by Mark Olalde

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President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal government, launched as the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires burned across Los Angeles, have left the country’s wildland firefighting force unprepared for the rapidly approaching wildfire season.

The administration has frozen funds, including money appropriated by Congress, and issued a deluge of orders eliminating federal employees, which has thrown agencies tasked with battling blazes into disarray as individual offices and managers struggle to interpret the directives. The uncertainty has limited training and postponed work to reduce flammable vegetation in areas vulnerable to wildfire. It has also left some firefighters with little choice but to leave the force, their colleagues said.

ProPublica spoke to a dozen firefighters and others who assist with the federal wildfire response across the country and across agencies. They described a range of immediate impacts on a workforce that was already stressed by budgetary woes predating the Trump administration. Hiring of some seasonal workers has stalled. Money for partner nonprofits that assist with fuel-reduction projects has been frozen. And crews that had traveled to support prescribed burns in Florida were turned back, while those assisting with wildfire cleanup in California faced confusion over how long they would be allowed to do that work.

“Uncertainty is at an all-time high. Morale is at an all-time low,” one federal wildland firefighter said. Multiple federal employees asked not to be named because of their fear of retribution from the White House.

In two separate lawsuits, judges issued temporary restraining orders against aspects of the White House’s broad freeze of federal spending, although the administration continues arguing that it has the authority to halt the flow of money. Some funding freezes appear to be thawing, but projects and hiring have already been severely impacted.

In one case, the freeze to Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding, combined with orders limiting travel by some federal employees, forced the National Park Service to cancel a massive prescribed burn scheduled for January and February in Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve, ProPublica has confirmed. Prescribed burns help prevent catastrophic wildfires by clearing vegetation that serves as fuel, and the meticulously planned 151,434-acre Florida fire — to cover more than six times the land area of nearby Miami — was also meant to protect a Native American reservation and improve ecological biodiversity.

“We will be more vulnerable to a catastrophic fire in the future as a result of not being able to do the prescribed burns,” a federal firefighter with direct knowledge of the situation said.

The National Park Service gave conflicting explanations for the cancellation, suggesting in a news release that weather was the cause while internally acknowledging it was due to funding, the firefighter said.

This comes as the U.S. Forest Service, which employs more than 10,000 firefighters,

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