Former Vermont resident faces federal firearm charge related to killing of border patrol agent
The I-91 highway southbound lane in Coventry on Wednesday, January 29, 2025. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Federal authorities in Vermont have charged a former Coventry resident with making false statements to buy firearms that were later used in a shootout last month that killed a border patrol agent in the same Northeast Kingdom town.
Michelle Zajko, 32, allegedly provided a false address when buying three firearms from the Last Frontier gun store in Mount Tabor in February 2024, according to charging documents filed Tuesday in federal court in Burlington.
According to the filings, two of those guns were later traced back to Teresa Youngblut, of Washington state, and Felix Bauckholt, a German national, who were involved in the Jan. 20 shootout on Interstate 91. Bauckholt and David Maland, a border patrol agent, were killed in that incident.
That afternoon, after Maland pulled over a Toyota Prius with North Carolina license plates, according to court documents, Youngblut came out of the vehicle and opened fire. Bauckholt, a passenger in the car, also drew a gun, court records stated, but was killed before firing a shot.
Youngblut has since pleaded not guilty to federal firearms offenses in connection with the shootout and has been held in custody without bail. Youngblut has not been charged directly in Maland’s killing and the FBI has declined to answer questions about who fired the shot that killed the border patrol agent.
Following the incident, the court records stated, Youngblut was found in “direct possession” of a Glock .40-caliber pistol and Bauckholt had a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield .380-caliber pistol in a holster on his waistband — both guns that Zajko had purchased in February 2024.
Security camera footage shows Teresa Youngblut waiting in the front office of the Newport Inn & Suites. Footage courtesy of Samantha Camley
A third gun that Zajko allegedly purchased from the gun shop in Mount Tabor was a Ruger pistol. James Loomis, a task force agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, wrote, “To my knowledge, law enforcement has not recovered that firearm to date” in the charging document.
Loomis also wrote that the Vermont address Zajko provided to the Mount Tabor gun shop when she purchased the three firearms was false, since she had moved out of that residence prior to buying the guns.
That residence is a house in Coventry, although it has an Orleans mailing address.
The charging documents do not describe how the guns got from Zajko to Youngblut and Bauckholt.
But according to data from license plate readers in New York state, a car registered to Bauckholt — the same one that Maland pulled over in the fatal traffic stop last month — was recorded driving north on Interstate 87 on Feb. 13, 2024 and south on the same road three days later.
That data “would be consistent with Bauckholt’s vehicle being driven towards southwestern Vermont” the day before Zajko bought the Glock and the Smith & Wesson pistols, and “being driven away from Vermont two days” after the purchase, according to the court documents.
“Michelle Zajko may have returned to Vermont specifically to purchase the firearms using her still-valid Vermont Driver’s License that bore the address of her previous residence,” the court records read.
A day after the shooting, the ATF sent an alert to federally licensed firearms dealers asking them to contact ATF if they had “any information about transfers or attempted transfers” of firearms to Zajko.
Zajko was one of three people arrested over the weekend in Maryland and linked to a series of violent acts across the country.
Zajko, Daniel Arthur Blank, 26, and Jack Amadeus LaSota, had separate bail hearings late Tuesday morning in the District Court of Maryland for Allegany County.
Zajko, Blank and LaSota, who is also known as “Ziz,” appeared remotely for their court hearings Tuesday from the jail where they have been held since their arrests Sunday.
Clockwise from left: Jack Lasota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank. Photos courtesy of Allegany County Sheriff’s Office
Judge Erich Bean, who presided in each of the bail hearings, ordered all three individuals held without bail as the cases against them proceed, according to court documents. Their next hearings are set for March 24, the filings stated.
Allegany County State’s Attorney James Elliott, whose office is prosecuting the cases, did not immediately return phone and email messages Tuesday seeking comment.
The three individuals have been linked by court records, acquaintances and media reports to multiple killings across the U.S., including a 2022 double homicide in Pennsylvania of Zajko’s parents, the January murder of a Vallejo, California landlord, and the shooting in Coventry, Vermont.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were taken into custody Sunday after a resident of Frostburg, Maryland, contacted Maryland State Police reporting seeing three “suspicious” people on his property with two white box trucks, according to charging documents.
Responding officers found Zajko, Blank and LaSota in the box trucks parked on the resident’s land, the filings stated. All three were uncooperative and refused to provide their names, according to the charging documents, and were eventually taken into custody.
