Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

[jeffreyi]

https://www.hatchmag.com/articles/trump-administration-orders-dismantling-us-forest-service/7716263

"Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.
They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way."

Much more at link.

[Irish_Dem]

1. How much in bribes did Trump make for this favor?

[Walleye]

6. Maybe he didn't get bribe maybe he just got a free ballroom out of it

Sometimes he’s just an asshole and doesn’t have to be paid for it. It’s just who he is. He hates mother nature for making him such an ugly pig. He has mommy issues. of course, if he can shake down some rich people and screw some poor people that’ll make him happy

[Irish_Dem]

10. Trump is lazy, and does nothing unless it benefits himself personally.

Yes he is a sadist and likes to hurt and kill people.
So that is part of it.

But he does nothing big like this unless he gets a payday.

[Walleye]

12. You are right about that unfortunately

But I think some of his sins are just pure hatred. He hates mother nature hates, mother earth, and he hates the United States. Not a doubt in my mind. His followers are feeling the same.

[Irish_Dem]

43. Yes some of his decisions are hate based.

But the big ones I think are money based.

[Walleye]

45. All part of the same thing. You hate someone, you steal their money.

Or their oil. I can’t believe he’s talking about international plunder.

[Irish_Dem]

47. True. He hates everyone and believes he owns all assets in the world.

The rest of us are too stupid and low life to deserve anything.

[Walleye]

48. You got it. That's it exactly.

[Irish_Dem]

53. We believe in hard work, loyalty, following the law, doing good in the world.

In Trump's book that makes us total suckers and losers.

[mucifer]

51. Yup a sadistic phsycopath

[bif]

34. Has he done one positive thing for the American people? Ever?

God he makes me sick. I don't think we'll ever recover from all the damage he's done.

[Irish_Dem]

44. No, he only does things that benefit him or the Trump crime family.

Some of the damage is permanent.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. How do they have the right to do this? Mike Lee said so?

Where is Congress?

[jeffreyi]

4. Good question. Calling my senator's office.

We do not have a representative at the moment. CA District 1. I coomented during the comment period but that, anymore, is whistling up a rope. A lot of important people said don't do this, and here are good reasons, but so what. Just insane vandalism.

[Wednesdays]

16. Congress? What Congress?

Oh, you mean the body that rubber-stamps anything The Felon wants? THAT Congress?

[Shipwack]

18. They can do it because no one says "no".

The only plank of the Republican Party platform is literally “Go along with whatever Trump wants”. The Democrats have only a few levers to pull to delay things, at best.

The Founders assumed that Congress would keep the executive branch in check because they would naturally be protective of their power.

They never envisioned that one day a majority of that branch would just roll over and abdicate their duties. This might be one reason why some of the founders were against the existence of political parties, but there’s no practical way to prevent them from occurring due to the Bill of Rights.

[Bayard]

55. I don't understand this either

Congress has already funded them through 2026. This looks like another thing trump is screwing around with that he has no right to do so.

Reading the whole article made my blood boil. This is a huge win for the logging industry, and people that want to use that land for their own profit.

"Theodore Roosevelt created the national forests to protect them from exactly the kind of industrial plunder this administration is enabling. Gifford Pinchot built the Forest Service from scratch, brick by brick, to ensure that America’s forests would be managed by trained professionals in the public interest — not by political appointees serving the timber industry from a satellite office in the state that wants to own those forests."

One of the biggest losses is the research scientists who will leave.

"This is the most respected forestry research program on the planet. It’s the reason we understand wildfire behavior, forest disease, watershed health, carbon storage, old-growth ecology, and climate adaptation. It’s the scientific backbone that every responsible land management decision depends on. It’s the envy of land managers across the world."

[MadameButterfly]

61. I assume there are court cases in the works

But courts take longer than Trump destroys. Let's hope they can stop this.

If we survive this I foresee some eplicit laws we never dreamed of before limited what a president can do. Like destroying things he doesn't own. Of course that is what Congress was supposed to be for, but it's apparently not enough.

[Goonch]

3. ;-{)......

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Whose turn is it to sue him?

[travelingthrulife]

7. God this guy knows how to destroy things.

[Ferrets are Cool]

14. That is ALL he knows how to do.

It always amazes me how these so-called MEN worship a guy who has never done a days work in his life. I would give a weeks paycheck to see him try to use a hammer or operate a jack hammer. OMG, it would be hilarious.

