Vermont Frames, a Starksboro-based timber framing company, uses Canadian wood in many of the handmade frames it builds for homes and barns across New England.

Each year, the company imports about $350,000 worth of Douglas Fir timber from Canada, representing approximately a third of its wood supply, according to Kevin Moyer, the company’s owner.

With 25% tariffs on Canadian goods expected to take effect Tuesday, Moyer is preparing to pay a premium for that timber, which he said would eat into his already thin margins. 

“There are certainly going to be headwinds. We won’t be able to grow as much. I won’t be able to hire as many people as I want to,” Moyer said. “It hurts. It didn’t have to be this way.” 

Moyer is one of many Vermont business owners bracing for the impacts of President Donald Trump’s trade policy, which officials have said could dramatically shake up the state’s economy. Canada is Vermont’s number one trading partner, and the state imports over $2.5 billion in goods from its northern neighbor each year, according to the Canadian consul general in Boston. 

But as of late Monday afternoon, just hours before the levies were expected to take effect, Vermont officials and business leaders were still grappling with uncertainty over exactly which Canadian goods would actually be subject to tariffs.

“All of this is happening so quickly and in a way that’s not consistent with past practice,” said State Treasurer Mike Pieciak. “You worry that the uncertainty itself is going to bring about an economy that is not as confident and therefore not growing as robustly.”

Trump initially threatened to impose 25% tariffs on most imports from Canada and Mexico beginning on Feb. 4, with fuel imports from Canada receiving a lower 10% levy. 

After deciding to postpone the tariffs for 30 days, the Republican president last week announced that they would proceed as scheduled and take effect on Tuesday, potentially sparking a trade war with two of the U.S.’s closest trade partners, both of whom have threatened to declare retaliatory tariffs.

But since then, the Trump administration has yet to offer much in the way of specifics, Pieciak said, making it hard to parse the potentially sweeping impacts the tariffs could have on Vermont’s economy. 

“When things aren’t done with a scalpel but are rather done with a sledgehammer, then that has a broad impact,” said Pieciak, who formed a taskforce in January to assess the potential economic consequences of Trump’s policies. 

One area of the economy that could see a big impact is Vermont’s energy sector, which relies heavily on Canadian imports, purchasing about $775 million of electricity and $420 million of fossil fuels from Canada per year, according to the Canadian consulate general. 

But it remains unclear how much of those imports would be subject to the 10% tariff on Canadian energy.

“There are lots of questions on our mind that we need answers to before we can understand the implications for us,” said Rebecca Towne, CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative. 

According to Towne, the cooperative imports about 40% of its electricity from Hydro-Quebec, a Quebec based supplier of hydroelectric energy. Last month, Towne told VTDigger that the cooperative could see up to $2 million in extra costs in 2025. 

But on Monday, one day before the tariffs were expected to take effect, Towne said there was still too much uncertainty surrounding the policy to determine any real impact on price increases for consumers.

“We still have to wait for more clarity from the federal administration to understand how this would work,” Towne said. “Like, we’re not even sure what entities are responsible for paying the tariff and how that would be measured and how we would report and pay.”

Vermont Gas Systems, the state’s only natural gas distribution company, gets almost all of its gas from Canada, according to public affairs director Dylan Giambatista. The levies could lead to price increases for more than 50,000 customers that rely on the company.

But Giambatista said that Vermont Gas still had more questions than answers about how the tariffs may impact gas imports.

“We are waiting for Federal guidance that will determine how these import tariffs will be applied, at which time we will be able to estimate rate impacts and address them through the regulatory process,” Giambatista said in a written statement.

Alison Hope, the executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association, said that, despite the uncertainty surrounding other sectors, the state’s sugaring industry was primed to take a hit from the tariffs. 

According to Hope, the tax threatens to raise costs on imported equipment for local sugar manufacturers even as it makes imported maple products themselves more expensive.  

“It’s all so intertwined that I don’t see in the long run how a 25% Canadian tariff could be favorable,” Hope said. “It’s going to have an impact in a number of different ways.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: As Trump forges ahead with tariff policy, Vermont braces for a trade war.

Workers at senior centers across the state take calls from senior West Virginians requesting enrollment in the Meals on Wheels program, but many end up on waitlists and even more go without the help.  

State officials ensure about 25,000 seniors around the state receive home-delivered meals. 

But more than 1,000, including those who can’t prepare meals due to mobility problems and those who live in isolated areas without transportation, were on waitlists as of October, even though they met stringent eligibility requirements.

Even more seniors have asked for assistance but didn’t meet requirements to be on the waitlist. Some live too far away from providers’ service areas, but service areas are dependent on funding.

The Bureau of Senior Services has said it would take $2 million in additional funding to eliminate the waitlists, and previous Bureau officials requested that money. 

But new Bureau officials aren’t asking lawmakers to pass a budget with more funding reserved for the program.

In fact, about a month into the job, the new Commissioner of the Bureau of Senior Services Dianna Graves said she plans to audit the agency to make sure the funds it is expending are truly needed. But she said she’d like to serve more people.

Graves noted that in Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s State of the State address, he said his budget would include a 2% cut. He directed other state officials to figure out how to cut costs, as he says he wants to do more with less.

Graves gave a budget proposal to state revenue officials without that cut but also without the $2 million increase needed to eliminate waitlists. That proposal was incorporated into Morrisey’s budget proposal presented to lawmakers.

“I’m grateful. I’m very grateful that seniors did not see a budget decrease,” she said.

She also said some counties don’t have waitlists due to county funding and fundraising, and she hopes to see more of that.

When asked about the waitlists, since they wouldn’t be eliminated in Morrisey’s proposal, Morrisey sent a statement through a spokesperson, saying that the “hallmark of Governor Morrisey’s administration is fiscal responsibility.” 

West Virginia lawmakers are under no obligation to pass the governor’s budget proposal as written. 

But senior centers have said they need more funding for Meals on Wheels in previous years as well and lawmakers didn’t allocate it.

And during Graves’ budget presentation to lawmakers, several asked questions indicating they’d like to see the Bureau’s funding be reduced. 

The need for the Meals on Wheels program has increased for years, according to Jennifer Brown, president of the West Virginia Directors of Senior and Community Services.

But she said some seniors who could use the assistance likely don’t even know the program exists.

Brown, who is also the director of the Council on Aging, which provides services in a multi-county region in the southern part of the state, said centers do their best to help seniors who call, but she can’t promote the program in good faith.

“We don’t normally advertise our nutrition programs, as far as Meals on Wheels goes, because we know there’s always a waitlist,” she said.

Brown said she’s hopeful the Legislature will increase funding for senior services, at least next fiscal year, if the state’s more financially stable.  In the meantime, she said sometimes neighbors report concerns for seniors. 

Following those calls, senior center workers have responded to find people with empty refrigerators.

More than 100,000 West Virginians 60 and over, about 20 percent, have limited or uncertain access to enough food, according to a 2024 Meals on Wheels fact sheet based on 2021 data. 