Both Zajko and LaSota were wearing gun belts with ammunition and a handgun was seized from Zajko’s front waistband, the filings added.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” charging documents say.
‘Finally Free’: Leonard Peltier heads home to North Dakota
ICT Staff
Leonard Peltier is free at last.
The longtime American Indian Movement activist was released Tuesday from federal prison in Sumterville, Florida, after 49 years behind bars in what he has long maintained was a wrongful conviction in the deaths of two federal agents during a 1975 standoff at Pine Ridge.
“Today I am finally free!” Peltier said in a statement released by NDN Collective, which has led the recent effort to win his release from prison. “They have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit!”
Peltier, 80, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, left in an SUV and did not stop to speak to nearly two dozen supporters gathered outside the prison gates, The Associated Press reported.
He was set to return to his tribal homelands in North Dakota, where a homecoming celebration and community feed were scheduled for Wednesday.
“Leonard Peltier is free!” Nick Tilsen, founder and chief executive at NDN Collective, said in the statement. “He never gave up fighting for his freedom so we never gave up fighting for him. Today our elder Leonard Peltier walks into the open arms of his people.”
Tilsen has called Peltier “the longest living Indigenous political prisoner in the history of the United States.”
Supporters of AIM activist Leonard Peltier await his release from of the Federal Correctional Complex Coleman in Sumterville, Florida, on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. Shown are, from left, Mike McBride, Ray St. Clair, center, and Tracker Gina Marie Rangel Quinones. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
In poor health and after years of fighting for his release, Peltier was finally granted clemency by then-President Joe Biden just minutes before Biden left office on Jan. 20. Biden’s order will allow Peltier to serve out the remainder of his sentence with home confinement on the reservation.
“This moment would not be happening without [then-Interior] Secretary Deb Haaland and President Biden responding to the calls for Peltier’s release that have echoed through generations of grassroots organizing,” said Holly Cook Macarro, who handles government affairs for NDN Collective. “Today is a testament to the many voices who fought tirelessly for Peltier’s freedom and justice.”
Peltier, who was an activist with the American Indian Movement during the 1975 standoff, has long maintained he was wrongfully convicted. He was convicted of murder in the deaths of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, but those convictions were overturned, leaving him with convictions for aiding and abetting in their deaths.
A woman who testified that she saw Peltier shoot the agents later recanted, saying she had been coerced into making the statements.
“He represents every person who’s been roughed up by a cop, profiled, had their children harassed at school,” said Nick Estes, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who advocated for Peltier’s release.
Supporters gathered outside the prison Tuesday, waving signs saying “Free Leonard Peltier.”
“We never thought he would get out,” said Ray St. Clair, a member of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe who traveled to Florida to be there for Peltier’s release. “It shows you should never give up hope. We can take this repairing the damage that was done. This is a start.”
Not everyone cheered his release, however, Former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who resigned as the Donald Trump took office, called Peltier “a remorseless killer” in a private letter to Biden obtained by The Associated Press.
Peltier had long sought release from prison, and was most recently denied parole in July. He would not have been eligible again for consideration until 2026.
He thanked his supporters Tuesday in the written statement and looked ahead to the homecoming.
“Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom. I am finally going home. I look forward to seeing my friends, my family, and my community. It’s a good day today.”
This article contains material from The Associated Press.
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North Carolina churches join lawsuit against policy allowing ICE into places of worship
Iglesias de Carolina del Norte se unieron a una demanda junto a más de veinticuatro entidades religiosas, en contra de la política que permite al Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, en inglés) en “lugares sensibles”, incluyendo lugares de culto.
Mississippi Researchers Investigate Growing Tick-Borne Allergy to Red Meat
Mississippians are no strangers to ticks, but residents of the Magnolia State may be surprised to learn that these pesky parasites are capable of spreading a food allergy that makes red meat particularly hazardous. The allergy, known as alpha-gal syndrome, affects hundreds of thousands of Americans.
” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” title=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” />As organizers prepare for the biennial Rally for Public Lands, the conservation world faces down a changing climate, an administration determined to dismantle environmental protections, and its own internal contradictions.
Rural North Carolina counties would suffer most from Medicaid cuts
A push by Congressional Republicans to slash federal funding for Medicaid could have “dire consequences” for the more than 1.2 million rural North Carolinians who depend on the program.
That was the key takeaway from a report released in January by the Center for Children and Families at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. Rural communities, the researchers wrote, are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts being contemplated in Washington because they make up a disproportionately large share of the state’s Medicaid enrollment.
