While Donald Trump spends millions of our taxpayer dollars gold-plaiting the White House and monuments, he’s still plotting ways to cut vital services for the rest of us.
At first blush, wildfire and smoke research may seem a distant second to such programs as health insurance, food benefits and education (which Trump has also cut in service to tax cuts for his billionaire cronies), that research is critical, too.
As NPR explained, “newly proposed U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and a larger reorganization of the agency would have immediate consequences as the West looks poised for an epic summer of wildfires and smoke.”
Taxpayer-funded technology produced out of Seattle’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab monitors and predicts wildfire behavior and smoke. It is “widely used by governments, elite firefighting teams and popular commercial apps that people rely on when the smoke gets bad,” according to NPR.
If you’ve ever lived near a wildfire, you have probably waited anxiously for Forest Service predictions as to where it's moving and whether or when you should feel. If you've ever had smoke from a wildfire irritate your lungs or worse, especially if you’re immunocompromised, you surely appreciate the ability to track and predict it. You don’t even need to live anywhere near a wildfire, as New Yorkers can attest.
But the Seattle smoke lab is “now on a list of 56 out of 90 research stations identified for closure,” NPR reported. “It's part of the Trump administration's controversial Forest Service reorganization.”
Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is trying to gaslight us into thinking this, like soaring inflation and gas prices, is not a problem.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz insisted to NPR, “Research is important — science is extremely important — in this organization." Yet NPR noted, “Even as Chief Schultz is adamant that science is still a priority, his boss President Trump's proposed budget for the Forest Service zeros out all research and development funding.”
You probably will not be surprised to know that the Sierra Club described Schultz as “the consummate logging industry insider” whose appointment surely had the timber industry “jumping for joy.”
Predictably, Schultz claims the cuts are because “we've got to get our budget into control.”
Well, I’d bet a lot of Americans would prefer cuts to Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom, his $6.9 no-bid contract to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the up to $125 million to change the name of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense to the Department of War. And, last but not least, Trump’s White House defacing and corrupt, $60 million birthday present to himself, the UFC cage match.
