AFTON—U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s remark about the U.S. Agency for International Development triggered one of the most raucous rounds of applause of the evening.
Even before the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency — aka DOGE — started gutting the federal government’s foreign aid branch, known by its acronym, USAID, the sophomore congresswoman for Wyoming had it in her sights, she said.
“In the interest of full disclosure, a year ago I voted to disband and abolish USAID,” Hageman told a conference room full of Star Valley residents, who cheered and even whooped in approval.
During Thursday’s town hall, Hageman told the rapt audience she doesn’t take issue with USAID’s mission. But then she proceeded to list off programs, echoing President Donald Trump, that she disagrees with, like the $520 million Prosper Africa initiative, which includes an educational curriculum about climate change.
The list ran long.
“I disagree with $20,000 to help LGBT people vote in Honduran elections,” Hageman said. “I disagree with $425,000 towards training Indonesian coffee companies on being gender friendly, and on and on and on.”
More applause erupted.
Ten minutes later, however, Susan Danford pushed back.
“I agree that all those things you read off sound ludicrous,” Danford told Hageman, “but surely they do some good things.”
The octogenarian, who’d traveled 140 miles round-trip from her home in Jackson, didn’t get the chance to complete her thought. A round of applause — every bit as loud as earlier — interrupted.
Hageman conceded that “about 17%” of the aid was “good.” Those things, she said, were moved into the The U.S. Department of State, which is where USAID’s defunct website now lives.
Danford ended the exchange.
“I just think we need to take a deep breath,” Danford said, “and try to start making sense.”
Hageman’s hour-long town hall — part of a southern and western Wyoming circuit the congresswoman is partway through — covered a lot of ground. The Equality State’s lone U.S. House representative touched on her efforts to legislate issues like grizzly bears and Bureau of Land Management resource management plans for its Rock Springs and Buffalo field offices. She also fielded questions about a lack of funding for preventative wildfire-related projects and Afton’s VA clinic, which a veteran who was wounded in combat in Iraq described as a “horrible mess.”
DOGE impacts
A good deal of the discussion, however, circled around what’s perhaps the highest-profile initiative of the second Trump administration: DOGE. The effort to downsize the U.S. government, named after an internet meme, has had impacts on the residents of Wyoming where the federal government owns nearly half of the land and manages it on behalf of all Americans.
Under the Trump administration, official federal job loss figures in Wyoming have not been provided despite numerous requests. But departed and current staff at agency after agency — from the U.S. Forest Service to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Bureau of Land Management — have reported involuntary workforce terminations, albeit to varying degrees. Federal offices are being eliminated and funding pools are being frozen for everything from flea fogging to saving endangered black-footed ferrets from plague to trail-building on Wyoming’s national forests.
The face of the cuts is Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world who was appointed as a special government employee by Trump, the president he often appears alongside.
As Hageman wrapped up in Afton, a man began to bemoan the influence of the “unelected billionaire” before the audience’s applause for the congresswoman cut him off.
In her remarks, Hageman discounted the South Africa-born entrepreneur, a polarizing figure. It’s not Musk who heads DOGE, she said. “A woman by the name of Amy Gleason is the acting director,” Hageman said.
Musk, she added later, isn’t calling the shots. “Congress will ultimately be the ones making the decisions about these various programs,” Hageman said.
Hageman spoke proudly of the $105 billion in federal government spending that DOGE has claimed to have cut as of last Thursday. But she also spoke in support of Wyoming’s federal workers. On site last fall while the historic Elk Fire burned, the congresswoman was “in awe” of Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson’s “knowledge” and “expertise,” and she extended the praise beyond one person.
“We’ve got some excellent people, some excellent federal employees right here in Wyoming,” Hageman said. “I’ve had a great time visiting with our BLM folks, our Forest Service people who live and work here, and I know that they have the best interest of Wyoming at heart. They have the best interest of these resources at heart. They always have.”
The challenge, she added, was shifting the decision making from Washington, D.C., to the local level.
‘Lot of rumors’
Publicly, Hageman did not address untold numbers of federal workers who’ve been fired or incentivized to leave their Wyoming-based jobs. Asked by WyoFile after the town hall adjourned, she didn’t necessarily agree with the basic premise of a question that concerned how DOGE downsizing was affecting Wyoming’s federal land managers and their staff — her constituents.
“There’s a lot of rumors,” Hageman told WyoFile. “[That] is why I’m going to push back a little bit.”
Like the general public, Hageman has been kept in the dark about Wyoming job loss figures stemming from DOGE.
“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” she said about job cuts in Wyoming.
But the suggestion that cuts were “deep” in places gave Hageman pause.
“Where?” she asked. “When?”
WyoFile cited the Bridger-Teton National Forest’s Pinedale Ranger District, where a combined 12 permanent-seasonal and year-round full-time employees either left their jobs or were fired in the Trump administration’s first two months, according to a federal worker familiar with the numbers. Most of those dozen workers were told to leave in a single day, Feb. 14, which came to be called the Valentine’s Day massacre.
Asked if she was advocating on behalf of any federal land managers behind the scenes, Hageman said she’s been in talks with agencies making sure they can “properly and effectively” manage their resources. Her office has been in touch with both the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Trump administration on the matter, she said.
“We need to have the folks available to do the managing of the resources,” Hageman said. “We’ve also been working with the [congressional] committees to make sure that what is going to happen with bills is going to be effective on the ground.”
Other Wyo. leader takes
Sen. John Barrasso, whose office didn’t respond to an interview request for this story, has publicly praised Musk’s downsizing. The day the Trump administration’s initiative claimed the jobs of an untold number of Wyoming residents, he told Cowboy State Daily that DOGE was “draining the swamp.”
“Congress will work with DOGE to keep key programs operational,” Barrasso said, “while addressing reckless and wasteful Washington spending.”
The remaining member of Wyoming’s congressional delegation, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, has hinted at having a nuanced reception to DOGE and its still-murky impacts. The senator was in the Wyoming Capitol on Feb. 14 and spoke glowingly about the change of administration, which was ushering in a “new golden age,” she said.
“If you’re watching network television, you’re not seeing and hearing what Elon Musk is actually doing to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse,” Lummis told state lawmakers.
But Lummis also has worked to ease the impacts of DOGE cuts on Wyoming, according to a statement from her office. The senator “has made sure the administration understands how important it is [that] our national parks and federal lands are properly staffed.”
Lummis is “sympathetic,” the statement said, to “Wyoming communities affected by proposed cuts.”
During a Wednesday press conference, Gov. Mark Gordon spoke broadly in support of the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal government.
“I do think this administration really does want to get back to letting the states lead,” Gordon told reporters. “That’s a very positive piece of this.”
But the governor also said he recognizes that DOGE cuts are going to be “traumatic” and “a hardship” for some individuals and that “there’s some disturbance that will happen” in some communities. He worried specifically about impacts on the federal firefighting corps, saying he was “very concerned.”
Wyoming’s congressional delegation, the governor said, has done reasonably well in “blunting” losses to some federal agencies, like the National Park Service. The impacts on others, like the Bureau of Land Management, are less clear.
“The point I’ve made to the [Trump] administration is the Biden administration wouldn’t give us any permits to drill oil and gas,” Gordon said. “Now we’re worried if we’ll have people to be able to fill those permits out. The net result, we hope, isn’t zero. We hope that that result is more positive: Permits to drill in Wyoming.”
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