A little over 39 percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries in North Carolina live in rural counties, according to an NC Health News analysis of the latest enrollment data from the state Department of Health and Human Services. A county is considered rural if it has fewer than 250 residents for every square mile of land.
Suburban counties, which are more densely populated, account for nearly 29 percent of the state’s beneficiaries. Urban counties with large cities make up about 32 percent.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are weighing various options to reduce federal spending on Medicaid in an effort to offset the cost of President Donald Trump’s plan to extend trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts. But experts say all of the proposals floated so far would most adversely affect the same rural communities that carried Trump to victory in North Carolina.
Trump was the overwhelming favorite among rural voters in the 2024 presidential election, defeating former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 66 of the state’s 78 rural counties. However, NC Health News found that some of those Trump-supporting counties have more residents enrolled in Medicaid than residents who voted, underscoring the program’s importance to rural populations.
In rural Robeson County, for example, Trump was the top vote-getter among the 47,094 residents who cast ballots. Nearly 66,800 people in Robeson — or roughly 57 percent of the county’s population — are covered by Medicaid.
The election happened less than a year after North Carolina became the 40th state to expand access to Medicaid in December 2023. Under expansion, the maximum allowed household income for eligibility increased to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or just under $36,000 annually for a family of three.
More than 600,000 newly eligible residents have joined the rolls since expansion took effect, swelling the state’s total enrollment to 3 million. NC DHHS has said the majority of people who gained coverage through expansion live in rural counties. Eight out of 10 of the new enrollees are adults with jobs, the statistics show.
“Medicaid is important in every state,” Leonardo Cuello, a research professor at Georgetown, told an audience of North Carolina-based health advocates during a recent webinar. “But man, is it really extra important in states with lots of rural areas.”
Children at risk
While Medicaid is most commonly associated with low-income adults, Erica Palmer Smith, executive director of the advocacy group NC Child, said the program is “vitally important” to children in the state.
“We have so many children who are dependent on the services provided through Medicaid for things as simple as their regular well checks,” she said in an interview with NC Health News. “But also when those children have a medical emergency or when they have a medical need, they don’t have another means for coverage than through our Medicaid program.”
That’s especially true for children in rural areas. Georgetown estimated that 237,800 children in rural North Carolina counties were covered by Medicaid in 2023, which translates to about 30 percent of all children living in rural areas based on population projections by the N.C. Department of Commerce.
“So many families across North Carolina are dependent on Medicaid for their children’s coverage, and so there is a lot of, I think, concern by a lot of those families around what could happen,” Smith said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but there is definitely a lot of concern because this is so important to those kids and their families.”
Medicaid begins benefiting many children before they’re even born.
Cuello said about 38 percent of North Carolina’s births are covered by Medicaid. The state, he added, pays less than a third of the $10,000 cost to deliver a baby from a mother enrolled in the program.
“With Medicaid, North Carolina can pay for more than three births with $10,000, so you’re getting three for the price of one,” he said. “Imagine if Medicaid goes away and you still have the same number of births to pay for.”
Hospitals in jeopardy
Cuts to Medicaid could also mean pregnant women in rural counties have fewer places to give birth.
Mark Holmes, director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC Chapel Hill, said the program is a major source of funding for the state’s rural hospitals, many of which are struggling financially.
“Without Medicaid, many of these people on Medicaid would be uninsured,” Holmes said in an interview with NC Health News. “Medicaid decreases the uncompensated costs that hospitals are covering. We might call this ‘charity care’ in a more layperson kind of language, but the notion is that if you are sick and you go to the emergency room, they’re going to take care of you. And if you have Medicaid, then hospitals are getting money for it.”
Twelve rural hospitals in North Carolina have either shut down or stopped providing inpatient care since 2005, according to data from the Sheps Center. At least 10 other hospitals in rural parts of the state are at risk of going under.
If they do, residents will be forced to travel farther for essential services. That would exacerbate existing barriers to care for Medicaid beneficiaries in rural counties, who Holmes said “tend to be less able to transport to other locations.”
“They’re more likely to stay and get their care locally, whereas someone who lives in a rural area but has a job an hour away in an urban setting might get their health care there,” he said. “Someone who lives in a rural area who’s on Medicaid may be more likely to get their care locally, and rural hospitals fill that important role for those local populations.”
Cuello said that rural hospitals “rely on Medicaid payments to literally keep the lights on.”
