The catastrophic 2026 wildfire season is reshaping the political landscape around wildfire policy, with bipartisan legislation targeting the root causes of destructive fires gaining new momentum in Congress — and an unexpected endorsement from the Trump White House. At the same time, the administration is moving independently on forest management rules that could have sweeping implications for how federal lands are managed for decades to come.

Fix Our Forests Act Moves Forward

The Fix Our Forests Act, a bipartisan bill that cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee and is being considered for attachment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, would expand forest management, prescribed burning, and wildfire mitigation projects on federal lands. Advocates argue that decades of fire suppression have allowed dangerous fuel loads to accumulate across millions of acres of Western forests — and that only aggressive, proactive management can break the cycle of increasingly catastrophic fires.

On August 10, the Office of Management and Budget released a statement of administration policy indicating that President Donald Trump's advisers would recommend he sign the Senate bill, framing it as a deregulatory measure that would help authorities "actively manage our forests" to reduce fire risks. Such statements are typically released only when floor action is imminent, suggesting the administration sees an opening to move the legislation before the end of the congressional session.

The timing is not coincidental. Wildfires in eastern Washington prompted the evacuation of roughly 65,000 Spokane-area residents in early August, and wildfire smoke reached Washington, D.C., this summer — making it politically impossible for lawmakers to ignore. A bipartisan coalition led by Western senators has been pressing for action.

Rollins Moves to Roll Back Roadless Rule

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins took separate administrative action last week, initiating steps to repeal a 25-year-old rule that bans road construction and other development on approximately 45 million acres of national forestland — an area larger than the state of Washington. The Clinton-era Roadless Rule has long been a flashpoint, with timber and logging interests arguing it blocks forest-thinning operations that could reduce fire risk, and conservationists arguing it protects some of the most ecologically valuable and fire-resilient old-growth forests in the country.

Environmental groups quickly announced opposition to the repeal, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are framing the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act as a more durable, legally defensible alternative to unilateral executive action.

Funding: Never Enough

Congressional budget documents show the FY2027 proposed budget for the Forest Service's Wildland Fire Management account at $6.42 billion — a substantial figure that nonetheless falls short of what state foresters say is needed. A recent analysis from Wildfire Today cited state foresters who reported that even Biden-era investments from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law were insufficient for the scale of the challenge — whether for hazardous fuels reduction, training, equipment purchase, or community education.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Rollins visited the Northwest last week to survey wildfire damage, including stops in Idaho where five large fires are currently burning. The visits have added urgency to the legislative push.

The Bigger Picture

The 2026 season, which has already burned 7.9 million acres nationally — 165 percent of the 10-year average — is likely to intensify calls for structural reform rather than emergency-by-emergency responses. Researchers and fire managers increasingly agree that the Western fire crisis requires not just more firefighters, but a fundamental shift in how forests are managed, how communities are built in the wildland-urban interface, and how the nation funds proactive fire risk reduction rather than reactive suppression.

For Pacific Northwest communities living through this crisis, the policy debates in Washington, D.C., feel both urgent and inadequate. As one fire manager on the Little Giant Fire put it: "We need the tools and the funding to get ahead of this before the fire season starts — not after homes are already burning."