Federal workers across the PNW are being fired by the Trump administration. They warn of impacts on wildfires, science and historic landmarks

SPOKANE — The letter from the federal government arrived in a email Thursday. He was fired.

First came a wave of panic. Then came feelings of betrayal.

“How could they be so callous?” his wife, Suzanne Anderson, asked. “Like we aren’t people? His name is just text on a spreadsheet. We are not people to them.”

Dennis is 61, lives in Moscow and works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture studying plants on the rolling hills of the Palouse. He declined to share his last name for fear of retaliation from the same government officials who fired him. The whirlwind of emotions from being fired, as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federal spending by terminating large portions of the workforce, left him feeling too disjointed to articulate his feelings Saturday.

So Anderson spoke for him.

“Next week is his last paycheck. We don’t have healthcare. It’s not easy to get another job,” she said. “We love the Palouse … We raised our family here. We wanted to retire here. Are we going to have to leave?”

Dennis’ letter — the same letter that thousands of employees in the federal government received Thursday — told him something Anderson could only describe as “a total lie.”

“The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the letter said. “For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from your position.”

Layoffs are happening throughout the federal government, with large cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Interior Department and others. The New York Times reported that the layoffs targeted most of an estimated 200,000 workers who were on probation, a period of time in which employees are easier to remove. Probation is required of all federal employees who enter a new position within the government, and it is not an indicator of poor performance or wrongful behavior.

As of Saturday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has fired around 3,4000 employees, according to a news release from U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell. This includes the loss 1,400 U.S. Forest Service employees, said Matthew Brossard, vice president of the Forest Service Council. More terminations are expected in the coming days.

Brossard is working to tabulate the numbers of employees who have been let go, but the numbers are “hard to comprehend,” he said . The gap left from these workers, often workers the public takes for granted, will be significant, Brossard warned.

Dennis was on probation as a new plant scientist for the USDA. He has felt like he was going to be on the chopping block for a while now — before his termination, he was getting signals that he and other employees were barred from speaking to the press.

While his letter told him his termination was based on his performance, nothing about Dennis’ work indicated he was underperforming. His boss is even trying to fight his termination, Anderson said. He’s also not eligible for unemployment because his firing was “performance-based.”

The hills of the Palouse are covered with wheat, lentils and other food crops. It’s home to some of the highest-yielding dryland wheat fields in the world with farmers often harvesting 100 bushels or more per acre. Dennis’ job is to continue researching those crops — how they grow, how they flourish and how drastic changes in weather or droughts can affect a farmers’ harvest.

The government can rely on that research to communicate with farmers about crop production, Anderson said. Farmers are also given open invitations to tour with the researchers, and the two groups tend to learn from each other.

“The science and the research is important to get what they need. It comes down to economics. Changes in the environment change crops and can change the soil. Researchers have to look at those things. The wheat farmers, especially,” she said. “They need the researchers. We are all tied together in Washington and Idaho. It’s not just the wheat, it’s all the crops. It’s vital for food.”

So does the administration know how vital the Palouse’s crop production is to the world? “No,” Anderson said: “The manner in which these firings were executed, they clearly didn’t do their research.”

Since the notice, the government has declined to say how many workers have been laid off in the states of Washington and Idaho.

“Secretary Rollins fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, loggers and the agriculture community. We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” an email from a USDA spokesperson said. “As part of this effort, USDA has released individuals in their probationary period of employment. We are confident that talented individuals who have been affected by this change will have many opportunities to contribute to our economy and society in countless ways outside of government.”

Across the state of Washington lives Anna Coburn, 31. Every day in her work as a lead park ranger, she walks the trails on the north side of Mount St. Helens, which erupted in the summer of 1980, claiming the lives of 57 people.

“I love people,” Coburn said. “And I love the planet.”

Like Dennis, Coburn received the same form-letter email on Thursday, which told her she, along with other colleagues at her station, were terminated from the job she had spent three college degrees and many years trying to obtain. Coburn’s father died last year, and the feeling of grief that swept over her was palpable. The grief of losing the job she loved feels like its on the same spectrum, she said Saturday.

“It’s not as big as that, but it’s the helplessness and grief I feel, especially for everyone who have worked so hard to get where they are. You have to work hard in the federal service to make nothing. You have to pay your dues,” she said. “Now I have to start at square one. This job market is not prepared for this.”

The volcano that made national news draws visitors from around the world. It’s an epicenter for ecological studies, a dream location for park rangers and an optimal destination for tourists. Coburn looks to the volcano as a scientific revelation and its rippling impact across the United States, especially one that took so many lives.

“Because of that, people are motivated to go around the globe in the science community and help local agencies do better work, evacuations and disaster response. It changed the world in so many ways,” she said. “We have people from all over the planet come because they are so excited about what Mount St. Helens means to the world. It’s so important to have (us) up there, not only for those who lost their lives, but the people who remember it.”

