against him, said she worried that Castro will flee to Mexico.

Reached for comment Wednesday, Moriarty compared the Justice Department’s decision to overrule Evans to its actions after ICE agents killed Renee Good. A week before shooting Sosa-Celis, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good in her car. Agents alleged she drove toward them, but video of the incident showed Good’s wheels turned away from them when they shot her. Federal authorities first agreed to a joint investigation, but Justice Department officials later refused to cooperate with state police, deeming any review of the fatal shooting unnecessary.