“If you slash Medicaid funding for North Carolina, some of these hospitals that depend on Medicaid reimbursement are going to close, and that has health impacts for people in rural areas who have nowhere else to go,” he said, adding that hospital closures often have a ripple effect on local economies.
Previous research by Holmes has found that rural hospital closures are associated with a per capita income loss of between $703 and $1,300, along with an uptick in local unemployment rates.
“These hospitals are big employers and the economic engines of some of these rural counties,” Cuello said.
Broader concerns
Reduced federal funding for Medicaid could have other ramifications for rural areas.
Cuello noted that the program is the nation’s largest payer for substance use disorder treatment. It allows people in rural counties that have been ravaged by the opioid epidemic to access addiction and recovery services that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
The North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reports that in the previous year, rates of opioid overdose fell by about 27 percent in 2024, the year after expansion went into effect.
Medicaid also pays for more than 60 percent of the state’s nursing home stays. That coverage is particularly important for rural populations, which skew older than those of urban and suburban counties.
“Medicare does not, repeat, does not pay for nursing homes,” Cuello said, referring to the similarly named program for older adults and people with disabilities. “It is actually Medicaid that pays for ongoing nursing home needs for seniors and similar placements for people with disabilities.”
Health care isn’t the only thing at stake. North Carolina receives about $14 billion a year from the federal government to run Medicaid, freeing up state dollars for other priorities like education.
Cuello said less than $9 billion of the state’s General Fund is earmarked for Medicaid, while the state pays more than $20 billion on K-12 schools. But that calculus could change if the feds decide to scale back spending on Medicaid.
“All of those federal dollars that are coming in for Medicaid are allowing the state to spend twice as much of its state dollars on education as it does on Medicaid,” he said. “If you take away the federal Medicaid dollars? Yes, that hurts health care, but also education and other state priorities — because how does the state sustain its high spend on education if it loses its biggest source of federal revenue?”
Speaking out
Amber Mosher grew up in a rural North Carolina town about 20 minutes from the nearest hospital.
Her parents, who worked in construction and retail, couldn’t afford health insurance. They relied on Medicaid to pay for Mosher’s health needs.
“It is how I got my vaccinations,” she said. “It’s how I was able to see a doctor when I was sick.”
Now the vice president of health policy at Washington-based communications firm GMMB, Mosher said it is important for Medicaid beneficiaries to share their own experiences with federal lawmakers.
“Sometimes folks can get lost in the sauce when you talk about data and statistics,” she said. “But when you pair that with stories about real people, real health care providers and real small town business owners, it really helps folks understand the real-life impacts of something like cutting federal Medicaid dollars.”
Mosher said GMMB is working with Georgetown to “help folks tell the story of North Carolina and how Medicaid supports your rural communities.” NC Child is also soliciting testimonials from families who have benefited from the program.
The organizations hope that members of the state’s delegation in Washington can be persuaded to remove Medicaid from the chopping block if enough of their constituents speak up.
“Everyone in North Carolina has friends, family, neighbors or coworkers who are being supported by Medicaid right now, whether they know it or not,” Cuello said, adding that people “might not stand for cuts to Medicaid if they understood what Medicaid is doing.”
Dive deeper
NC Health News analyzed data from multiple state agencies and organizations while reporting this story. Check out this spreadsheet for a county-level look at what we found.
Federal cuts could affect all of Virginia — a new committee hopes to determine how
The need to explore the effects of federal budget cuts on Virginians crystallized for House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott when a neighbor saw him outside of his house in early February, stopped him and asked, “What are you doing to protect us?”
His neighbor is an employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She became alarmed by new directives that had been handed down to employees since Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump took office, Scott said.
“She said, ‘Y’all need to look into it now,’” he said during an interview Wednesday.
Three days after the conversation with his neighbor, Scott, a Democrat from Portsmouth, called for the formation of a bipartisan emergency committee to study the potential effects of federal workforce and funding reductions on Virginia. On Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees.
Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders since he was sworn in. He also formed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is led by Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire and advisor to the president who has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Since its formation, DOGE has begun work to dismantle federal agencies, including USAID and the U.S. Department of Education — potentially with more in its sights. The Trump administration has also announced potential funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and an effort to freeze all federal grants, which sent health care providers reeling.
