Donald Trump — aided by DOGE — just crippled California’s ability to fight wildfires | Opinion
President Donald Trump made good on his promise to shrink the federal workforce— and he did it in the worst possible way.
Aided and abetted by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Trump declared a hiring freeze and fired tens of thousands of probationary employees, regardless of their missions.
DOGE would have us believe these were mostly low-level bureaucrats who sat behind their desks and did little more than collect paychecks.
They were not.
They held down a variety of positions — not necessarily behind a desk — and often worked long hours for little pay, doing jobs that would be unimaginable to many of us.
One worker fired from the U.S. Forest Service, for example, led a horse-and-mule crew that maintained backcountry trails and removed garbage — including human excrement — from a National Park in Idaho.
The Forest Service was hit hard by the purge. It lost 2,000 probationary employees who were “released,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
That’s a big concern in California, where Forest Service crews play key roles in both preventing and putting out wildfires.
To carry out those jobs, the agency relies not only on professional firefighters, but also on a host of ancillary workers — biologists, meteorologists, surveyors, clerks, tech workers, public information officers, dispatchers and mechanics, among others.
Yet it appears DOGE did not take that into account. It used an axe when it should have used a scalpel.
Fire professionals are worried about what that means for the summer.
“It’s a mess and I don’t have a lot of confidence in how things are going to go as things warm up,” said Bobbie Scopa, who retired after a 45-year career with several fire agencies in the Western U.S., including the Forest Service.
‘They are laying off staff that support firefighter operations’
Trump’s appointees would have us believe that all is well.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says Forest Service firefighters are not losing their jobs and points out that 1,000 additional firefighting positions were recently approved.
But here’s something the USDA is not telling us: Employees who were actively involved in fire prevention were terminated
For instance, on California’s Los Padres National Forest — the second largest national forest in the state — wildlife biologist Ben Vizzachero was abruptly fired.
He conducted the environmental assessments required before fire prevention projects like proscribed burns and vegetation thinning could be carried out. Those off-season projects — aimed at making communities less vulnerable to wildfire — will now be delayed.
“They are not directly laying off firefighters,” Vizzachero said, referring to the USDA administration, “but they are laying off staff that support firefighter operations.”
The claim that no firefighters were terminated in the purge is open to debate, however.
Some workers who were fired had other primary jobs, but they were also certified to fight fires — “red carded” is the terminology that’s used — and were available for dispatch to major incidents.
Vizzachero, for example, had his red card; the Forest Service provided him with extensive training in firefighting that he never had the opportunity to use.
Trump: ‘You gotta clean your floors’
It’s both ironic and puzzling that President Trump — who considers himself an expert when it comes to managing forests — would now be disregarding the important role that fire prevention plays.
On multiple occasions, he has chastised Gov. Gavin Newsom in particular and California in general for poor forest management practices.
“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said in 2020. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
At one point, he had even recommended raking the forests — a suggestion that has dogged him to this day.
Yet Trump has now — unwittingly or not — made it impossible for forest employees to keep fire prevention projects on schedule on land that is under the direct stewardship of the federal government.
The president has been mostly silent about all the firings, though he recently said that in some cases, “they’ll put some people back.”
They’ll fire people and then put them back?
This was more than a minor “oops.”
Think about it: How would you feel if you were fired without notice — possibly even told a lie that it was due to bad performance — and then hired back a few days later because your employer suddenly realized the work you did was important?
This reflects just how haphazardly DOGE carried out what was essentially a publicity stunt to prove Trump is keeping word about downsizing the federal government.
In doing so, he jeopardized public safety by allowing the mass firing of thousands of public employees without bothering to determine the consequences.
President Trump got this spectacularly wrong and unfortunately, we cannot count on the courts to make things right, and there is too much at stake for California to let this pass.
Some federal agencies have reversed course and rehired employees who were mistakenly fired. Workers who monitor the spread of bird flu and others charged with the safety of nuclear weapons were among those “put back”
Some National Park Service employees also are returning, following a loud public outcry.
Forest Service employees are also worth fighting for.
The state is just beginning to recover from the devastating Los Angeles fires that killed 29 people and burned nearly 12,000 homes.
We must do everything possible to prevent a repeat.
We should have more employees working on fire prevention, not fewer.
California lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — must demand that the Forest Service be returned to full strength immediately.
This story was originally published February 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.