The Trump administration’s federal workforce reductions and January 27 Office of Management and Budget Directive (OMB Directive) to agencies freezing all federal funding have left states and tribes unsettled by the loss of essential federal backing for wildfire prevention and response. With fewer federal resources for fire protection, state and tribal representatives worry that lives, property, and natural resources will be at greater risk in the coming wildfire season
A week after the OMB Directive froze funds, but well after the administration claimed to have rescinded the Directive, state officials said they were unable to access hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wildfire projects funding. In a February 10 letter to Secretary Bergum of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Acting Secretary Washington of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, fourteen western senators aired their concerns about President Trump’s executive orders, which resulted in the Bureau of Land Management issuing stop work orders for hazardous fuels reduction projects that mitigate wildfires. The senators expressed concern that the U.S. Forest Service might have to stop its fuels projects as well.
The Forest Service also initiated plans to fire 3,400 employees as part of the Trump administration’s downsizing of federal workers, and 2,300 lost their jobs in the Department of the Interior. In 2024, the Service employed 11,393 wildland firefighters, many of them working seasonally. This year, the Department of Government Efficiency instigated firings that diminished the Service’s wildfire mitigation and firefighting capacity. Some fire staffers had positions rescinded or postponed in mid-February, just when fire season preparation usually starts. More than half of the agency’s 35,000 employees have trained to fight wildfires, so even those discharged whose primary work is not firefighting would likely have acted as reserve firefighters or essential support staff in wildfire emergencies.
The funding freeze and job cuts threaten tribal nations as well. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs employs wildfire responders for tribal lands, and some tribal reservations have their own federally funded interagency wildland firefighting crews. When the January 27 OMB memorandum directed federal agencies to pause “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” tribes understood that their federal funding––$32.6 billion dollars for programs and agencies last year—was at risk, though mandated by treaties between tribal nations and the federal government, as well as the federal trust obligation. The funding pause applied to both new awards and existing grant payouts, and in the wake of the funding pause, tribes had issues accessing federal funds from multiple agencies.
On January 29, the Coalition of Large Tribes (COLT) issued an emergency resolution supporting “Tribal exemption from any funding freeze, covering any account paying to Tribal governments or entities serving Tribal citizens.” The resolution detailed that tribal governments and organizations had experienced “escalating problems with Federal accounts suddenly and without explanation ‘zeroed out’ and our access to Federal payment systems shut off.” The freezes “were not limited in any way,” including “everything—public safety funds, healthcare funds, waste management funds, child protective service funds, etc.” The resolution also communicated that most of the tribes in the Coalition are “more than fifty percent funded by Federal dollars, meaning our Tribal governments will have to shut down in days or weeks if the broad freeze persists, which would be devastating to our Tribal citizens.” The Coalition clarified, in response to the Trump administration’s focus on purging diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) funding and apparent misunderstanding of the U.S. government’s tribal obligations, that “Tribes do not receive Federal funds as part of any DEIA initiative. Rather, Tribal receipt of Federal monies is rooted in our government-to-government relationships with the United States memorialized in our Treaties and enshrined in the Trust responsibility.”
Tribes’ uncertainty about federal commitments includes funding for wildfire crews. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington, for example was unsure, even weeks after the Trump administration rescinded its spending freeze on January 29, about the status of its federal funds to hire seasonal firefighters.
In addition to the efforts of tribal nations to address the funding freeze, attorneys general in 22 states and the District of Columbia collectively initiated legal action against the Trump administration for the January 27 OMB Directive, with a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The plaintiffs requested a judicial declaration of the OMB Directive’s unconstitutionality and a temporary restraining order enjoining agencies from enforcing the directive.
The complaint explained that the Unleashing American Energy (UAE) order was among the many new Trump executive orders (EOs) that the OMB Directive referenced as the basis for a general funding freeze. UAE had significant implications for wildfire response programs because it paused all funds appropriated through the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). IRA and IIJA funded both the 2022Widfire Crisis Strategy and Wildfire Crisis Implementation Plan, which focused on using fuels reduction forest treatments to limit wildfire exposure in areas at high risk.
The states’ complaint quoted from the January 27 OMB Directive’s requirement that federal agencies pause “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders…” The complaint concluded that the OMB Directive “has now sown chaos and confusion around whether States can continue to receive disbursements of funding already obligated to them and whether any further funding will ever be obligated.”
In its accounting of funds affected by the OMB Directive, the complaint included Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds for disaster relief and management for the 2025 fires in California, which was declared a major disaster on January 8, with estimated economic losses greater than $150 billion. The directive paused FEMA grant money, “including key support for California as it responds to the fires.”
The states’ counts against the Trump administration included two substantive violations against the Administrative Procedures Act, violation of the separation of powers by usurping the legislative function, violation of the spending clause by altering conditions attached to funds after they were accepted by states, and violation of the Presentment, Appropriations, and Take Care Clauses by refusing “to spend money appropriated by Congress, in violation of the executive’s constitutional authority to administer the law.”
Though on January 29 the Trump administration rescinded the OMB order at issue in this case, Judge John J. McConnell issued a temporary restraining order on January 31, reasoning that the “evidence in the record at this point shows that, despite the rescission of the OMB Directive, the Executive’s decision to pause appropriated federal funds ‘remains in full force and effect.’” On February 10, Judge McConnell’s subsequent order granted the states’ motion to enforce the January 31 restraining order, referencing evidence that even after the restraining order, the Trump administration “continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds.”
As the letter from western senators decrying fire mitigation work stoppages explained, when agencies first initiated the Wildfire Crisis Implementation Plan in 2022, the Forest Service selected 21 high priority landscapes for mitigation with IRA and IIJA funds, awarding $1.73 billion “to protect at-risk communities, critical infrastructure, public water sources, and adjacent Tribal lands in 10 Western States.” The wildfire hazard reduction efforts on Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscapes have involved the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, states, counties, tribal nations, local governments, and businesses. The Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscapes documentation also indicates that IRA and IIJA funds “help reduce wildfire risk and improve local economies and communities” in every state and Puerto Rico. The BLM’s account of its IRA and IIJA-funded fuels management program stresses that the agency “accomplishes much of its fuels management work with partners and contractors, providing an economic boost to local communities.”
The Trump administration’s actions to freeze funds for wildfire mitigation and lay off employees who work on forest hazard reduction treatments and fight fires have left stakeholders fearful about the economic, public safety, and ecological repercussions for communities throughout the United States.
