As Donald Trump travels to Medora, North Dakota, to dedicate the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, he is positioning himself as the heir to America’s “Conservation President.” The reality is that Teddy Roosevelt established 18 national monuments and signed the Antiquities Act to protect America’s wild places for future generations. Trump has spent his term doing the exact opposite: draining national park entrance fees to pay for fountains, fireworks, and a White House ballroom; gutting park staff and maintenance even as visitation hits record highs; destroying the Lincoln Reflecting Pool; and handing over public lands to oil, mining, and logging interests.
TRUMP IS DRAINING NATIONAL PARK ENTRANCE FEES TO PAY FOR HIS OWN WASHINGTON MAKEOVER
Trump Is Diverting at Least Millions In Park Fees — Paid by Visitors to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Other Parks — to Fund Fountains, Fireworks, and “Beautification” in D.C. Internal National Park Service documents show the administration is using park entrance fees to fund a $1.6 million Fourth of July fireworks display along with $76 million in fountain and monument repairs in the capital. Another analysis separately found the Park Service spent nearly $75 million in recreation fees on contracts signed between December 2025 and March 2026 alone, with more than 90% going to D.C.-area projects — a staggering shift from the 2% or less of that fund that went to Washington projects during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s presidency combined.
National Park Visitor Fees Are Paying For Trump’s White House Renovation. The Atlantic’s obtained Park Service budget documents showing the replacement of the West Colonnade walkway with polished, Italian-carved African granite cost taxpayers $689,232, part of a broader $1.3 million project. When a reporter asked Trump who was paying for it, he said, “Paid for by me.” A year earlier, the Park Service spent another $347,503 in a “Rush project at request of POTUS” to redo the stucco on the colonnade wall — clearing space for Trump to hang gold-framed plaques mocking his predecessors. Park Service managers approved $32,095 from a maintenance account in March for the “cleaning, waxing, inspection for damage, and minor conservation treatments” of statues Trump added to the Rose Garden — with budget documents noting the scope “may be expanded in the future” as more statues go in.
While The White House Gets a Makeover, Parks Around the Country Are Losing Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in Needed Repairs. Spending on projects in park regions outside Washington dropped $854 million — 68% — in the first eight and a half months of fiscal year 2026 compared with the entire prior fiscal year, including a $235 million cut in Pacific West parks like Yosemite and a $254 million cut in Intermountain Region parks like Yellowstone. More than 900 Park Service projects expected to be funded this year never received the money, including a $1.5 million roof replacement at the Yellowstone Center for Resources to stop pest invasions and water leaks, funding to keep Acadia National Park’s free bus system running, and a roughly $424,000 guardrail replacement at a “significant safety hazard” cliff edge in Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
Trump Put His Own Face on the National Parks Pass. The $80 annual “America the Beautiful” National Parks pass, which has featured a public-contest-winning nature photo every year since 2004, now shows a portrait of Trump alongside George Washington instead of the contest’s actual winning image — a photo of Glacier National Park. The Center for Biological Diversity has sued, calling it a politicization of the National Parks and “Trump’s crassest, most ego-driven action yet.” The backlash has spawned a cottage industry of stickers and pass “sleeves” to cover Trump’s face, and the Park Service updated its policy to warn that passes altered with stickers may be voided.
The Spending Spree Isn’t Stopping — Trump Wants Billions More. Trump’s 2027 budget requests $10 billion to continue beautifying the Washington area, nearly eight times all National Park Service project spending in 2025. The supplemental request to fund the Iran war includes another $500 million in Park Service funding for D.C. projects, including a new seawall on the Potomac.
TRUMP SLASHED PARK SERVICE STAFF, GUTTING SAFETY AND SERVICES
The Park Service Has Lost Roughly a Quarter of Its Staff Since Trump Returned to Office. About 24% of National Park Service employees were fired, resigned, or otherwise departed in just the first half of 2025 alone – a wave of mass firings, forced resignations, and federal buyouts that has continued since even as near-record high numbers of visitors came to the National Parks in 2025. Trump’s 2027 budget proposes cutting another 3,967 full-time positions, a 31% reduction from 2025 staffing levels.
Visitor Safety Is Suffering And the Administration Is Trying to Hide It. As park staffing has fallen at least 15-25% since Trump returned to office, the Interior Department issued an internal memo in December instructing staff they “shall not confirm a death” or release details about serious injuries, breaking with the agency’s longstanding practice of disclosing fatal incidents within one to three days. The policy has already meant delayed or missing public notice of real deaths: three apparent heat-related deaths on a single Grand Canyon trail in June went unannounced for a week, until after journalists asked; a 17-year-old who drowned in Sequoia National Park and a 23-year-old who fell to his death at Yosemite went unacknowledged by Interior for days.
Gutted Staffing Is Producing Long Lines, Closed Campgrounds, and Worse Service Nationwide. After the administration eliminated Yosemite’s timed-entry reservation system for 2026, visitors faced two-hour waits at the entrance gates and gridlocked parking lots during spring break; the park has also closed multiple campgrounds and lost rangers to bathroom-cleaning duty due to understaffing. At Death Valley, water was shut off at two campgrounds; at a popular North Cascades site, there hasn’t been enough staff to even open the visitor center. “We’re definitely really nervous and anxious about the upcoming season, especially with the staff shortage we already have,” one Yosemite union member said.
Park Staff Are Being Pulled Off Their Regular Jobs to Stage Trump’s Events. As of late June, roughly 450 employees from more than 200 parks nationwide were redeployed to Washington to support Trump’s America 250 celebration, with home parks still required to pay for their staff time while the celebrations rack up additional costs. An internal memo warned employees that vacation time may be “impossible” this summer due to an “all-hands-on-deck approach” for the festivities.
TRUMP IS ERASING HISTORY AND HANDING OVER PUBLIC LANDS TO OIL, MINING, AND LOGGING INTERESTS
A Federal Judge Had to Order the Administration to Stop Erasing American History From National Parks. Under a March 2025 executive order, the Park Service has been removing signs and exhibits on slavery, climate change, and Indigenous history nationwide. In June, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ordered the exhibits restored and ruled the removals amounted to “a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization,” writing that “under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history… thereby telling half-truths.”
The Administration Has Stripped Conservation Protections From More Than 86 Million Acres of Public Land. A Center for American Progress analysis found that since January 2025, the Trump administration has eliminated protections across an area larger than 70 Grand Canyons or 38 Yellowstones — exposing pristine forest wilderness to development, opening Alaska habitat to oil drilling, and threatening places like Minnesota’s Boundary Waters with contamination.
Trump’s Budget Proposes Permanently Transferring National Park Sites Out of Federal Hands. Trump’s budget calls for shifting some of the National Park system’s 433 sites to “state-level management,” something no president has ever done. Park advocates warn most states lack the resources to maintain the sites, so “the inevitable outcome is the closure, then privatization of our most treasured public lands,” said Jennifer Rokala of the Center for Western Priorities.
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