In McDowell County, 70 people are on the waitlist.

Donald Reed, executive director of the McDowell County Commission on Aging, said isolation is a main contributor to people ending up on the program or waitlist. 

“They don’t have a large family or support network, because those family members have moved away,” he said.

Lucreatia Ford, a regular visitor to the senior center in McDowell County, noted that in the county, poverty is widespread and grocery stories are few and far between. She knows other seniors who struggle to get to them. 

“The majority of the people here are seniors,” she said.

Brown said one reason the meal delivery program is so important is it means someone is also checking on the welfare of seniors living alone.

“We’ve found people lying on the floor where they’ve fallen, and we’ve had to go in and help them or call 911.”

Senior services programs, like those at senior centers with opportunities for socialization and community connection and home-delivered meals, increase the chances seniors can live at home independently, instead of in nursing homes where they’re more likely to develop additional physical and mental health problems.

Ford socializes with other seniors during meals offered at the McDowell County center and while playing card games.

Now 79, she used to work at a nursing home.

“They were beautiful people,” she said.

But there was little she could do about how much they despised living there, becoming hopeless and trying to escape.

“They can’t get used to their new environment and they want to go home,” she said. “I hope I don’t ever have to go to a nursing home.”

More than 1,000 seniors are waiting for meals as Morrisey charges agencies to cut costs appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

On a brisk October morning, two pickup trucks ground to a stop and parked side by side on a Northwest Arkansas dirt road. Dan Douglas, a cattle and hay farmer whose family has farmed in Benton County for 170 years, rolled down his window to chat with longtime neighbor Chris Harral. They spoke about the changes sweeping through their community: new subdivisions, soaring land prices, and the fading presence of a once robust farm community.

After roughly 20 minutes of spirited discussion, Douglas asked: “Why the hell are we doing this?” 

“The only reason that Dan and I still do it is ‘cause it’s what we’ve always done,” Harral said. “We love it. It’s fun. It’s a way of life. We get to do it with our friends and our family. And you can’t have a better job than that.”

Still, at that moment, as the two men prepared to go their separate ways, it was difficult not to feel as though they were at a crossroads. On one side of the road was a cattle farm with rolling hills. On the other was a 59-acre parcel of land purchased by housing developers for nearly $2 million in 2021.

Agriculture has long been a part of Northwest Arkansas’ identity. Benton County and neighboring Washington County lead the state in cattle and poultry production by a considerable margin. 

Both Tyson Foods and Walmart have made Northwest Arkansas one of the most consequential regions for America’s food system. Springdale-based Tyson Foods is the nation’s largest meat company and has completely transformed the way animals are processed, especially poultry. 

About 20 miles north on Interstate 49 in Bentonville is the headquarters of Walmart, the nation’s largest grocery chain, with an annual revenue that topped $648 billion last year. With more than 4,600 stores in the U.S., 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart. 

However, over the past several decades, Walmart’s corporate presence — which includes more than 1,300 vendors that sell to the retail giant and maintain a local presence — has ushered in a surge of urban development, shifting the region from a farming hub into a major metropolitan area. That transformation appears to be accelerating with the construction of a new Walmart headquarters near downtown Bentonville. 

“Once Walmart decided that all of its vendors were going to move here [in the ’90s], they were committed to making this an urban place — which is not what it has been, right?” said Olivia Paschal, a journalist and historian who has written extensively about the company and its roots in Northwest Arkansas. 

Paschal said there’s been a push toward attracting high-quality talent — and providing the quasi-urban amenities that such employees would desire — while also trying to preserve the veneer of “being smaller, more authentic, more rural, more outdoorsy.”

From 2002 to 2022, farmland in Benton County decreased by nearly a third to around 217,000 acres, according to the USDA’s most recent Census of Agriculture. In the same time period, the price of that remaining farmland increased by nearly 500%, averaging $13,105 an acre in 2023, according to the Iowa Farmland Value Surveys. Land immediately west of Bentonville sometimes sold for 10 times that figure, according to sales records.

The loss of farmland to urban development can be found across the country. 

Between 2001 and 2016, 11 million acres of the nation’s farmland were converted to urban or low-density residential land use, according to an American Farmland Trust report.

In that same report, each state is scored for how well it has responded with policies and programs to preserve farmland. Arkansas ranked last. 

In Northwest Arkansas, Walmart’s philanthropic arm, the Walton Family Foundation, has made efforts to preserve the region’s agricultural identity through initiatives focusing on local food, including the soon-to-open Market Center of the Ozarks. However, many local farmers believe the transition away from agriculture is too far along. 

“Up into the mid-90s, we did agriculture — that’s what we did; this was a farming community,” said Jared Phillips, a professor at the University of Arkansas who also farms in Washington County's Prairie Grove. “There was cattle, chickens, turkeys, and then out on the western side of the county is more row crop and forage crops. But that’s what we were — we were a farm economy. We're a farm economy in transition right now.”

Much of that farmland loss comes when developers offer huge payouts to build subdivisions and strip malls. The offers often leave farmers faced with the decision between preserving generations of farming or providing for their families.

“We can't afford to keep the land when it's so valuable,” said Douglas, who ultimately decided to sell 70 of his family’s original 80-acre farm for $45,000 per acre in 2004. “Now I'm holding on to some because I don't need the money. But whenever I'm dead and gone, I hope to hell my daughter sells it and does something with the money. You know, it's sad that we've been here 170 years and now, you can't afford to stay. You can — I am — but you're stupid for doing it.”

Strawberries, skeletons and subdivisions: Benton County’s urban growth

On a warm October afternoon in Pea Ridge, about 10 miles northeast of Walmart’s Bentonville headquarters, Dennis McGarrah drove his tractor alongside a sprawling pumpkin patch with roughly a dozen people in tow. 

“I’m Farmer McGarrah,” he said for the seventh time that day, having already given the same spiel to roughly 220 school-age children who’d visited his 30-acre farm that morning. “I’m boss around here sometimes when the wife ain’t around. Most of the time, just another spoke in the wheel. Married men know what I’m talking about.” 

The McGarrah family has been in Northwest Arkansas since 1824, originally settling in what became the city of Fayetteville, experiencing the region’s shifting agricultural fortunes firsthand: By 1960, commercial row crop production of products like grapes, apples and tomatoes had declined to insignificance, and more than half of the income for a typical farming household in the region came from off the farm. 

McGarrah’s father operated a 60-acre tomato and strawberry farm while also working at a nearby processing plant. McGarrah himself farmed part-time while working a full-time manufacturing job for 32 years. When he was laid off in 2009, he took the opportunity to start farming full-time. 

“People don't realize that a lot of the farmers that we have actually had to have a job off the farm to even make a living,” McGarrah said. “That's just the way it works. And that's just one of them things that we do to survive.”

What’s allowed the McGarrahs to survive — in Pea Ridge, the original homestead in nearby Lowell, and Rivercrest Orchard, the family's other, larger farm in nearby Fayetteville, which is run by Dennis’s son Buddy — is agritourism. In addition to being regular vendors at most of the local farmers’ markets, the McGarrahs allow visitors a chance to pick their own produce, including strawberries in the spring and pumpkins in the fall. McGarrah also offers hayrides and Buddy hosts seasonal festivals at Rivercrest Orchard. 

