U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, left, brought fired U.S. Forest Service field ranger Liz Crandall as her guest for President Donald Trump’s address to Congress. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum’s office)
Liz Crandall was supposed to spend Tuesday renewing the wilderness first responder certification she needed as a field ranger for the U.S. Forest Service.
Instead, Crandall is in Washington, D.C., as U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum’s guest to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress, where she’ll face the man whose administration fired her and thousands of other federal workers.
Crandall and more than a dozen colleagues abruptly lost their jobs at the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District in the Deschutes National Forest in mid-February when the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency fired probationary employees across government agencies.
“Liz is a dedicated public servant and played a key role in public safety,” Bynum said during a call with Oregon reporters Tuesday. “Her firing benefits no one, and it certainly doesn’t lower costs or create jobs or improve quality of life.”
Her decision to bring Crandall as her guest to Trump’s first address to Congress is in line with other Democrats in Oregon and around the country, who are using the event to highlight Trump and special government employee Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal workforce and federal programs. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, both Oregon Democrats, will also bring federal workers as guests.
Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Oregon, will show up with a local firefighter to highlight cuts to wildfire mitigation programs and the federal agencies that work with state and local firefighters to extinguish blazes. And Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, is skipping the speech entirely. Instead, he’ll host a virtual town hall, livestreamed on Facebook, for Oregon residents.
“I always think it’s important to remember that there is a human face behind every policy that we make, and I would hope that it’s hard for the president to look someone in the eye that he directed that their job be terminated through no fault of their own,” Bynum said. “And I would hope that by bringing her forth and bringing the stories that she’s carrying forth, that those people would have their jobs reinstated.”
Crandall has worked for the U.S. Forest Service for nine years, mostly as a seasonal employee, before landing a full-time job in 2023. Most federal employees are on probationary contracts during their first year or two at a full-time job, before they gain the full protections of civil service employment.
If she hadn’t been fired, she said she would be spending the early spring working on prescribed burns and keeping the public from burn sites. She also would be training for summer firefighting work, including taking an annual test that involves carrying a heavy backpack on a trek through the forest.
“We must come together as a united nation to protect our federal workers, who consist of your neighbors, your family, your friends, or just local community members,” Crandall said. “In doing so, we are protecting our communities and our public lands, which boast our history, natural beauty and draw visitors from around the world and around the country.”
Merkley’s guest, Isabella Isaksen, is a U.S. Army veteran and Olympic pentathlete who worked as a public information officer for the Ochoco National Forest and Crooked River National Grassland before her sudden firing.
“Let’s be clear: workers like Isabella aren’t fraud, government waste, or numbers on a spreadsheet,” Merkley said in a statement. “They’re real people performing essential everyday duties in our communities. Isabella agreed to bear witness to this speech with me, as she and thousands of other public servants across this nation deserve an explanation for why they were illegally fired without any consideration to the immense expertise, value and economic benefits they bring to our communities.”
Dexter, a Democrat who represents the 3rd Congressional District that stretches from Portland to Hood River, will bring Alan Ferschweiler, legislative director of the Oregon State Firefighters Council.
Ferschweiler told the Capital Chronicle that many of the federal employees who lost their jobs held the incident qualification card, or red card, that serves as an interagency certification for fighting fires. Firefighters from federal, state and local agencies and rural fire service districts work together to combat blazes, and those federal employees are crucial to keeping small fires from growing bigger.
“The main issue is trying to keep them small with the workforce that’s out there, and then supporting us as they do get bigger,” Ferschweiler said. “We work hand in hand with all the agencies federally to be able to help suppress them, either on the line or through logistics, and it’s a big cut, especially to Oregon, to the potential wildfires that’s coming up.”
Oregon’s congressional delegation has signed onto multiple letters urging federal bureaucrats to restore fire positions and funding for mitigation, and Gov. Tina Kotek personally urged the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support Oregon’s fire efforts during a meeting at the White House last month. But so far, Dexter said, their pleas aren’t being heard.
“It really is clear that there is nothing efficient about letting our communities burn, which is effectively what they are signing us up for,” Dexter said. “We have had increasingly intense and prolonged wildfire seasons, and it is 100% putting lives at stake in the name of politics.”
Bonamici will bring Arielle Kane, a maternal health policy analyst who was fired from her job at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Firing her blocks work that saves lives of mothers and babies, Bonamici said in a statement.
“I’m not here to say everything is perfect in the U.S. health care system, but when you fire the people working on making it better, you aren’t going to fix anything,” Kane added. “Maternal health outcomes in the U.S. are the worst among high-income countries and gutting the team that’s working to improve outcomes at lower costs won’t make them any better.”
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