[hkp11]

58. and....

make money for himself, his family, and his rich allies

[RussBLib]

60. I'm sure this is coming from Project 2025

...if not for that piece of retro-bullshit, Trump wouldn't be doing half the shit he is doing. Much of this comes from Russell Vought himself at OMB. Fucking Heritage Foundation.

This sounds like another lawsuit in the making. I think our side needs to be quicker at filing lawsuits to stop more of this garbage.

https://russblib.blogspot.com

[travelingthrulife]

8. Proving himself to be a King again.

[Klarkashton]

9. Mostly likely dictated in project 2025, the document that

Trump claimed to know no nothing about.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

11. My sister lives not far from Mt. Lassen National Forest.

Should that go up in flames, it will be sayonara to plant and animal life.

States like South Dakota, California, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington State, Montana, Idaho, etc, with vast forest lands will be up a creek if a wildfire runs through and no one to put it out.

THIS IS SO WRONG!

[Another Jackalope]

13. Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can prevent forests." nt

[BattleRow]

36. "Only when the last tree has been cut down...

the last fish has been caught,and the last stream poisoned,will we realize we cannot eat money."

Cree Indian proverb

[Wild blueberry]

15. Mother Nature is going to have the last word

Not surprised but very sad.
Midterms can't come soon enough.

[oldinmtdem92]

17. anything to pissoff the public

he is trying to get the people to openly revolt so he can cancel the midterms ,not hard to see through the madness .

[Seinan Sensei]

22. Yet another distraction from the Epstein Files

[aggiesal]

37. He'll do that without the revolt ...

He'll claim a National Emergency, about a week before the elections.

The National Emergencies Act (NEA) of 1976 (50 U.S.C. 1601–1651) formalizes the President's authority to declare national emergencies.
Even though Mierda47 cannot cancel or postpone federal elections under the National Emergencies Act or any other authority, he will do it anyway, and by the time it goes through the courts, election day will have past.

That's my prediction, and I'm sticking to it.

[progressoid]

19. Well, why have a forest service when you don't have forests

The Trump Administration’s Expansive Push to Sell Out Public Lands to the Highest Bidder

After bipartisan opposition forced Senate Republicans to remove language from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have sold off public lands, the Trump administration is still moving forward with proposals to transfer control over tens of millions of acres of public land to the oil and gas, mining, and timber industries.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administrations-expansive-push-to-sell-out-public-lands-to-the-highest-bidder/

[Mysterian]

20. I knew a USFS district ranger in Montana who is rabid MAGA

I hope he loses his fucking job.

[AZ8theist]

32. Same here. FAFO

[BidenRocks]

21. Fire season has started (?) in California.

It never ends, but the Santa Ana winds cause many wind whipped fires threatening communities.

Time for chump to "open the valves" and waste our water again.

Tie him up in court for years like his taxes and Epstein!

[ybbor]

23. Simply vile human

I can’t wait for Orrex’s question to finally be answered “yes”!

[agingdem]

24. And here's what's going to happen..like every one of his edicts

dismantling a government agency, a lawsuit will be filed, a Federal judge will declare what ever odious shit he and Stephen Miller concocted illegal and must be fully funded..

this dismantling of the forestry service is just another Trump hate vendetta.. this one is aimed at California’s Gavin Newsom and Eric Swalwell..

[Soul_of_Wit]

25. When folks claim they don't know what "end-stage capitalism" is

This. This is what end-stage capitalism is. Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt are rolling in their graves.

[Borogove]

26. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and all the other technofascists responsible for this destruction must be forced to pay for it.

[jfz9580m]

40. Indeed and courts are starting

This is tangential to the OP. But it is about accountability for these parasitic industries.

I want and need indirect harm and more to be result in serious charges against both: technology companies (ceos and individual malicious/negligent employees) and humans participating in barbaric experiments “in the wild” exploiting the form of Dutch courage that comes with mob might. Such mobs also rely on systemic gaslighting and plausible deniability. I see it daily and am determined to press charges by now.

Criminal liabilty is essential because these guys don’t care about fines - the giants anyway. They amount to slaps on the wrist for large corrupt giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Tata, Reliance Industries etc.

As for the mobs, if gang rapes are not treated as something where the presence of a larger number of men somehow makes the action more acceptable, group harassment should similarly be dealt with the same way.