Impacts on wildfire response will be consequential, workers warn

The Trump administration promised wildland firefighters they would be safe from termination. But that pledge doesn’t apply to those who are the second line of defense during wildfire season.

“I received a notice of an employee’s termination who is on a fire assignment in Louisiana,” Brossard said. “They were let go. And they don’t know how they’re getting home at this point. The (Trump) administration doesn’t want anyone to know about that.”

When wildfires ignite, firefighters head straight to the flames with their axes and hard hats while helicopters zoom overhead. As they do the work, they look to other workers for support — dispatchers, mechanics or forest protection planners. Public information officers take information from those people and distribute it to help reach people and keep them safe.

Those positions were among the positions gutted this week, Brossard said.

“You’re going to have this huge gap going into fire season of a critical position to inform the public what is going on on their lands,” Brossard said. “In the Forest Service, there are office positions for fires. There are extra dispatchers. There is ground support. They’re all being let go. Everything in the Forest Service is going to be affected. They’re going after the support people, the people who do all the work on these incidents, it’s all going to be limited.”

Riva Duncan has spent more than 30 years in the Forest Service responding to wildfires. After her retirement in 2020, she became the vice president of the nonprofit, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. The organization is meant to address concerns raised by wildland firefighters, like healthcare, pay or workers compensation claims.

“A vast majority of people let go is non-fire. But what the public needs to know, is they still fight fire,” Duncan said. “That might not be their full-time job, but everybody helps. They fill in on engines, hand crews, helicopters, and provide a ton of behind the scenes support, like logistics, food, water, planning and more. There is a giant group of people behind the scenes supporting fire, and firefighters cannot do those jobs without them.”

Duncan now lives in North Carolina, but she spent several of her years working in Oregon, where wildfires tend to rage every summer. She has also spent time fighting fires near Spokane. Duncan knows all too well the importance of wildfire response in areas like Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California, because those are areas with evergreen forests, tall trees and dry soil.

“When there’s a lightning storm in the PNW, which happens every summer, there are numerous fires at once. It’s an all-hands-on-deck thing,” Duncan said. “It’s going to affect response times. Some of these people fill in when people are sick or on leave. This will have far-reaching effects, and the public needs to be concerned.”

Because those areas are so rural, many of the federal workers in those small towns have no where else to seek work once they are let go, Duncan said. And when they leave, they’ll bring their spouse with them. Those spouses may work in sectors like school teaching, so fleeing the town with their spouse who was just fired will also leave the town with one less teacher.

“The people who answer the phone to sell permits or to tell you if a recreation site is open, a lot of those folks were fired, too,” Duncan said. “It’s going to have a ripple effect, it will affect a lot more people than those folks who were fired.”

While workers like Coburn are finding it hard to rationalize the reality of being fired, she knows too many people take her position for granted. Rangers are there to teach people the history of the ground they stand on, to direct them toward pleasure or to warn them of danger. Losing an entire lead team at Mount St. Helens is detrimental to those who want to experience the same joy of the volcano that Coburn does, she said.

“Park rangers keep your parks open … We clean your bathrooms. We keep the trails groomed. We are in your visitor’s centers. We are keeping the public safe when they’re enjoying the land,” Coburn said.

Too often, tourists arrive at the mountain who are not equipped for a long hike. Some don’t pack enough food or water and some don’t read the signs or maps. Some get lost and have to be rescued. There’s too many instances to count where a life has been saved by a park ranger, Coburn said.

“I regularly help people who have fallen, or who are suffering,” she said. “We had a lady come from the cruise ship … Last year she fell and busted her head open. We were so far up the road, and we are far from medical. I was there to help command the scene and hold her head closed for an hour.”

Park rangers teach, bring people water or patrol the trails, Coburn says, but first and foremost, they are there to help. Now that she has no position to go back to, she has no idea what’s next.

Neither does Dennis and his wife. The two are trying to stay calm in a quickly-changing environment.

While both consider themselves fortunate for what they already have — a home that is paid off and no extra mouths to feed — Anderson says she’s worried about the younger federal workers who are beginning to have children and have to find a new source of income at the drop of a hat.

“My heart goes out to people who don’t know if they’ll be able to put food on the table,” she said. “Imagine being told you’re terminated, but now you have to fight for unemployment. They’re trying to wear people down.”

Coburn has sent her resume to every place she can think of — she’s tried the Washington parks department, a department she’s pretty confident has a “stack” of resumes after the mass layoffs. She also and even applied for a job at Home Depot to find a source of income until she lands back in her chosen field.

Everything she’s worked for since she left Mount St. Helens the first time to get her master’s degree feels gone, she says. Like she’s starting at square one.

“Being told to leave because I’m not fit for the public is absolutely insulting,” Coburn said. “I was very proud of the role I had this past season, and it meant a lot to me.”