While Donald Trump spends millions of our taxpayer dollars gold-plaiting the White House and monuments, he’s still plotting ways to cut vital services for the rest of us.
At first blush, wildfire and smoke research may seem a distant second to such programs as health insurance, food benefits and education (which Trump has also cut in service to tax cuts for his billionaire cronies), that research is critical, too.
As NPR explained, “newly proposed U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and a larger reorganization of the agency would have immediate consequences as the West looks poised for an epic summer of wildfires and smoke.”
Taxpayer-funded technology produced out of Seattle’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab monitors and predicts wildfire behavior and smoke. It is “widely used by governments, elite firefighting teams and popular commercial apps that people rely on when the smoke gets bad,” according to NPR.