Still, they’re not immune to the forces changing the surrounding area.

As McGarrah piloted his tractor along the property’s “spooky woods,” the property's northern border decorated with skeletons and yetis for Halloween, he could see several newly built and under-construction homes through the tree line. 

Five years ago, McGarrah said he tried to purchase the neighboring property, a 28-acre cattle ranch, to keep it as farmland. He offered the owner $12,000 an acre but was told they couldn’t go lower than $18,000 an acre. No deal was made. A few years later, someone else bought it for $22,000 an acre, cut it into five-acre parcels, and sold those for $50,000 an acre. 

“(When you used to) drive down my road in July, where I live, everybody along that road had a tomato patch or a strawberry field,” McGarrah said. “And now it's just houses.” 

While the growth of Walmart has spurred much of the development, the retail giant has attempted to help some farmers survive. 

In March 2022, the Walton Family Foundation announced the Market Center of the Ozarks (MCO), a 45,000-square-foot facility that, as Tom Walton said in a press release, marked “another bold step to position Northwest Arkansas as a national model for locally grown food.” 

Scheduled to open this spring, the $31 million MCO will offer farmers technical and educational assistance to help them scale up their businesses. It will largely operate through two separate organizations with different missions: the Spring Creek Food Hub, which focuses mostly on produce, and the Arkansas Food Innovation Center at Market Center of the Ozarks, which focuses on value-added products. 

Since beginning operations in mid-2023, the Spring Creek Food Hub has partnered with more than 60 farmers — the majority of them in Northwest Arkansas — with more farmers reaching out, said Anthony Mirisciotta, the organization's executive director. Although McGarrah is among those farmers, most are relatively small operations. Mirisciotta estimated just over half operate on less than one acre of land. 

“It’s not something that is going to be able to, you know, support the entire community and the food system,” Mirisciotta said, noting that food hubs tend to be small relative to conventional wholesale models. “But hopefully, optimistically moving in the right direction, building upon that momentum and helping to conserve farmland and rural communities while feeding community members.”

Darryl L. Holliday, executive director of the Arkansas Food Innovation Center at Market Center of the Ozarks, said such a shift represents not just a move away from larger industrial agricultural operations to smaller farms but a changing idea of what a farm actually looks like.

“There is a demand for local food — I don't think that will ever go away,” Holliday said. “It's really just more of a modifying from the old McDonald's storybook farm into, ‘What does farming look like?’”

The evolving Ozarks: From farming backbone to suburban sprawl

The collision of suburban development and agriculture is on full display at the intersection of Southwest Juneberry Street and Vaughn Road. On one side, a sign announces the coming of McKissic Springs, a subdivision marketed as having a “country-charm-meets-city-convenience style of living,” with prices “from the $400’s.” On the other side of the fence, just steps from a future backyard, stands an industrial poultry farm.

Along with Walmart, Tyson Foods and its large network of poultry farms have significantly shaped the region. 

“Almost every crucial development of the past half-century (including the rise of Walmart) … traces at least a few of its roots back to the meat-producing empire brought about through the efforts of Tyson Foods and other corporations birthed in the region,” wrote historian Brooks Blevins in his book, “A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3.”

Between 1940 and 1960, the number of chickens raised in the Ozarks region increased by 1,500%. Among the most significant developments, however, came when Congress passed the Poultry Products Inspection Act in 1957, mandating federal inspection of all processing plants, the same year that John Tyson began constructing his first processing plant in Springdale.

“The increased costs associated with inspections drove many small operators out of the industry,” Blevins wrote, “but more than anything, it was poultry’s volatile market that spurred consolidation.” 

By the 1980s and 1990s, it was no longer profitable to raise birds anymore, which required massive debt to enter the market. Rather, money was made by flipping farms. “Between 2002 and 2017,” Blevins wrote, “the number of farms in the Ozarks classified as poultry operations declined by 22%. Sales more than doubled to $3.5 billion.”

Don Mayer, a longtime dairy farmer who recently switched to beef cattle, lives across the street from the McKissic Springs subdivision. 

“I'm sure they're gonna make his life miserable, but I don't know what the guy's supposed to do,” said Mayer, noting the distance between his neighbor's chicken houses and the new subdivision. “I think we still matter, but a lot of people just come out here and just expect you to leave.”

Sam Walton’s vision: The airport that changed everything

While much of Northwest Arkansas’ development during the 20th century was the product of external market forces, the direction, shape and speed of that development since the mid-1990s has been a result of deliberate actions taken by Northwest Arkansas’ corporate leaders — the roots of which can be traced to the airport just two miles south of Mayer’s farm.

On Sept. 8, 1990, when Springdale hosted the U.S. House Public Works and Transportation Committee, the Northwest Arkansas Council, a newly formed area economic organization headed by Walmart founder Sam Walton, announced further development of the region hinged on the expansion of area highway systems, infrastructure, and a new airport that could handle jetliners ferrying in vendors for meetings with Walmart. 

Walmart’s sales of $32 billion annually could quadruple to $130 billion by 2000. “But we need the airport and the roads to do it,” Walton said then, according to an Arkansas newspaper.

Not quite a decade later, in November 1998, President Bill Clinton touched down in Air Force One for the dedication of the new airport. During his remarks, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article, Clinton praised the airport's “particular squeaky wheels,” including Alice Walton, the billionaire daughter of Sam Walton, “who wore me out with lobbying for the new airport.”

An article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from August 1999 was more direct: “There might not be a Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport without Alice Walton. Her company also personally anted up the final and vital $5 million in matching money, and her [investment firm, the Llama Co.,] bought the $79 million in airport bonds.” This was in addition to the $15 million seed money that Alice Walton and her family had raised in 1994 and 1995.

Following the airport’s opening, Mayer started to hear from real estate agents on a regular basis asking whether he’d be interested in selling his land. At one point, while visiting his 98-year-old mother at her nursing facility, he found an agent there asking whether she’d be open to selling the family land. He still receives offers on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week, asking if the “Don Mayer Family Trust” is now ready to sell. 

He is not.

“You just don't get pieces of land like that in Benton County anymore,” Mayer said. “To drive around a circle of a couple 100 acres — it's just not going to happen anymore. You just either have it or you don't.”

But for all the headaches that development brings, Douglas, the cattle and hay farmer in Benton County, believes there are worse problems to have. As a former legislator — a career move that was only possible, he said, from selling some of his land — he saw areas of the state that weren’t so fortunate.

“You go to some of those places that are dying instead of growing, and it will make you appreciate this,” he said. “We have our problems and our issues, and we’re growing too fast. We’re outgrowing our infrastructure, and we will have problems because of it.”

Still, Douglas said, not every problem is one of infrastructure. 