The possible statewide effect of federal funding cuts
“It’s fresh, to everyone, what’s happening at the federal level, and so I think it’s prudent of the speaker to look forward and prepare, but beyond that it’s kind of a guessing game right now to what’s truly going to happen,” Del. Tony Wilt, R-Rockingham County, said. Wilt was one of 12 lawmakers tapped to serve on the emergency committee. “We really don’t know what we’re going to be facing as a state.”
Rural school systems get a large portion of their funding from the state, and the biggest source of state funding is the income tax. The region in Virginia that generates the most income tax is Northern Virginia, accounting for about 40% of the state’s revenue. That means state-funded projects, from schools to roads to prisons, owe a large portion of their funding to the economic health of Northern Virginia.
The emergency committee established by Scott on Feb. 4 is tasked with assessing the potential economic and budgetary consequences of federal cutbacks and providing policy recommendations to mitigate negative effects on Virginia’s families, economy and state budget.
“Right now, they’re taking a sledgehammer to everything. They’re not coming in a precise way, in a thoughtful way,” Scott said. “This committee is set up to really take a look at the facts, the hard data, the sobering boring facts, and let’s see if what we believe our thesis is, is true.”
That thesis, currently, is that when the federal government cuts federal jobs, or funding for health care, transportation projects, public education, agriculture and conservation projects, it hurts Virginia, Scott said.
“I don’t want to be in a position where we are panicking,” he said.
Virginia also ranks as the top state in the nation for federal contract awards, totaling $106 billion in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
The federal workforce reductions, which include a deferred resignation program aimed at cutting federal employment by up to 10%, and the mass termination of federal office leases could have significant repercussions for the state’s economy, particularly in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads region, Scott’s office said in a statement.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget also issued a recent pause on the disbursement of federal funding, which could create funding gaps for essential services. Impacts could be felt in everything from infrastructure projects to social programs, Scott’s office said.
“When you go out to Southwest, they’re going to be the ones hurting,” Scott said. “Some of the poorest communities that rely on these services, that we all pay taxes in to make sure that we take care of our most vulnerable communities, they’re in Southwest and Southside. … They’re going to get left further behind.”
The committee’s charge
“This is about ensuring that Virginia remains prepared and resilient in the face of federal policy shifts,” Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax County, who is slated to chair the emergency committee, said in a statement.
“Our state budget must remain structurally sound, and we must take steps to protect our communities from sudden economic disruptions. The committee’s work will be critical in identifying ways to mitigate the effects of federal cuts while continuing to support Virginia families and businesses,” he continued.
The 12-member committee will be tasked with:
Collecting and analyzing data on the potential scope of workforce and funding cuts;
Assessing the likely economic and budgetary impacts on Virginia;
Engaging with stakeholders, including state agencies, businesses and nonprofits, to understand their concerns and gather mitigation strategies; and
Providing policy recommendations for the 2026 General Assembly session to address the challenges posed by these federal reductions.
Del. Ellen Campbell, R-Rockbridge County. Photo by Bob Brown.
“We work together, we collaborate and we look at what needs to be done in the commonwealth and we try to come up with good policy ideas and decisions,” Del. Ellen Campbell, R-Rockbridge County, said regarding the bipartisan work before the committee.
Campbell has worked on a number of bipartisan special committees, including the Rural Healthcare Committee that was established in 2024, the Behavioral Health Commission and the Early Childhood Education Commission. She noted that the charge of the emergency committee, as it stands before its first organizational meeting, which will need to take place before May 1, is pretty “broad brush.”
Members of the committee plan to travel across the commonwealth, not just to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads but to the Southwest and Southside regions of the state. It is expected to produce a final report with findings and recommendations by Dec. 15.
Scott noted that there could be some good to come of the federal shakeup, but he said that guardrails need to be in place. From a state budgetary standpoint, lawmakers need to be responsible and prepare for federal funding cuts, he said.
“We have to be ready because our constitution requires a balanced budget, so we have to see what the feds are going to do,” he said. “We may have to come back for a special [session] and shave a lot of stuff out of our budget.”
Trump’s halt on federal spending could cost West Virginia millions to clean up hazardous orphaned gas wells
West Virginia could lose out on millions of dollars earmarked to help state regulators clean up abandoned natural gas wells as a result of an executive order halting federal funding that President Donald Trump signed on the day of his inauguration.
Regulators previously estimated they’d receive more than $200 million in federal funding to help clean up the thousands of orphaned wells scattered throughout the state. However, West Virginia could lose out on nearly $90 million of those funds.
