The Fifth Risk

Lewis begins the section by discussing Ali Zaidi, who worked for the Office of Management and Budget when he was given the budget for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to look through. He soon realized that “[t]he USDA had subsidized the apartment my family had lived in. The hospital we used. The fire department. The town’s water. The electricity. It had paid for the food I had eaten” (88).

Like the DOE, no one from the Trump transition team showed up at the USDA the day after the election. The first person who did was Brian Klippenstein, who came from a job running Protect the Harvest, an organization founded by a Trump supporter that, according to Lewis, mainly attacked other organizations that set out to protect animal welfare. Klippenstein, or “Klip,” was interested in only one issue—climate change—and specifically in acquiring the names of anyone who worked on it.

When Lewis spoke to current and former USDA staffers, they told him that the best way to get to know the department was to get to know each subsection found on the departmental organizational chart:

·       Natural Resources and Environment

·       Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services

·       Rural Development

·       Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services

·       Food Safety

·       Research, Education, and Economics (Science)

·       Marketing and Regulatory Programs (93).