Employees who maintained America's most wild places say they are concerned for public safety and for wildlife.

Summary

The Trump administration’s recent mass layoffs of national park and forest staff have sparked outrage as services deteriorate and safety concerns grow.

Around 1,000 National Park Service employees (5%) and 3,400 Forest Service workers (10%) were terminated on February 14, causing long entrance lines, trail closures, and reduced visitor services.

Former employees like wilderness ranger Kate White worry about visitor safety and ecological damage at popular destinations.

Conservation work for endangered species has halted, and wildfire response capabilities are threatened. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the cuts as deficit reduction, while critics call for policy reversal.

  • stickly@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 days ago

    So let’s get this straight, social services are wasteful and don’t help the poor. So let’s cut them AND raise taxes on the poor while we cut taxes for the rich? Even in that framework it doesn’t make any sense.

    I don’t know for a fact that any of the US spending is all that corrupt at the federal level, don’t presume that we agree there. The straws they grasp at as “wasteful” are pennies.

    Notice how they don’t touch military, social security or medicare. The latter two paper over social issues that could be addressed but conservatives can’t cut them because it would be massively unpopular. No amount of “simplified spending” can fix the fundamental flaws in these programs. So in the structure of government spending we’re allowed to have, it’s not wasteful. It’s literally all PR and conservative talking points.

    • turnip@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      It makes sense in the eyes of Milton Friedman and Austrian economist, who believe that it raises the price of goods. Taxing the rich is usually taxing corporations, since the rich aren’t exactly liquidating their holdings every year.