Revealed: Trump taking 'baseball bat' to core California asset
U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks with members of the media on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 28, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
While President Donald Trump has given his blessing to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's effort to slash federal budgets and fire federal workers, the South African centibillionaire's initiative is now reportedly clashing with a key Trump administration policy.
Politico reported Friday that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — which Musk unofficially leads — has made steep cuts to the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which manages waterways and dams in 17 states. Those cuts have resulted in the USBR's California office having to lay off employees who were tasked with carrying out Trump's plan to unleash the Golden State's water reserves.
During his first month in office, Trump issued two executive orders pertaining to California's water supply. One controversial order directed federal officials to tap into reservoirs to redirect water to help fight wildfires in Southern California, which was water that farmers in the San Joaquin Valley were counting on to keep their crops healthy during dry summer months. He also directed DOGE representatives to fire probationary-level employees, which amount to roughly 10% of the USBR's California workforce.
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“We could have made the 10 percent cuts, if we’d been allowed to, much more easily, with far less impact to the mission,” one USBR employee told Politico. “Instead, it’s been this baseball bat that’s been taken to it, and the targets that they’ve hit are mission-critical.”
The cuts prompted 14 local water officials in California to write a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (which oversees the USBR) imploring the administration to reconsider its approach. The officials pointed out that it's not taxpayers that fund the USBR, but local farmers who pay for water deliveries.
"It is important to note that elimination of Reclamation staff will not further the goal of achieving significant cost savings to the American people," the officials wrote. Their points were echoed by Jim Peifer, who is the executive director of the Sacramento Regional Water Authority, in his own letter to Burgum.
"It is my assessment that the organization is already extremely lean on staffing, and further workforce cuts would jeopardize its mission and place the American people, who live in or near key federal water facilities such as dams, in danger," Peifer wrote.
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Click here to read Politico's report in full.
