Monday March 17, 2025
Willamette Week —
Democrats have spent a lot of time calculating the scale of the damage President Donald Trump has inflicted through cuts in federal agencies.
The Department of Government Efficiency, run by car-and-rocket billionaire Elon Musk, has fired about 10,000 government employees. Those cuts might soon be felt locally.
In an essay in The New York Times opinion pages last week, author Jacques Leslie examined how cuts could affect the Klamath River Basin in Southern Oregon. (The piece features photography by Jordan Gale, a frequent contributor to WW.)
The removal of dams from the Klamath is a saga that local media have watched closely, as Indigenous tribes have fought alongside other advocates to restore the salmon runs that had all but vanished. But Leslie raises a concern:
“In the past month, however, the Trump administration suspended funding authorized in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other Biden-era legislation for the wetlands restoration and other Klamath projects, and laid off U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees who facilitated those projects,” he writes.