This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 1 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
Right now, wildfires are burning through millions of acres across the U.S. and Canada. The same thing is happening in Europe, as Spain and France experience their biggest wildfires on record and hundreds of thousands of people are forced to evacuate. Greece, Turkey and parts of the U.K. are also trying to contain outbreaks. And climate change is fueling all of it.
The massive flames and black skies you see on the news — or might have seen firsthand for yourself, depending on where you live — are the direct result of hotter, drier conditions. Dead grass, brush and trees essentially turn into kindling, awaiting any tiny spark to light it up and spread, as the phrase goes, “like wildfire.”
While climate change may be the root cause, the Trump administration is making it pretty easy for these natural disasters to become as destructive and frequent as possible.
I saw it firsthand in my hometown of Los Angeles last year while I was covering the costliest wildfires this country has ever seen. I cannot emphasize how catastrophic the conditions were and how eerie and terrifying it was to watch flames engulf entire communities.
But things are only getting worse. According to a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, high-severity fires in California burn 30 times more acreage than they did four decades ago, in 1985.
And while climate change may be the root cause, the Trump administration is making it pretty easy for these natural disasters to become more destructive and more frequent.
In my book “Firestorm,” I wrote about this administration’s attempts to “refute, dismantle, or outright eliminate valuable resources within the federal government’s arsenal to communicate about, respond to, mitigate, and prevent disasters.”
Those effects are being felt even more acutely now. Remember the Department of Government Efficiency? DOGE was an initiative launched by billionaire Elon Musk early in President Donald Trump’s second administration, and it laid off hundreds of thousands of federal workers and destroyed multiple federal programs.
Even though DOGE officially came to an end last month, we’re still talking about Musk’s brainchild because many areas involved in those cuts are currently on fire.
In 2024 the Biden administration invested $100 million to fight the national wildfire crisis. Part of that went to the Superior National Forest in Minnesota, which planned to spend millions of dollars in approved grant money to remove decades of dead trees and undergrowth. They were, in the words of former Forest Service district ranger Aaron Kania, who spoke to The Washington Post, “shovel-ready.”
Then DOGE came in swinging, laying off about a third of the U.S. Forest Service staff, slashing funding and delaying the grant that was supposed to thin out some 4,000 acres of Minnesota forest in the process.
Most of that work never got started, according to five people who spoke with the Post. And now that area is getting torched.
In July wildfires burned through tens of thousands of acres in Minnesota, across parts of the Superior National Forest and along a 36-mile gravel road known as Echo Trail. The Washington Post reported that funding postponed by DOGE would have covered wildfire reduction efforts in both of those areas.
The White House and the U.S. Forest Service did not respond to a request from the outlet. But that same former district ranger told the Post that “had that work been implemented, it would have been effective in stopping or slowing down these fires.” Instead, he said, “they are doing it under emergency conditions … and that is the most expensive way to do this work imaginable.”
So much for “government efficiency.”
Allison Detzel contributed.
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