This op-ed was originally published by The Revelator. The introductory section is reprinted under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.
On March 3, Randy Moore, the 20th chief of the U.S. Forest Service, stepped down after a lifelong career that started in 1981. A soil scientist and forester, Moore was also the first African American chief of the Forest Service. His resignation came on the heels of a widespread wave of mass firings of Forest Service personnel that amounted to approximately 10% of its workforce. In his farewell letter, Moore laid bare his frustration regarding the ongoing dismantling of the agency and the need for personnel to stick together and remain nimble, adding that for those in the Forest Service “feeling uncertainty, frustration, or loss, you are not alone.”
Moore was replaced by Tom Schultz, a timber executive with deep ties to the logging industry. Schultz is also the first chief in Forest Service history who has not previously worked in the agency. In his introduction letter, Schultz highlighted his 25 years of land management, focusing on his timber and mineral extraction directive roles in Idaho.
This change in leadership provides a clear example of what the Trump administration means to do to federal agencies and public lands: crush agency capacity, shift focus from conservation to exploitation, and bring private interests directly into public agencies whose mandate is to serve the public.
By weakening protections — and decimating the agencies in charge of enforcing those that are left — the Trump administration will ensure that economic activities have primacy over everything else, including, perhaps, the rule of law.
This shift is rooted in the ideology that nature should be commodified to the utmost extent allowable, and it’s part of a bigger strategy determined to withdraw the state from public life and toward a capitalist economy unrestrained from “unnecessary burdens” like public and environmental protections. Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for this presidential administration, includes detailed instructions to achieve these goals, primarily through diminishing the ability of the administrative state to fulfill its duties.
While much of this has been highly visible, just as much has not.
When austerity-minded governments cut services, often branded as “downsizing,” the costs end up in one of two places.
They can go to government contracts in the private sector, if agencies are expected to keep providing the same services or doing the same amount of work.
Or, if an agency is left resourceless and reduces its work, these costs become social and environmental externalities that fall first and foremost on frontline communities and affected ecosystems.
We’re already seeing the ground laid for both these outcomes, with dire consequences for our public lands and waters.
For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — a building block of the nation’s system for earth monitoring, climate research, and emergency preparedness and response — is preparing to lay off more than 1,000 employees — just ahead of hurricane season.
Even more concerning is the fate of the Department of the Interior, the agency responsible for managing more than 500 million acres of public lands, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, and 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. All these resources are now up for grabs to the highest bidder. During CERAWeek, an energy industry meeting organized by S&P Global, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said that “If the Interior Department was a stand-alone company, it would have the largest balance sheet in the world, bar none.”
Many of us feel overwhelmed by these changes, which was itself central to the strategy laid out by Project 2025.
We need an approach that allows us to make sense of this new reality. I believe we can understand this “war on nature” by grouping the administration’s actions into three main buckets.
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Federico Holm | April 1, 2025
On March 3, Randy Moore, the 20th chief of the U.S. Forest Service, stepped down after a lifelong career that started in 1981. A soil scientist and forester, Moore was also the first African American chief of the Forest Service. His resignation came on the heels of a widespread wave of mass firings of Forest Service personnel that amounted to approximately 10% of its workforce. In his farewell letter, Moore laid bare his frustration regarding the ongoing dismantling of the agency and the need for personnel to stick together and remain nimble, adding that for those in the Forest Service “feeling uncertainty, frustration, or loss, you are not alone.” Moore was replaced by Tom Schultz, a timber executive with deep ties to the logging industry. Schultz is also the first chief in Forest Service history who has not previously worked in the agency. In his introduction letter, Schultz highlighted his 25 years of land management, focusing on his timber and mineral extraction directive roles in Idaho.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | March 31, 2025
As the authors of a book that argues that a combination of government and markets has built a country truest to its fundamental political values, we see plans to radically downsize government as a contradiction of the historical evidence. As our book relates, the country has established a web of laws that interact with markets to build up our infrastructure, protect people, and help the most vulnerable among us.
Federico Holm | March 31, 2025
Since our last update (March 18), we have seen some small changes regarding CRA resolutions. There have been no new resolutions signed into law (only two so far), and there are now seven resolutions that have passed one chamber. This means that in addition to the six resolutions that had already cleared one chamber (you can see our previous update for a detailed description of those resolutions), there have been votes on four other resolutions.
Jamie Pleune, John Ruple, Justin Pidot | March 28, 2025
On February 25, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued an interim final rule (IFR) rescinding the CEQ regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). On March 27, we submitted a comment, along with 25 other professors, identifying the severe challenges this rescission will create for critical infrastructure projects and other important federal activities.
Shelley Welton | March 24, 2025
\In How Government Built America, Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain offer a sweeping account of the role of government in building the United States. Readers will encounter a tour de force of U.S. history that includes topics as diverse as the regulation of early taverns; founding-era debates over bureaucracy; Andrew Jackson’s spoils system; the post office; the Civil War; monopolies and the Gilded Age; immigration, tenements, and slums; populism and muckrakers; Keynesianism and the New Deal; nuclear power development and the space race; the civil rights movement; the Vietnam War; Rachel Carson and Earth Day; Ralph Nader and consumer protection; the War on Poverty; Alfred Kahn, President Jimmy Carter and deregulation; Reaganomics; the Affordable Care Act; governmental outsourcing; the judiciary’s evolving role in government; January 6; COVID-19 and Anthony Fauci; and climate change and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | March 24, 2025
We thank Shelley Welton for her generous comments about our book and for the two issues she raises about our argument that American history is a story of how the mix of government and markets has been based on respect for equality, liberty, fairness, and the common good. We appreciate the opportunity to engage in a dialogue on those issues.
Alejandro Camacho, James Goodwin | March 18, 2025
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the questionable leadership of Elon Musk, has quickly become the signature initiative of the second Trump administration. Since Inauguration Day, personnel associated with DOGE have fanned out to virtually every executive branch agency, systematically dismantling them from within by hacking their IT infrastructure, firing thousands of staff, and even attempting to shut down entire agencies. To help congressional leaders, concerned policymakers, and citizens understand the various ways that DOGE’s actions may be unlawful, the Center has established the Unmasking DOGE tool that catalogues the numerous legal infirmities that underlie both DOGE as an institution and the specific actions it is seeking to carry out.
Federico Holm | March 18, 2025
Since our last update (March 10), we have crossed two important milestones regarding Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions: President Trump signed the first two resolutions into law, and the overall number of CRA resolutions introduced in Congress reached 60.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | March 17, 2025
Government has always been an essential part of American history, and this remains true today. Yet, as President Trump prepares, once again, to do his best to dismantle the administrative state, American history reveals why these efforts will ultimately fail. To appreciate that history, and what it means as the country moves into the Trump administration, we summarize key findings of our book.