As he drove west of Bentonville, he pointed at future subdivisions with empty lots and told the stories about the people who’d once lived there. The Eggers. The Hendersons. The Grimsleys. Hundreds of years of history had been reduced to names on street signs. 

Coming up to another subdivision, Douglas started talking about his uncle, Glen Featherston, and how “he’d worked his tail off,” eventually buying 80 acres in 1965 at $200 per acre. 

“(Uncle) Glen passed away in 2010, I believe, and his wife passed away, oh, five or six years ago. And (his son) Sam sold this 80 acres,” said Douglas, as he rounded the corner of Chance Street in a subdivision whose street names are taken from the Monopoly board game. 

“Look at this shit. What the hell are these?” he said about the new homes. “I won’t drive through all of it, but by God, I’ve chased cows all over this place. I’ve baled hay off of it. And look what the hell we have here. I don’t know what you call this.” 

The post Is there still room for agriculture in Walmart’s backyard? appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

The Trump administration’s purge of “probationary”-status employees has not, to date, been felt as acutely within the Bureau of Land Management as it has in some other federal agencies that manage land and wildlife within Wyoming.  

As of Wednesday, the federal agency continued to withhold layoff numbers from the public. An inquiry to BLM-Wyoming’s office in Cheyenne was routed to the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

“We do not have a comment on personnel matters, however, BLM reaffirms its unwavering commitment to both the American public and the lands we protect,” a spokesperson for the BLM’s national office wrote in an emailed statement. 

Although official channels are yielding no information about the status of an agency that manages over 18 million surface acres in Wyoming — nearly 30% of its land mass — several of BLM’s Wyoming employees told WyoFile that mandatory layoffs have not hit the bureau especially hard so far. 

“Just yesterday, I heard it was only six,” one of the federal agency’s Wyoming workers told WyoFile on Thursday. “Compared to the Forest Service, it’s nothing.” 

WyoFile is granting the person anonymity because of the potential for retaliation. 

Losing six positions would be a drop in BLM-Wyoming’s employee bucket — just 1% to 2% of its approximately 400 permanent full-time employees across the state. In addition to working out of the office’s Cheyenne headquarters, those employees are based all across the state’s 10 field offices. 

Notably, that figure does not include bureau staffers who may have taken the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-branded “Fork in the Road” resignation offer. Thousands of federal workers in Wyoming were presented with the offer, which promised pay and benefits through the end of September in exchange for voluntarily giving up their jobs. 

Subsequently, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, known by its acronym, DOGE, began mass firings that cut across divisions of the federal government. Nationally, as many as 2,300 U.S. Interior Department employees — including 800 Bureau of Land Management staffers — were let go, according to reporting by Reuters.  

Although BLM-Wyoming employees haven’t been given an explanation for why they’ve been spared relative to other federal land managers, many believe it is because of the trove of energy and mineral resources contained within the bureau’s property in the Equality State. Those holdings include, for example, behemoth natural gas fields like the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah fields and the Powder River Basin’s bountiful coal deposits. 

“The day that we thought we were going to get fired — on Friday, Valentine’s Day — we got the call from our supervisor that we were not going to be [fired],” said a different BLM-Wyoming employee whom WyoFile also granted anonymity. “We didn’t know why. But I was like, ‘it’s because oil and gas, for sure.’ That’s just an assumption I have.” 

Mary Jo Rugwell, a retiree who served as BLM-Wyoming’s state director under the first Trump administration, agreed with the premise. 

“If one of your primary goals is to unleash American energy, reducing BLM employees isn’t going to help,” Rugwell said. “Because they have to do the work.” 

One of President Donald Trump’s many actions during the first six weeks of his second term was the “unleashing American energy” executive order. Maximizing energy production on federal land requires significant planning and preparatory work to comply with federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. To punch a new energy-producing project through, many disciplines of specialists are required, said Rugwell, who chairs the BLM advocacy group the Public Lands Foundation. 

“It’s not just engineers, petroleum engineers and petroleum technicians that you need to get that work done,” she said. “You also need archaeologists, you need wildlife biologists, you need people that are engaged in planning. You need the entire team to get that work done, because we have to follow the law.” 

Changes to the BLM-Wyoming’s workforce to date have not been of concern to the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, Communications Director Ryan McConnaughey told WyoFile. 

“In regards to staffing at BLM, we have not heard anything specific at this point,” McConnaughey said. “We’re confident that the administration understands that the BLM, through its federal leasing program, is the only other revenue-generating department besides the IRS, and that it will make decisions appropriately.”

The Petroleum Association of Wyoming has not lobbied in favor of maintaining the BLM’s workforce, he said. 

“It’s like a fat person saying, ‘I need to lose weight.’ And in order to lose weight, they just start chopping their arms and legs off. It makes no sense.”

bureau of land management employee

Although mandatory BLM-Wyoming job losses so far have been slim, turmoil from the Trump administration’s actions and intimidation tactics have rattled many in the workforce, its employees have reported to WyoFile. 

“Our NEPA planners are starting to get kind of nervous,” one of the Wyoming staffers said. “They don’t know what [the administration change] means for NEPA or their job.” 

On Tuesday, the Trump administration published an interim final rule in the Federal Register that gives federal agencies more discretion in how to implement the nation’s bedrock environmental planning policy.

A different BLM-Wyoming employee described the Trump administration’s decision to spare their own agency, while deeply cutting others, as poorly planned and “weird.” The hard-hit Forest Service, the worker pointed out, also supports extractive industries and other economic drivers. 

“It’s like a fat person saying, ‘I need to lose weight,’” the federal government employee told WyoFile. “And in order to lose weight, they just start chopping their arms and legs off. It makes no sense. They just gut one agency and leave the other one.” 

The post Wyoming BLM staff, key to Trump’s ‘energy dominance,’ largely spared by Musk’s DOGE appeared first on WyoFile .

What you need to know:

• The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District reached a settlement this week allowing students to engage in political discussions and peaceful protests on campus, with district officials having the authority to set protest time and place restrictions. The district must also pay out $30,000 in legal fees.
• The settlement resolves a 2023 lawsuit filed by two high school students who claimed their First Amendment rights were violated when officials blocked student political speech and investigated a student protest.
• Two additional lawsuits are pending: one challenges restrictions on transgender students’ bathroom access and privacy, and another class-action suit alleges illegal restraint and isolation of students with disabilities.

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PALMER – The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District will allow students to hold political discussions on school grounds as long as they don’t interfere with others’ rights, according to the settlement of a 2023 lawsuit against the district announced this week.

The out-of-court settlement resolves a lawsuit filed on behalf of two high school students who said district officials repeatedly violated their First Amendment rights in 2023 by blocking their political statements on campus and investigating a protest staged at a school board meeting. 

The suit was filed in November 2023 by Quin Schachle, then a senior at Wasilla High School who served in student government, and Ben Kolendo, then a senior at Mat-Su Career & Technical High School who served as the student representative on the district school board. Schachle and Kolendo graduated in 2024. Kolendo lost a 2024 school board election bid to incumbent Tom Bergey.