The cleanup of abandoned wells has been a growing liability for the state as operators have walked away from their nonproducing wells, leaving them unplugged. If the operator of an abandoned well is unknown or files for bankruptcy, it becomes “orphaned,” and the cleanup falls to state regulators. West Virginia regulators previously estimated it costs about $124,000 to clean up an orphaned well.
Currently, regulators are responsible for cleaning up more than 6,000 orphaned wells in West Virginia. However, that number is considered to be greatly underestimated as there are tens of thousands more that aren’t documented.
Unplugged, nonproducing wells can pose significant health and environmental threats, including contaminating groundwater and emitting methane and other air pollutants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the unplugged, non-producing oil and gas wells emitted 275,000 metric tons of methane in 2020; equivalent to emissions of more than 1.7 million gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $4.7 billion to states, tribes, and the Federal Bureau of Land Management to help clean up orphaned wells as an effort to address some of the damage left by the oil and gas industry. The money that was awarded was set to be distributed in installments, but Trump’s executive order halted those.
So far, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection has received $56.1 million, according to DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher. The agency expects to receive at least another $88.8 million, but that could change given the “fluidity of this situation,” added Fletcher. The state could get additional money if they spend the initial funding well.
Hours after he was sworn into office, Trump signed an executive order that immediately halted federal spending appropriated by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Under the signed order, no funds from the legislation can be disbursed until White House officials determine whether the funding aligns with the executive order and administration’s policy.
The executive order also halted spending from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included billions of dollars for investments in clean energy and climate change mitigation.
The federal funding has played a key role in helping West Virginia officials clean up orphaned wells faster than in previous years. The initial $25 million grant awarded to the state by the federal government in 2023 helped plug 202 orphaned wells — about 10 times the number of wells state regulators cleaned up with state funds in fiscal year 2023.
The White House budget office issued a memo the week after Trump’s inauguration halting federal grants and loans. The action was temporarily blocked by federal judges. Though the memo was later rescinded by the White House, courts later determined that the Trump administration had kept funds frozen in violation of those federal orders.
Many DEP programs rely on federal grants for funding, including one that cleans up abandoned coal mines and another that provides money for water and sewer programs.
While these programs can continue as normal during short funding pauses, Fletcher said, “Longer interruptions could be more problematic.”
Large earthquake strikes West Texas, among strongest ever in state
The 5.0 magnitude earthquake is tied for the sixth strongest in state history. Scientists have warned for years that increased fracking in West Texas is causing higher earthquake activity.
Valentine’s Day massacre: Uncounted throng of Wyomingites fired by Trump administration
A wave of federal-employee layoffs swept the nation Friday, leaving an undisclosed number of Wyoming workers from multiple agencies suddenly jobless and bereft of explanations in its wake. How many people and agencies have been affected, what roles have been eliminated, which communities have been hardest hit and many other basic questions remain unanswered by the government, despite repeated inquiries to multiple offices.
Amid the confusion and chaos, patterns emerged through interviews with a diverse array of fresh-out-of-work staffers and their advocates: concern for agencies’ ability to execute their missions today, and in the future; fear of public harm from lost services and damaged resources; and expectations that Native Americans will be disproportionately impacted, both by lost jobs and broken commitments.
Wyoming’s top elected officials, meanwhile, have largely celebrated the Trump administration’s actions.
WyoFile agreed to let both newly laid-off and still-employed staffers remain anonymous because we found their fears of potential reprisals to be credible and realistic.
In the absence of agency responsiveness, we’ve not been able to independently corroborate everything they shared.
Stability gone
For nearly seven years, a U.S. Forest Service employee based out of a mid-sized Wyoming town worked mostly as a horse packer. In that role, he helped haul timber for bridge projects, transport alpine lake water samples and pack gear for hydrologists, biologists or trail crews.
He loved the lifestyle and had a knack for working with horses. So he was thrilled last year when his job status changed to “permanent seasonal.”
“When I finally became a permanent employee with the Forest Service, I had committed to this being my career,” he said. “It had a lot of stuff going for it in terms of benefits and stability, or what felt like stability.”
A U.S. Forest Service employee speaks at an interagency wildfire briefing in May 2024. (Madelyn Beck/WyoFile)
He settled in, buying property with his fiancé and planning for the long haul. Now, however, all that supposed stability “is just gone.”
He was just a couple months shy of completing the mandatory one-year probationary phase of his new position. That left him vulnerable to the thousands of jobs cut by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the Forest Service’s parent agency — this week as part of an aggressive Trump administration campaign to reduce the federal workforce.
