Trump wants to get rid of FEMA

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Peter Slevin:
"The recklessness of the federal firings is clear by now.
At the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Donald Trump’s minions axed workers responsible for maintaining nuclear weapons and monitoring the Avian flu outbreak, only to realize their mistake and scramble to rehire them. Talented and dedicated workers by the thousand — doing work every day that makes our lives better — are being dismissed without review or warning.
While Trump pretends that there is a method to the madness — “We’re keeping the best people” he told reporters this week — Elon Musk gave away the game when he pranced around a CPAC stage smiling and brandishing a chainsaw. Haha! What a funny guy! Such a card!
In reality, the randomness and suddenness of the cuts have created massive confusion while opening gaping holes in offices that do everything from answering the phones at the IRS during tax season to making appointments for some of the 127 million health care visits last year at the VA. Plus scientific research, food safety, air traffic control, climate resilience, roads, parks, data collection, consumer protection.
There’s a reason that societies have had government since ancient times. Government does things for us that we can’t very well do for ourselves. A fellow named Abraham Lincoln, the future Republican president, pointed that out in 1854 when he said, "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done - but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves, in their separate, and individual capacities."
So, who are these sluggards and incompetents whom the Trump administration is so eagerly adding to the unemployment rolls?
Here’s one: Jen Bunty. I flew to Asheville, N.C., to spend time with her in the Pisgah National Forest, where she had been working for nearly two years in a Swiss Army Knife of a role as emergency manager, district ranger, public information officer and certified firefighter. Qualifications: undergraduate double-major in biology and Russian; master’s degrees in biology and public administration; years of experience learning and explaining forest science, especially fires.
Valuable, one might say.
Bunty was house-hunting with her husband, their two young daughters in the back seat, when her supervisor called on a Sunday last month to say that she was being fired for reasons of poor “performance” — the cruel and inaccurate Muskian pretext that federal judges have since exposed and rejected. After delivering the news, he added, “You’re the best damned hire I ever made.”
Was she expendable? Let’s think for a minute about the work that the Forest Service does, particularly in Pisgah’s 500,000 acres, and particularly now. When Hurricane Helene roared through North Carolina in September, the storm killed more than 100 people and left a ravaged landscape of fallen trees, twisted debris piles and shattered bridges on Forest Service land. Jen worked 19 days straight.
Then, in December, Congress appropriated $2.6 billion for the recovery. Already dealing with a staffing shortage, Bunty and her team calculated that they needed to fill those jobs, plus another hundred to get the job done. Spending that kind of money properly, she said, was like pushing a bowling ball through a cocktail straw.
Team Trump’s solution? Fire more workers.
By the count of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, 2,000 employees across the country were sent home. If they are not rehired, that will mean fewer available firefighters as wildfires intensify — nine million acres burned last year — and fewer controlled burns designed to keep fires in check. Think, too, of the 158,000 miles of trails and the 4,300 campgrounds managed by the Forest Service. “Who’s going to do this work?” Jen asked.
This is your “bureaucracy,” your “deep state,” your cadre of “radical left lunatics.”
Working in the Pisgah National Forest was Jen’s dream job. She’s still hoping to get it back.'
The New Yorker

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https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... nate-fema/