As part of the settlement, Schachle, Kolendo and the district crafted a joint statement agreeing that students can assemble peacefully on school grounds, but district officials may set time, place and safety-related restrictions, according to documents shared by Kolendo. Setting those restrictions is a school district right established by previous case law, Kolendo said in an interview.

The agreement also allows students to have “open and honest” political discussions on any Mat-Su school campus as long as doing so does not interfere with the educational process or impact the rights or safety of other students or staff.

Schachle and Kolendo were represented pro bono by the Anchorage-based Northern Justice Project. As part of the settlement, the district must also pay $30,000 to cover attorney fees, according to terms shared by Kolendo.

The suit alleged that Mat-Su district officials violated students’ First Amendment rights through a trio of actions in fall 2023. 

A school board-directed investigation into whether teachers assisted students with a school board meeting protest intimidated students for expressing their opinions, the suit stated. Students were later banned from political speech during a pair of walkouts held throughout Mat-Su, including on Election Day, the suit alleged. Then, during the Election Day walkout, students were told they could not protest on the grounds of schools used as polling places, it stated.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. The notice of settlement was filed with the court Thursday.

School district officials were not immediately available for comment.

Kolendo and Schachle said they are happy with the outcome of the case.

“This is a good thing for students, that their rights are protected and the district is recognizing that,” Schachle said in an interview Friday.

A pair of other lawsuits regarding student rights filed against the district in late 2023 and early last year are still pending.

A lawsuit filed in Palmer Superior Court in January of last year on behalf of a transgender student argues that a school district rule banning him from using the bathroom of his choice violates his rights under the state constitution. It also contends that disclosing transgender students’ birth names and sex through the school’s internal information system is a violation of privacy.

A preliminary injunction issued in the case in late December requires the school district to address students by their parent-approved preferred name and not disclose their birth names. A trial date for the suit has not yet been set.

A class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage against the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in December 2023 claims the district illegally restrains and isolates disabled students.

A Feb. 26 court order in that case certifies the suit as representing all district students with an identified disability who have been restrained or secluded by district personnel. A trial date has not yet been set.

— Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com

The board of visitors of the Virginia Military Institute will not renew retired Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins’ contract as superintendent.

The move follows weeks of debate among Virginia lawmakers about whether Wins’ tenure should be extended or whether efforts to keep him were solely based on efforts to advance a diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. Wins is the first Black superintendent of the state-run military college, and was selected after allegations surfaced that racism plagued the Lexington campus.

Ten of the 16 board members who met for a special meeting Friday morning voted to remove Wins. There was no discussion of Wins’ employment or board members’ views during the board’s public session.

All 10 board members who voted against an extension for Wins were appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Among them were Jonathan Hartsock and Stephen Reardon, who were named Wednesday to replace Youngkin appointees rejected by the General Assembly.

Four of the six who voted in favor of extending Wins’ contract were Democratic appointees.

In response to questions about Wins’ ouster, Christian Martinez, Youngkin’s press secretary, said that the governor has consistently said that the board of visitors at VMI is “comprised of experienced individuals who both believe in the institute’s mission and would do what they believe to be in the best interest of this prestigious military college.”

Martinez said that Youngkin respects both the board’s authority and its decision. 

Wins attended the meeting, sitting at a conference table with the board members. He did not speak during the public session and did not visibly react as the vote was tallied. The meeting was livestreamed. 

Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt County, represents House District 37, where VMI is located. Austin said he didn’t know the details behind the board’s vote. 

“Everything he’s asked me to do has always been in the best interest of the institution,” Austin said of Wins during a phone interview Friday. “I just find him to be a very honorable and credible individual and I really enjoy my friendship and association with him, and I find it a great honor to represent VMI. I’m a huge proponent of that institution in the commonwealth of Virginia.” 

Austin had asked Wins to serve on the African American advisory panel for the VA250, a commission to celebrate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. He said he has “no idea whatsoever” about who could or should take Wins’ place as the next superintendent of VMI. 

In a statement released Friday afternoon, the institute said Wins would complete his term ending June 30 and information about a search for a new superintendent would be provided at a later date.

“The BOV is supremely grateful to Major General Wins for his service to the Institute during some very difficult times,” VMI Board of Visitors President John Adams said in a statement. “The foundation he has provided us will ensure VMI continues to fulfill its vital mission of educating future leaders.”

Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt County, whose district includes VMI, did not respond to a voicemail requesting comment on Wins’ ouster. Neither Rear Adm. (Ret.) Terence McKnight or C. Ernest Edgar IV, both Youngkin appointees to the board who voted to keep Wins as superintendent, responded to an email requesting comment.

Wins, a VMI alumnus, was named interim superintendent in November 2020 and was formally appointed in April 2021. His contract expires June 30.

The superintendent has received several salary bonuses during his tenure and has been  credited with improving the atmosphere at the institute, which was found in a 2021 report to have widespread racism issues. That investigation was ordered by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a VMI graduate.

Enrollment has also ticked upward as the institute has recovered from the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and criticism of its campus culture.

“This decision by the VMI Board is not based on performance or character — it is purely political,” House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, said in a statement Friday. “Over the past week, we have witnessed a systemic purge of high-ranking military leaders, including the recent firing of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair CQ Brown [by President Donald Trump].”

“The Board’s decision is a clear signal that VMI is choosing to move in the wrong direction, caving to political pressures rather than continuing on the path of necessary reform,” Scott added. 

Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, called the move “shameful” in a post on X on Friday afternoon.

Northam also weighed in. 

“Our country has purged too many patriotic military leaders this week, and now Virginia has done it too,” he said in a statement. “These are dark times.” 

“VMI needs to take a hard look and ask, how long will we cling to the past? If the institute wants to survive, it needs to start looking to the future. Time is running out,” he added. 

Both Scott and Northam are former military officers. 

Conservative alumni have rallied against Wins and VMI’s diversity, equity and inclusivity efforts, claiming that VMI has never had a problem with racism and that the school has gotten too soft on students, known as cadets. 

The Spirit of VMI, a political action committee founded in 2021 to “help restore VMI’s reputation as an elite leadership institution” has called itself “instrumental” in the selection process for several Youngkin appointees to the VMI board. 

The General Assembly voted during its session this winter to reject two Youngkin appointees endorsed by Spirit of VMI, alumni Quinton Elliott and Clifford Foster. The reasons for legislators’ rejection of the appointees was not made clear.

“The General Assembly should allow the Board to do its job without continuing to exert their political influence into a process that has been vested to the Board of Visitors by law,” the PAC said in a Feb. 24 email to its mailing list.

VMI board of visitors member Teddy Gottwald is the PAC’s top donor. He has contributed $50,000 since 2021.

The PAC has criticized Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Petersburg, claiming she has meddled in discussions about Wins’ tenure at the institute. Carroll Foy is a VMI alumna.

In a statement Friday, Carroll Foy noted Wins’ achievements during his time as superintendent. Wins increased state funding by 7%, reversed declining applications, drove major capital improvements, and boosted athletic and academic performance, she said. 