The worst part is that these guys are complacent about it all being on camera thinking (mob) might makes right and a woman’s perception can be slandered easily.


And their sad surveillance Panopticons also capture data on innocuous if technically illegal activities like private medical marijuana use in technically legally grey areas. That let’s stupid people think they can push the limits, bully, harass and bullshit without consequences.

And the burden of the proof should not be on survivors, but on all perpetrators big and small.
If the two-finger test for rape Is archaic, finding a tortuous path assailing the mental fitness of complainants and insisting on daft tests is a huge step sideways not progress.

This could be a tipping point. At any rate serious repercussions are unavoidable on a long enough timeline for all robber barons, slavers etc thus far in human history. Or women would never have had suffrage.

Democracy and enlightenment values are hard to permanently put back in the bottle using various forms of ubiquitous sophistry. Only horrifying industries like animal agriculture and the rape of earth have been largely immune thus far. Unsurprisingly then, a small corrupt group aside, humans are increasingly treated like confused chattel to exploit.

Still I am hopeful seeing more stories like this given where we are today (though it will take time to get traction).

This is from 2021:
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/04/993579600/snapchat-can-be-sued-for-role-in-fatal-car-crash-court-rules

But this is from yesterday:
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5764306/big-tech-lawsuits-verdicts-accountability-social-media-harms

Verdicts against Meta and Google may bring a new era of big tech accountability

In 2017, Matthew Herrick sued the dating app Grindr after his ex-boyfriend used fake profiles to harass Herrick and send hundreds of strangers to his home.

Herrick's lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, argued that Grindr had made a defective product, because the company claimed it couldn't stop the harassment.

Advocates hope the early legal victories against the social media platforms will generate momentum outside courtrooms, too, to pass long-stalled tech regulation and to force change in Silicon Valley.

"If you go and look at what really changed the tobacco industry, it wasn't one thing, it was everything together," said Gardner, the child safety advocate. When it comes to tech, she said, the question is: "How do you actually create enough pressure that it will change the business incentives?”

Where I live in the global south, gang-rapes, acid attacks etc. are relatively common as is street harassment. Treating the world like an open world game, that too on the order of years, must bring criminal liabilty for all participants, accessories and bystanders.

I have seen wannabe intimidating displays of of malice that almost certainly were not imaginary. The internet cannot bleed into real life in socially regressive parts of the world using nonsensical hyper libertarian arguments about Streisand effects etc especially as so many common forms of oversight and complaint filing have been laid to waste.

The real world and the net are not the same and bluster that is empty-headed or agenda filled will face pushback.

Pokemon Go has dealt with similar lawsuits. I have seen a sprawling mess of corruption and overtly malicious and invasive forays into private spaces that are clearly outrageously illegal, parasitic, intrusive and corrupt.

[usaf-vet]

27. Is it time to shelf this fool in the WH? In my personal feelings the time is long ago passed/

[IronLionZion]

28. Dude probably thinks we won't have forest fires if we cut down all the forests

[Hope22]

29. He must have a master list of these things!

The grift of the month club!! He certainly doesn’t think them up!

[catchnrelease]

52. Project 2025 n/t

[True Dough]

30. Jeez!

Who's going to do all the raking of the forest floor now?

[Exp]

31. Conservative, rural, Trump-votong, tourist, moumtain towns are not benefitting from this. Could this be a ramping up

for more mining and logging dirty jobs? For sure. This will destroy our environment even more and wipe out a natural legacy.

[aggiesal]

33. As bad as this is, I"m wondering how many people in the U.S. Forest Service voted for Mierda47? n/t

[Exp]

42. a LOT nt

[JoseBalow]

35. Vandalism

Everything he touches turns to shit. This asshole's reign of destruction must be stopped

[calimary]

63. And shit is what WE are left having to deal with after he's gone.

PLEASE, Dear God. Help us get through this with at least some of our country’s national beauty remaining untouched.

[Frasier Balzov]

38. So the termite king finally attacks the forests.

[AverageOldGuy]

39. And sell off public land to developers

National forests - which are managed by the Forest Service - are multi-use: camping, hiking, hunting, bicycle trails, logging.

Sell the national forests to developers to build McMansions that only Trump donors can afford.

We need to alert all the hunters we know because I guarantee you damn near all of them hunt on national forest land.

