Fire Storm - by Dan Rather and Team Steady - Steady

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Fire Storm<br>Trump’s is diverting funds for protecting federal land to his vanity projects<br>Dan Rather and Team Steady<br>Aug 17, 2026

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Credit: Getty Images<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>Share<br>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.<br>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.<br>Fast-forward 18 months, and those cuts are now causing inefficiency and chaos on the ground where fires rage.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>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.<br>“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.<br>Six firefighters have died since the season began. Four were killed in western Colorado when a fast-moving fire coupled with...