“Now, hyper-partisan MAGA Republican appointees have taken over the VMI Board with their political agendas. These dangerous political games destabilize VMI, and removing an outstanding leader in this unprecedented manner dishonors VMI’s legacy,” Carroll Foy added. 

The PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an additional statement issued Friday, Carroll Foy said she suspects the board of visitors may have already selected a replacement for Wins. She called on Youngkin to “support an independent expert investigation of the Board’s mishandling of the current situation.”

The post Amid furor over diversity efforts, VMI board ousts school’s first Black superintendent appeared first on Cardinal News.

MARIETTA, Ohio — Most Sunday afternoons, Glenn Newman hosts church in his living room. It’s much cozier than a typical religious space, with stuffed leather recliners and gas logs glowing in the fireplace. More a grandparent’s den than a sanctuary.

A half-dozen attendees watch a sermon from a California pastor and follow along with a study guide. Afterward, they make small talk between bites of homemade nachos and chocolate cake prepared by Newman’s next-door neighbors.

Quietly, over the past 15 years, these small group Bible-study-style gatherings have been the foundation for a movement that appears to punch above its weight in terms of political influence.

It started in 2009 when Newman invited his neighbors over for dinner. Like him, they were angered by the Great Recession of 2008 and the ensuing $800 billion American Recovery and Rescue Act.

“I realized that my grandchildren would never enjoy the lifestyle I’ve had,” Newman said.

This was the Tea Party era of U.S. politics, when a populist social movement — animated by a backlash to the George W. Bush administration’s bailout of banks deemed “too big to fail,” along with the election and policies of Barack Obama — was catapulted into the national spotlight.

Small groups like Newman’s popped up all over the country, amplified and supported by a pre-existing political advocacy infrastructure powered by Big Oil.

In southeast Ohio, Newman’s early gatherings evolved into the Marietta 9-12 group, which aligned with the Tea Party and prominent Fox News personality Glenn Beck. Throughout the 2010s, the 9-12 group hosted a range of events, including candidate forums and presentations from organizations like Turning Point USA.

Newman and the 9-12 group also unequivocally supported President Donald Trump. Several members attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. — a galvanizing moment for Newman.

“We had a bunch of people there,” Newman said (he rejects the term “insurrection”). 100 Days and the Independent confirmed that multiple people affiliated with his group attended the rally at the U.S. Capitol, although they did not enter the Capitol building.

“After January 6, I told my wife, ‘We can’t continue this meet, greet, eat, retreat, so we are going to become a citizens action coalition,’” he said.

For Newman, it was time for a renewed push for lasting political change in the country. The Mid-Ohio Valley Citizens Action Coalition, or MOVCAC, launched in June 2021 and has grown to include chapters across West Virginia and in Meigs and Washington counties in southeast Ohio.

MOVCAC’s influence on local and state politics reflects the nation’s current moment: a time when right-wing politics has fused with a version of Christianity that calls for a strict interpretation of Old Testament biblical law.

Mixing politics and religion in the Mid-Ohio Valley

MOVCAC holds its public meetings every other Monday in the sanctuary of Freedom Gate Church in Marietta, Ohio. While some attendees are also regulars at Newman’s home church, the crowd has grown beyond the confines of his living room, with dozens of people regularly attending MOVCAC’s meetings.

At the public meetings, members welcome newcomers with open arms; they laugh and cry together, and catch up on life’s goings-on. Discussions range from local school board races to presidential politics, alternative medicine, community news and homemade pickles.

They also pray together — for each other and for the nation’s spiritual redemption.

Newman runs the meetings from behind a lectern at the front of the church’s sanctuary. Freedom Gate Senior Pastor Rodney Lord is often there too, offering opening prayers and running the soundboard.

While Lord claims no “official role” in MOVCAC, he says that most members “are very encouraged that I’m a pastor who will show up to a meeting like this, or even speak out on an issue, that kind of thing.”

Lord and Newman, who have known each other for years, both say their conservative political activism is informed by their Christianity. This has manifested itself in legislative pushes, like collaborating with other faith leaders and anti-abortion groups to lobby Ohio lawmakers to eventually pass the Heartbeat Bill in 2019. It was one of the strictest abortion laws in the country before being declared unconstitutional in 2024.

That bill, Newman said, “reflects my commitment to protecting life.”

For Lord, the bill reflects dominion theology, a system of religious belief that seeks a society whose laws are based on an extremely conservative interpretation of Christianity. Lord is a “church ambassador” for Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based lobbying group, which has pushed anti-LGBTQ policy in that state.

Mainline Christian leaders criticized Gov. Mike DeWine’s office for including CCV in discussions with the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2015-16 designation of CCV as a hate group for their extreme anti-LGBTQ agenda.

“The message of his (Christ’s) kingdom throughout the New Testament was, it would influence every mountain of culture, every sphere,” said Lord.

There are seven major spheres — or “mountains” — of influence, he added, including government, family, arts and entertainment, media, education, and business. It’s a belief system, he said, that hearkens back to when the church was the “predominant influence on culture” in the U.S.

Dominionism advocates for a society transformed by a far-right version of Christianity.

And religion scholars have said that taken to its extreme, dominion theology erases the boundary between church and state.

The goal is the complete transformation of the country by taking control of its political and cultural institutions, according to Fred Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based think tank.

That transformation, across the “Seven Mountains” of society, is a guiding principle of the New Apostolic Reformation, one of the fastest-growing religio-political movements in the U.S. and abroad.

“The NAR celebrates Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be a Christian nation,” said Clarkson.

And just as MOVCAC has expanded its influence in Ohio and West Virginia, NAR has gained powerful allies. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump tapped longtime adviser Paula White-Cain, an NAR apostle, to lead the new White House Faith Office.

Extremism experts also worry that some of the Trump administration’s early moves — including the formation of the White House Faith Office — reflect the goals of Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint for radical government change published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023. That document outlines hard-right policies, described by critics as “very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism.”

For Freedom Gate pastor Rodney Lord, these religion-infused hard-right political successes are 15 years in the making.

“You’re seeing the zenith of Make America Great Again,” he said. “It kind of flows out of that same heart as the Tea Party, basically saying, ‘We want change.’”

Fusion, contradiction and identity in Tea Party, MAGA movements

Most of MOVCAC’s positions reflect a mix of libertarian politics and hardline conservative Christian values: small government, lower taxes, opposition to abortion and the civil rights of transgender people. The group supports the diversion of public funds to private schools through “school choice” programs and the elimination of vaccine requirements for school-age children.

Conspiracy theories about immigrants were also a frequent topic of conversation at the group’s meetings this past presidential election cycle, including false accusations that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.

Pepperdine University professor Christina Littlefield said the current anti-immigrant rhetoric popular with the Christian right is an outgrowth from the Tea Party movement, when “we saw the quiet part said out loud, the racism and anti-immigrant language as a reaction to the country’s first Black president.”

Littlefield says these positions are also a fusion of small government libertarian ideas with the culture war positions of the Christian right. The Tea Party, she said, is a recent historical example.

