"Neither the House nor the Senate included funding for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service in new spending bills. The Interior Department is still forging ahead."
"The Trump administration last week established a new firefighting agency to combine operations at the Department of the Interior under one entity.
But Congress isn’t cutting any ribbons.
The appropriations bill package approved by the Senate on Thursday doesn’t allocate any funding for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, denying the administration’s request for $6.5 billion for a new agency. The snub is more targeted at the Trump administration’s broader vision to also fold into the agency fire operations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service—a merger that has not yet happened and is unlikely without congressional approval, sources say.
“The bill does not endorse the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting into one agency as proposed in President Trump’s budget request,” reads a summary of the measure from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the vice chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. “Instead, it specifically provides funding to continue wildland firefighting using the longstanding practice of funding both the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to allow Congress to consider legislative proposals for such a major change.”"
Kiley Price reports for Inside Climate News January 20, 2026.
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