Fire Storm

Trump’s is diverting funds for protecting federal land to his vanity projects

Credit: Getty Images

Their magnificence can be difficult to describe. As anyone who has visited our national parks and forests knows, photographs rarely do them justice. One must witness, in person, America’s millions of protected natural acres to fully appreciate their grandeur.

It is likewise appalling that money, your tax dollars, is being diverted from protecting those national wonders. Instead of working to preserve this incredible resource in the face of climate change, this president is abandoning it. While not shocking, it is disheartening.

The vulnerability of these national treasures and Donald Trump’s lack of stewardship is not reported on enough. This season is shaping up to be the worst wildfire season on record. The West — especially Oregon and Washington — is burning.

You wouldn’t know it by Trump’s actions. This administration has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from protecting the land to pay for Trump’s White House vanity projects and Washington, D.C. “beautification” plans. Congress didn’t appropriate nearly enough to foot Trump’s ever-expanding bills. So the president is redirecting funds from other departments to do things like build his ballroom and fix the botched reflecting pool renovation.

In 2024, Congress allotted $7.5 million for White House upkeep and upgrades. According to Scott MacFarlane Reports, internal Department of the Interior documents show that Trump rerouted at least $323 million from that department to White House accounts. You see where this is going. And that doesn’t come close to covering the projected $900 million price tag of all Trump’s pet projects.

We the people can be mad about the massive expenditures on Trump’s unapproved plans, but furious is the better word when considering the collateral damage of this profligate president.

After the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) got done gutting the federal government, the Forest Service saw a staff reduction of 5,860 people — more than 16% of its workforce. Most of those cuts were veteran scientists and managers. Fifty-seven of 77 labs that researched forest management were closed, along with all nine regional offices.

Fast-forward 18 months, and those cuts are now causing inefficiency and chaos on the ground where fires rage.

Climate change has created the perfect environment for what is being called an extraordinary fire season. With 70% less snow to melt, plus a hot and dry summer, and less forest management in the off-season, this year’s wildfires are more numerous, bigger, and more destructive. More than a million acres have burned so far this year. Scientists say the season started earlier and are predicting it will last longer too.

The national fire preparedness level is set at 5, the highest level, meaning conditions are prime for wildfire. Currently, more than 80 uncontained large fires are burning in 15 states, most of them in the Pacific Northwest. One fire in Spokane is “probably the largest, most destructive fire in Washington’s history,” according to Incident Commander Tom Clemo.

There simply are not enough boots on the ground to effectively fight all of the fires. Ironically, the shortage is not in the firefighters’ ranks, who are hired seasonally; it is in the people who tell them where to go.

In July, Tom Schultz, the head of the Forest Service, told Congress that the agency was ahead of its recruiting goals and had hired slightly more firefighters than during the Biden administration. The problem is that the DOGE cuts eliminated the people who manage the firefighters. Without incident command teams, the firefighters can’t do their jobs.

Australia, New Zealand, and even Mexico have agreed to send their own teams to help, but it won’t completely make up the shortfall. In addition, there are not enough personnel to run the fire camps, where firefighters sleep and eat between shifts.

Some states have taken to deploying National Guard troops to fill in the gaps, feeding them MREs, the self-contained, U.S. military field rations. They are fine in an emergency, but a person expending thousands of calories fighting fires all day cannot subsist on them long term.

Even with the known staff shortages, federal officials in Washington are urging wildfire crews to use an aggressive “full suppression” strategy to fight the fires. In a fully staffed world that might work, but it is dangerous, especially so when they are short on commanders.

“I found it disturbing. You’ve got somebody in a suit in an office who’s never fought fires saying you’ve got to go direct attack,” Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service fire chief, told Stateline.

Six firefighters have died since the season began. Four were killed in western Colorado when a fast-moving fire coupled with 50-mile-per-hour winds overwhelmed the team. In Utah, after waiting days for help, two firefighters perished after a helicopter crash.

Sam Forstag, a smokejumper and wildland firefighter, is running for Congress in Montana as a Democrat. He jumped out of airplanes fighting fires across the West for the past 12 years.

“They said it was all about government efficiency, but what it was really about was power, consolidating and privatizing so much of the public lands and services that people like me and a lot of us have depended on,” Forstag said in a recent town hall in Bozeman, Montana.

In Washington, Governor Bob Ferguson declared a statewide wildfire emergency. More than 900 homes, businesses, and other buildings have been destroyed by fires just this month. That Spokane fire wiped out entire neighborhoods.

In Oregon, more than 2.3 million acres have burned, making it the worst wildfire season ever for the state.

The smoke from the fires is exposing people to more toxins than were previously known, according to The New York Times. Beyond damaging lungs, wildfire smoke may affect hearts, brains, and other organs. One study estimates that exposure to wildfire smoke could be deadly and that it’s more harmful than air pollution from car exhaust.

So go ahead, Mr. President, build your gaudy ballrooms and monuments to yourself as our country burns from your selfishness. The Trump administration doesn’t even acknowledge climate change, much less deal with it.

That is so profoundly sad. I have great memories of time spent among the tall pines, rivers, lakes, and grasslands. I have seen so many of my fellow citizens enjoying them as if they owned them because, in fact, they do; we all do.

I remember from my youth many in my home state of Texas fleeing the summer heat, driving to the Colorado Rockies where they would enjoy our great national forests and, for many, appreciate the outdoors for the first time.

I am grateful that those same forests and national parks remain today. Setting aside vast spaces in America for everyone to enjoy was one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s great achievements. He once said, “There is nothing so American as our national parks.”

They need to be protected, for every American, not plundered or privatized, not defunded for some authoritarian monstrosity. Let our children and grandchildren see and appreciate the world as early Americans saw it.

President John F. Kennedy eloquently stated, “It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.”

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Stay Steady,
Dan