“The Tea Party takes on the Christian right’s restriction of liberties, particularly when it comes to issues like abortion rights, but also now LGBTQ rights,” she said.

Another element of populist movements like the Tea Party and its evolution to the MAGA movement is probing the culture to see what sticks. “They are always asking, ‘What’s going to get the most public outrage to get them to vote for us?’” said Littlefield. That’s what happened with the right’s focus on transgender issues, she said.

Within MOVCAC, however, members appear to deviate from right-wing positions in some areas.

For example, the group opposes some natural gas fracking practices, including the use of injection wells to store waste underground. Newman said that he has spoken to left-leaning environmental groups and said that they share common concerns.

“I want my grandchildren to have clean water,” he said.

William Callison, a researcher at Harvard University focused on climate change politics and far-right political movements, said that in the “post-COVID era,” leftwing movements are increasingly “being grafted onto far-right projects.” Callison said that is an “increasingly common and quite effective” tactic for bringing political communities together.

Traditional left politics showing up in right-wing spaces include vaccine conspiracies, an emphasis on health and wellness, and environmentalism, as reflected by the ascendence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. within the Trump administration, Callison said. (MOVCAC has shared RFK Jr. videos on their website.)

Political change happening ‘in God’s time.’

True to its name, MOVCAC members have engaged in “citizens action,” including political activism and outreach. And they are in it for the long haul.

One example is the group’s fight against public libraries with collections that include LGBTQ-themed books.

In 2022, MOVCAC members lobbied the Parkersburg City Council to censure the Parkersburg & Wood County Public Library over the placement of the book “Gender Queer” in a Banned Books Week display.

The following year, MOVCAC members got West Virginia lawmakers to introduce a bill that would have kept books deemed “obscene material” from being in or near state public schools. A similar bill got some traction in 2024. The measure would have made public library and public school employees vulnerable to prosecution for displaying “obscene materials” where minors could easily view them; several MOVCAC members supported it at a public hearing, but the bill ultimately failed in the state senate.

While these efforts were unsuccessful, this year’s political landscape is different. West Virginia House members have already introduced an identical library bill. And Gov. Patrick Morrisey has signaled support for another MOVCAC policy push: religious and moral exemptions for childhood vaccinations in schools.

For pastor Rodney Lord, this political momentum is happening in God’s time. “We see the Kingdom of God increasing,” he said. “Does that take 25 generations or 100 years, we don’t know.”

Working to usher in that kingdom requires a generational mindset. “We’re hard at work pouring ourselves into the things that matter. Government matters,” he said.

“I want to change this nation because I see where it’s going, and I don’t like it.”

Disclosure: Laura Harbert Allen serves on the board of the Southeast Ohio Independent News, which operates the Athens County Independent.

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This reporting is a collaboration with 100 Days in Appalachia and was made possible by grant funding from the Poynter Institute and Joyce Foundation.

The post Mid-Ohio Valley group blends religion, politics to affect policy in Ohio and West Virginia appeared first on Athens County Independent.

The Panhandle town of Canadian is determined to move beyond the deadly fire. And yet, they are reminded almost daily another catastrophe is possible.

Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign led to a surge in rural attention, research, and support over the last decade, but his second presidency could bring that progress to a sudden halt.

The president declared on Wednesday that he would like to see the Department of Education “closed immediately” — just hours after his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced nearly a billion dollars in education cuts.

The first cuts were reportedly aimed at the Institute of Education Sciences, the DOE’s independent research and evaluation arm, with at least 170 contracts shuttered. That could be bad news for rural education researchers who had just started to make significant progress in recent years.

The National Rural Higher Education Research Center just opened in September, after being awarded a 5-year, $10 million grant through the IES. Led by MDRC, which conducts nonpartisan research to improve the lives of low-income Americans, the center is conducting eight major studies in rural areas across 10 states and 25 colleges.

Just two weeks ago, I talked to MDRC researcher Sabrina Klein about the center, which has plans to study a number of education factors critical to Trump’s economic goals of building domestic manufacturing and filling key workforce shortages — from evaluating rural nursing programs in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming to studying dual enrollment in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee.

So far, MDRC has heard nothing from the IES or Department of Education about possible cuts to their funding. But their work provides a glimpse at the kinds of future rural efforts that could be imperiled if federal programs disappear, as both researchers and policymakers take a wait-and-see approach.

Sydney Dickson, the longtime State Superintendent of Utah, told me Wednesday that they were particularly keeping an eye on how Perkins grants — federal funds that support career and technical education (CTE) programs — would be affected.

“We anticipate those programs will be supported, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens to both the dollars and the regulations, because those are things that really impact our rural communities.”

While Dickson said some deregulation may be necessary, what looks like superfluous funding for rural areas could actually be careful resource management. For instance, rural districts sometimes hold federal money in abatement for years. Not because they don’t need it, but because they are saving for a larger purchase.

“They can’t just take the money they get one year and buy the big piece of equipment to train their students on,” Dickson said.

Amid the administration’s war against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, it’s difficult to separate rural work from those conversations. (The Trump administration has also called for a ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the federal level. Universities have already been chipping away at them across the country.)

“With all the pressure DEI is under now in higher education, I see the work to engage rural communities as part of that umbrella,” says Rob Vischer, president of the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn.

The private Catholic research university has a scholarship program focused on getting new lawyers to practice in rural America. It also offers engineering bootcamps as part of a Defense Department grant to fill manufacturing gaps in Greater Minnesota. Vischer says it’s unclear what programs may be affected by the Trump administration’s actions.

“We’re just trying to get as much information as possible, and provide it to those who could be affected,” Vischer says.

While K-12 research has received significant attention over the years, research into rural higher education is still relatively nascent in academic circles.

University of Mississippi higher education professor Ty McNamee often talks about how a peer professor once told him that rural “wasn’t an identity” at a conference. While he says there is increasingly more awareness of rurality as an identity worth studying, the recent politics at the federal level is creating a new challenge.

“The really hard part is how do I convince folks who are in favor of the Department of Ed being eliminated, that these actions are going to significantly impact rural and low-income communities?” McNamee says.

“Whether people know it or not, the DOE funds a variety of programs and services that positively impact rural, low-income communities — and if you eliminate that, then you are moving to a state model, when you know that states often don’t have a lot of money.”

McNamee is one of what Klein calls “a small, mighty, crew” of new rural higher ed researchers, mostly in their thirties or forties, whose niche focus has had an outsize impact on our understanding of rural communities in recent years.

“We need more champions, on every level, developing that next generation of policymakers and researchers,” says Klein, whose own journey out of poverty is marked by mentorship and community support — from a state-funded college access program to federal grants that helped her attend Rogue Community College, Southern Oregon University and, later, UCLA.

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The post Rural Education Research at Risk Under Trump appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina, WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region, and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Marie Richards sat in her living room in northern Michigan. She was having a hard time talking about her job at the U.S. Forest Service in the past tense.

“I absolutely loved my job,” she said. “I didn’t want to go.”

