Trump fires federal workers who help fight forest fires weeks after historic LA blazes

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1. **From USA TODAY:**

   Victoria Porter spent two days last year fighting a small forest fire that sprang up from a hunter’s campsite in the Montana wilderness.

   Porter, 28, helped dig a fire break to prevent the blaze from spreading and used a mule team to haul water to squelch the blaze.

   Firefighting wasn’t Porter’s primary job at the time. She worked for the U.S. Forest Service on a crew maintaining hiking trails. But, like many Forest Service workers, she has basic training in fighting wildfires and is expected to help fire crews when needed.

   Porter won’t be around to help when the next wildfire flares up. She was fired from her job last week as part of the wave of mass terminations of probationary employees by President [Donald Trump’s](https://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/donald-trump/) administration, a move she believes will put a strain on the agency’s firefighters.

   “They need our support, and now they don’t have it,” Porter said.

   As wildfires raged around Los Angeles last month, Trump said [not enough was being done](https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-threatens-withhold-federal-aid-203916842.html) to prevent such disasters.

   He criticized the fire response in his inaugural address and flew to Los Angeles during his first week as president, [chastising local officials.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/getting-rid-fema-takeaways-trumps-035901373.html)

   Yet fired Forest Service workers who have been caught up in Trump and [Elon Musk](https://www.usatoday.com/news/elon-musk/)’s push, through the Department of Government Efficiency, to cut government agencies say the administration is harming future wildfire fighting efforts through their cuts.

   The DOGE cuts are impacting many people who help with firefighting, even if it’s not their primary job.

   The Forest Service says about 2,000 probationary workers were terminated.

2. states need to hire up the staff, invest in the western states working well

3. Don’t worry, Musk will design autonomous AI rakes that can clear forests.

4. I keep expecting these to be Onion articles, but no. This is reality. A joke, but not comical.

5. “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

6. In California, Oregon and Washington state most of the forest fires in recent years have happened on federal lands. In California 57% of the forest in the state are on federal land, in Oregon the number is 60% and in Washington it is 43%. With that being said the governors should tell Trump he better start hiring forest rakers to clean all the forest floors on federal lands because their state will not be able to fight these fires once they start, it will be up to the federal forest forest service employees to put them out do to budget constraints! Trump is an absolute moron of epic proportions!

7. We’re gonna need a shitload of goats.

8. The smash and grab continues.

   Oligarchic capitalism loves chaos.

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