Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again. And welcome to the Roads with Bell. Today, we're going down the roads to your July questions, mainly because it's a busy week and I didn't have time to pull together a deep dive on a topic, which is what we normally do on Thursday.

So we're going to start with some questions and they're from all over the place.

Email, Patreon, comments, everywhere.

But before we get started, just a reminder, we will never send you off platform to like Telegram or WhatsApp to chat with us.

Any account in the comments that looks like us asking you to do that is a scam.

Our first question.

I was passing a rural fire department as I do on the way to the post office next

door when a question popped in my head about President Donald J. Trump's budget cuts. This rule

FD has some very nice equipment for a town of 11,000, where the tallest structures are the old growth trees.

You have probably guessed the question, but here it is anyway. Will or have the President

Donald J. Trump budget cuts proposed or enacted impact first responders in rural areas,

or does all that money come from the state?

So, this is actually more complex than it seems at first. I haven't seen any direct pushes to cut back specifically on federal grants to fire departments. But some of the overall grants help the states,

which then filters down to the fire departments.

And the big one?

I think most money going to fire departments

comes through something pretty simply named

the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program. That program is run by FEMA,

and Trump keeps saying he'll wind FEMA down. I don't think there will be intentional cuts to

fire department grants, but Trump might cut FEMA as a whole and not reorganize the funding.

I have a question.

I'm a voting independent and have always wondered why we have a party system of electing officials.

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