Richards, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was a tribal relations specialist at the Huron-Manistee National Forests. In mid-February, she found out she was one of the some 3,400 workers who had been targeted for layoffs — an estimated 10 percent of the workforce — as part of the Trump administration’s move to cut costs and shrink the federal government.

Richards watched as some of her colleagues were laid off on February 14 — the so-called Valentine’s Day massacre, when the Trump administration laid off thousands of probationary employees, generally hired within the past two years. She got a call from her supervisor that Saturday informing her that she had been let go, too. The letter she received cited performance issues, even though she, along with others in a similar position, had received a pay raise less than two months earlier.

“None of us deserved this,” Richards said. “We all work hard and we’re dedicated to taking care of the land.”

The U.S. Forest Service, which stewards 193 million acres of public lands from Alaska to Florida, was in trouble even before Trump took office. Chronically understaffed, the service was already under a Biden-era hiring freeze, all the while on the front lines of fighting and recovering from back-to-back climate disasters across the country.

For now, workers with the Forest Service fear this isn’t just the end of the line for their dream careers, but also a turning point for public lands and what they mean in the United States.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Anders Reynolds with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit that litigates environmental issues in the southeastern U.S. “We are losing an entire generation of talent and passion.”

The federal agency does more than ensure that Americans have a place to hunt, hike, fish, or paddle. In the South, forest workers played a key role in helping western North Carolina and other communities recover from impacts of Hurricane Helene. In the West, they’re taking on fire risk mitigation and fighting wildfires. They’re also involved in fisheries management in places like Alaska. Across the country, agency biologists and foresters are busy working to strengthen the over 150 national forests and 20 grasslands it monitors in the face of changing climate.

Increasingly, the service is getting spread thin. 

The agency has experienced a steady decrease in staffing over the last decade and the workers that remain are often overworked and underpaid, according to Reynolds.

“That means you’re going to see those campgrounds close, the trails go unmaintained, roads closed, you’re going to feel the effects of wildfire and hurricane recovery work that’s just going to remain undone,” said Reynolds. “Communities are going to struggle.”

The Forest Service has reduced its capacity over many years, causing headaches for staff.

A report from the National Association of Forest Service Retirees showed the agency losing a little over half of staff who supported specialty ecological restoration projects — meaning a whole range of jobs, from botanists to foresters to wildlife and fisheries biologists — between 1992 and 2018. As a result, understaffed Forest Service ranger districts, hemorrhaging staff positions, have consolidated.

Former employees report they saw serious financial and staffing shortages during their time. Bryan Box, a former timber sale administrator with the Forest Service who took some time out of the agency to care for his aging mother, said he found the working conditions unsuitable for a stable, normal life. Box worked for the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin, where he said he made so little he biked around on his off days rather than wasting money on gas. While he was working, multiple national forests around him consolidated, causing a downward spiral on organizational capacity.

“We decommissioned buildings, we decommissioned the infrastructure that we had back in the ‘80s and ‘90s when we had this huge staff,” Box said. “And that put us into a position where we couldn’t hire seasonal employees anymore because we didn’t have housing for them. In rural northern Wisconsin, you know, just there’s not any housing available really. I think at one point our firefighters were all living above a bar.” 

Other foresters he knew failed to make rent and were evicted or lived itinerantly, couch-surfing, for the love of the work they did. For Box, the financial realities became untenable. So, too, had the restrictions on his work, which grew as budgets failed to grow.

Box’s program was expensive to run and required travel, often to reduce fire fuels by harvesting timber after an emergency. The program he worked for, Box said, ended up needing to reduce costs by cutting travel funds and ending overtime, making it difficult for him to do his job well. 

Much of their work involves emergency response, not only fighting fires but also picking up the pieces after conflagrations and hurricanes leave potentially thousands of acres of dead timber. 

Matthew Brossard works as the current business representative and organizer for the National Federation of Federal Employees, and was formerly the general vice president for the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council, which represents around 18,000 employees of the Forest Service, 6,000 of whom are probationary, meaning they have either recently been hired or moved to a new position within the agency. Typically, probation — a part of every federal hiring process — is one or two years. Probationary employees were primarily targeted in the layoffs, meaning a generation of hires is potentially interrupted. Brossard said even though the administration maintains they have not fired positions essential to public safety, there’s more to fighting fires than just the firefighters. Support and logistical personnel are essential. “Extra dispatchers, security to close off roads, food unit leaders, base camp managers, all these very important, 100 percent-needed positions. Those people are getting terminated right now,” Brossard said. 

In another instance recounted by Brossard, someone on assignment to help with long-term hurricane recovery in Louisiana was fired while he was there. The employee lived in Oregon and reported having no financial support for his trip home. 

The loss of a seasonal workforce will also be felt, Brossard added. “Without that influx of seasonal workforce, it puts a huge amount of work onto the permanent staff if they’re still employed to do all the work,” he said, meaning not only trailwork and campground maintenance, but also research and other essential work. “So the work that in the summer that should have been done by 15 or 20 people are now going to be done by five or six.”

As workers continue to struggle with the fallout of their abrupt firings, their union is jumping in to protect them, Brossard said. The NFFE-FSC has joined in multiple lawsuits to challenge the firings, including one filed February 12, provided to Grist, that aims to put a stop to the firings and reverse the ones that have already happened, on grounds that the terminations are unlawful. A decision on the lawsuit is still to come, with more potential legal action following, Brossard said. 

“You’re not reducing, you know, the stereotypical bureaucrats,” Brossard said. “You’re reducing the boots on the ground that are going out and doing work.” 

In an emailed statement to Grist, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the new agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, supported Trump’s directive to cut spending and inefficiencies while strengthening the department’s services. “As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters.” 

The statement continued, “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.” 

Back in northern Michigan, Marie Richards, the former tribal relations specialist, crunched down the snowy driveway, pointing toward the Huron-Manistee National Forests where she worked. It spans nearly 1 million acres and covers land tribal nations ceded in two treaties, which the federal government has a responsibility to keep in trust. 

Richards said workers like her are also a vital part of pushing the federal government to meet its trust responsibility to tribal nations. She helped connect the region’s federally recognized tribes with officials and staff at the forest service, set up meetings, and ensured work was being carried out responsibly. 

“It’s not just the damage to that trust relationship with the Forest Service,” said Richards, who left her job as a repatriation and historic preservation specialist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians to work at the agency. “It’s across the board for so many things, and tribes trying to work through that freeze, and making people understand that this isn’t DEI — that this is governmental affairs.”

Richards doesn’t know what’s next; she wants to finish her dissertation (about the impact of the lumber industry on traditional cultural landscapes and Anishinaabe bands and communities) and continue her work. 

“It still really hurts that this dream of mine is kind of shattered, and we’ll see, and find a new dream,” she said. “But ultimately, my career, my livelihood, is in tribal relations for our heritage and I will find a home somewhere.”

Lilly Knoepp contributed reporting to this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency: ‘It’s catastrophic’ on Feb 27, 2025.