His supervisor called him Thursday to break the news, he said, and he received his formal notice via email on Friday, effective immediately.
He thinks this will likely mark the end of his career with the agency, and said he will seek other work in the area. But he worries about the state of a workforce already stretched so thin it’s barely able to adequately manage an invaluable resource.
“Mostly I’m just concerned for the resource at this point,” he said. “Like the trail maintenance that the community has seen over the years, that is going to be gone. There’s just no one to do it anymore. So I think that’s going to be one of the first impacts that people notice.”
Long term, he said, “I just hope our public lands are still here. For me, that means more than working for the Forest Service, like just having a place to go.”
He studied wildlife and fisheries management in college, and worked his way up through internships and trail crews before getting his job in Wyoming. He is also concerned about the many young people who were starting their careers in the agency — because they represented the future of the Forest Service.
“The people who are getting cut right now are the Forest Service’s future employees, the future leaders of the Forest Service,” he said. “It’s just wrong, what they are doing to people.”
‘A new day’
Meanwhile, in Wyoming’s Capitol building Friday, the state’s U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican, spoke to legislators in both chambers. She described the rapid changes under Trump as having many benefits for Wyoming.
The president, she told the Senate, “is working with lightning speed to make major changes that are going to be so good for Wyoming.”
Members of Wyoming’s House of Representatives greet U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) in the Capitol Building in March 2021. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile)
Changes she referenced involve energy production and women’s sports. She also lauded the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
“What Elon Musk is doing is incredibly important to America,” she said. “He is ferreting out true waste, fraud and abuse.”
“It’s an absolute new day in Washington,” Lummis, who has held state or federal office for decades, said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Deep cuts
That optimism was in stark contrast to the uncertainty expressed by federal employees to WyoFile.
Staffers at western Wyoming’s two largest national forests, the Bridger-Teton and Shoshone, were shaken by the seemingly indiscriminate layoffs that swept across their federal agency late this week.
On the 2.4 million-acre Shoshone — the nation’s oldest national forest — roughly 20% of permanent workers were informed they were out of a job, according to a U.S. Forest Service staffer in Wyoming familiar with the layoffs. The losses hit some reaches of the Shoshone harder than others, with up to 40% of the non-fire staff being cut loose in some ranger districts, they told WyoFile.
A Biden administration decision to convert long-term seasonal employees into permanent seasonal employees likely inflated the number of lost jobs. Those converted federal workers were still considered “probationary” and every one of them who wasn’t a firefighter lost their jobs, according to the staffer.
“None of those people who just got hired permanently last year have a job anymore,” the federal worker said.
Ripple effects from the empty positions will inevitably reach the public, according to the source. Many fields and disciplines will be affected.
“It’s all different fields, from timber to recreation to people who are supposed to be clearing the trails, picking up garbage and replacing toilet paper,” the federal worker said. “Our office is going to have to close our doors to the public, because we won’t have front desk staff.”
This image of a Forest Service staffer illustrates the impacts of big crowds on national forest infrastructure. (Facebook/U.S. Forest Service Bridger-Teton National Forest)
Two federal government employees with connections to the Bridger-Teton National Forest reported that probationary employee layoffs there were also deep. Across the 3.4-million-acre forest, according to the sources, about 30 or more full-time staffers have been informed they’re losing their jobs.
Some ranger districts were hit harder than others, with the Jackson District losing eight staffers and the Pinedale District losing 10 employees, according to the staffer.
Communication about what’s happening from newly minted agency top brass under the Trump administration has been dismal, one of the sources said.
“This is terrible, it’s an absolutely terrible way to treat people,” the source said. “Morale is really low, we’re not getting any information. I find out more from r/fednews on Reddit than I hear from any sort of level of leadership.”
A spokesperson in the U.S. Forest Service’s Washington, D.C. headquarters declined to provide or corroborate layoff figures for Wyoming’s six national forests.
“[U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins] fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, loggers and the agriculture community,” the spokesperson said in an email. “As part of this effort, USDA has released individuals in their probationary period of employment.”
A harbinger
The federal layoffs, while hard to swallow for those affected, weren’t completely out of left field. Federal workers were already feeling uncertain after the Trump administration emailed the “Fork in the Road” letter.
The resignation offer excused those who accepted it from “all applicable in-person work requirements” while paying them through the end of September. For those who would not resign, the letter stated, “we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency.”