[KentuckyWoman]

41. Easier to rape the resources without the Forest Service.

It is the new age of robber barons. They'll log and strip mine Independence Pass and sell the contract for Pike's Peak to Six Flags Entertainment Corp.

[mercuryblues]

46. Who's going to rake the forests now?

[cstanleytech]

49. Another step towards setting up a potential coup? I'm hoping not.

[Martin68]

50. I'm not a big fan of the Forestry Service whose main job seems to br maintaining national forests for harvesting by

lumbering corporations, but this also seem like on more step in taking our national park system apart piece by piece.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

54. Tragic!!!

[Martin Eden]

56. Is it possible to hate this administration more than I already do?

Yes, I keep finding out that I can.

[Joinfortmill]

57. Oh, man, die already you menace to the world.

[Blue Owl]

59. Hey Donny go eat shit and die you fat fucking fuck

[MadameButterfly]

62. Maybe they weren't raking the forests well enough

[pansypoo53219]

64. undone later like killing pbs/npr. all illegal decrees by the fat preznit.

[Initech]

65. Couldn't we just dismantle him instead?

[jmowreader]

66. This is really going to hurt states like Idaho

One of our biggest industries in Idaho is tourism, and a lot of those tourists come here for one specific thing: to visit our national forests. Without national forests - and believe you me, the GOP would like nothing better than to privatize them all - that income stream disappears.

[Tree Lady]

67. They obviously don't care about tourism

Because no one wants to come here anymore.

[summer_in_TX]

68. 193 MILLION acres - the largest body of public land anywhere. Not just in America, but the whole world.

Being commodified. The new headquarters of the National Forest Service moved to Utah? The home of the most rabid anti-public land ideologues.

All the science lost: fifty research stations across thirty-one states are shutting down, and with them go decades of long-term scientific data on wildfire behavior, endangered species, watershed health, and climate patterns. Thanks for sharing that, jeffreyi.

Some of the best documentation and explanation of what the Trump administration is doing is from the More Than Just Parks substack, co-founded by award-winning filmmakers and conservationists Jim and Will Pattiz. Their careers have involved capturing and telling the stories of our beautiful wild spaces.

They have an interactive map where we can all see where the threats are. Mapping the Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service to show every regional office, every research station, what they protect, and what you can do to stop it.

[summer_in_TX]

69. Can the states do anything to rescue the data and these highly knowledgeable scientists?

Do States Have a Secret Weapon to Counter Trump's Forest Service and Medicaid Cuts Before the Damage Becomes Permanent?
Christopher Armitage

The Forest Service emergency offers a second and more immediate use of the same [emergency powers] authority. The scientists who staff those fifty research stations have individual assignment letters coming in sixty days. Most of them will not move. States can hire them before they disperse, using emergency procurement authority to skip the year-long hiring processes that would otherwise apply. More urgently, those research stations contain decades of data, physical sample libraries, long-term monitoring records, the kind of scientific foundation that cannot be rebuilt once it is gone.¹⁵ Emergency grants to secure, digitize, and transfer that data to state universities and research institutions could preserve irreplaceable knowledge that the federal reorganization would otherwise scatter or destroy.

A judge can rule in eighteen months that the Forest Service reorganization was unlawful. That ruling does not reassemble the research stations. It does not rehire the scientists who spent those eighteen months building careers elsewhere. It does not reconstruct forty years of monitoring data that nobody preserved before the Portland station went dark. Courts restore legal status. They do not restore dissolved institutions, and the people running this reorganization understand that perfectly. The emergency powers argument does not ignore that reality; it exploits the same logic in reverse. Act now. Hire the scientists before they sign elsewhere. Secure the data before the stations close.

[leanforward]

71. Do they realize the damage done to Rural Americans

They being the Hysterical Society, the Federalist Society and others etc. the rural states will be hard hit economically. Then all of that diminishing returns has an impact on state budgets. It will get hunger bad and small businesses will close.

[ecstatic]

70. People so much smarter than tRump came up with these agencies

for a reason. Just like they came up with the pandemic agencies that he tore down shortly before covid.

Just because he doesn't know what that reason is, doesn't mean he should be allowed to just destroy everything that we've built.

Our constitution really has too many holes in it.

It's heartbreaking that one man is allowed to do all of this. He's taking us back to the 1800s.