WyoFile first spoke with a federal employee about the mounting employment situation in Casper on Feb. 7. They followed up Friday to say they were fired.
The prospect of finding another job in Wyoming felt daunting, where options, in their fields of expertise, are slim. There are far more career opportunities outside the state, they added, which means uprooting families, including spouses who work in Wyoming communities.
“You’re going to have to cast a wider net than just Wyoming,” they said. “There’s just not that many specific job opportunities here for those people that are specialized.”
The weeks leading up to the layoff announcement have been uneasy, they said.
The normally interactive, boisterous and friendly daily atmosphere among work colleagues had turned quiet and even suspicious.
“You can feel distrust,” they said. “You can feel low morale and just anxiety in general, because every day, multiple times a day over the past two weeks, there’s been just a barrage of different orders, rulemakings — and they contradict one another. It changes constantly.
“Obviously, people fear for their jobs,” they added.
A line of visitors queues up for boat rides in Grand Teton National Park. (J. Bonney/National Park Service)
There’s also fear about what layoffs mean for Wyoming.
“It’s going to slow down approval processes, permitting — all of that stuff,” they said. “If you lose the people that keep those wheels greased, then stuff is going to grind to a halt, or at least become very slow and tedious.”
Most federal employees in Wyoming are not performing their jobs with partisan politics in mind, they said. Yet those workers are being inundated with a public discourse that paints them as either partisan or lazy — simply on the public dole, they said.
That sentiment is reflected in emails sent from the administration’s higher-ups in recent weeks.
“They have this language that was very clearly not written by a federal employee,” they said. “It has no formality, it has no professionalism and it has these snarky comments like, ‘We’re giving you the opportunity to quit being a lazy employee and you can go be more productive in the private sector,’” they said, summarizing the tone of emails. “The language in those letters is condescending and insulting.”
“I feel like this tactic — by the person who’s instigating it — their concept is that it’s an acceptable way to go about things,” they said. “But in the public- and in the civil-service sector, those are different people.
“For one, you take an oath before you’re hired. Everyone takes a live oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to serve the people of the United States, not an administration. And that’s different [than the private sector]. That feeling of dedication is different, I think, when you’re a civil servant. They’re not just doing a job just to make money and go home. There’s another component to it.”
Support for workers
Federal employee support groups, conservationists and advocates for tribes criticized the indiscriminate slashing. The Native Organizers Alliance said the actions could affect a host of agencies from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Indian Health Service and Bureau of Indian Education and might be illegal.
“Blanket layoffs … without a process in place to ensure that the federal agencies can carry out the duties … means that these actions potentially violate the law,” said Judith LeBlanc, executive director of Native Organizers Alliance.
“The largest single employer of Native people is the federal government, LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation from the lower Mississippi Valley said in a statement. “The federal government is legally responsible for ensuring that our Tribal programs are funded and run smoothly.”
Built in 1884 to serve as a calvary commissary, the Fort Washakie IHS clinic is one of the few original IHS clinics still in operation today. (Matthew Copeland/WyoFile)
National Parks supporters also waved a warning flag.
“Today, approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees lost their jobs,” Phil Francis, former Superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway and chairman of the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said Friday. He called the action to fire probationary employees — those who have been hired within a year or so — “shortsighted.”
“We are losing the future leaders of the National Park Service,” he said.
Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association agreed with the former superintendent, calling the widespread firing “reckless.”
The firings “could have serious public safety and health consequences,” she said in a statement Friday. “This isn’t how we treat the places we cherish or those who protect them.”
That the administration backed off its earlier hiring freeze on seasonal National Park workers brought limited relief. “These jobs should never have been in jeopardy,” Francis said.
Parks can fill some visitor services positions, Pierno said. But, she cautioned, the beginning of the visitor season is “just weeks away.”
Another Forest Service employee spoke of how the layoffs will ripple into Wyoming communities where federal workers buy homes, shop and enroll their children in schools.
“These people live and work in our communities,” the employee said.
Wyoming Workforce Services was not aware of federal employee dismissals, a spokesperson told WyoFile on Friday. The agency encourages “federal employees who may be affected by a layoff to contact their nearest Wyoming Workforce Center for assistance,” the spokesperson said. “These centers offer a range of individualized resources, including job search support and training opportunities. Our unemployment insurance website offers a portal for individuals to file unemployment insurance claims. Additional information can also be found on our website at dws.wyo.gov.”
