No problem

 Nobody's coming here anymore anyway.

It's all going away - this is just the beginning

 

Sarah Kindzior was right

Trump is busting up America and selling it for parts.

UPDATE 06/19/2025:

The end of an era

 

Go this summer.

Sarah Kendzior was warning us of this back in Trump 1.0, so she took her children on a tour.  I'm glad I saw as many of them as I did back in the early 2000s when I was working with three-weeks/year vacation time.  They are truly stunning treasures.

America for sale

 

Sarah Kendzior, authoritarian regime scholar and author of several books about what's happening to this country, started taking her children to all the National Parks during Trump 1.0, because she doesn't believe they will survive the current trajectory.  I expect she's right.  I've been lucky enough to have seen many of them in several traveling vacations I took while working for the University of Missouri.  If you haven't been yet, try to get to as many as you can while they're still open.  They're truly amazing.  The National Parks Service will be shut down completely in Trump 2.0.

Your National Heritage is disappearing

 

I'm just waiting to read the news that they're selling off public lands.

UPDATE 12:34 pm:

The Trump purge reaches far

 

And, more agency firings...

Burn it all down.

Surely we won't need the rangers once Trump sells off the park lands.

And all I hear from Cory Booker is that "we" can't become like "them" so keep finding ways to work with them.  Which, in practice, is lie down and let them roll right over you.

Trump would be thrilled to watch California burn.

UPDATE 02/21/2025:

National parks improvement

I believe this is the same bill the Senate passed in Feburary last year.

Back in November, though, Trump was talking about privatizing the parks.  Are they upgrading so when they turn them over to privateers, their pocket-liners won't have to incur the expense?

Also, remember way back in 2017 when Zinke was Secretary of the Interior and Trump signed an EO to eliminate or scale back national monument parks?  (Let's remember that the next time he acts offended by the removal of confederate statues.)  And even earlier when he proposed to cut the national parks budget?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another desperate attempt to make Trump look presidential

Or maybe just to satisfy his need for attention and praise.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is working with the Trump administration on plans for a military flyover at Mount Rushmore during the president's visit to the national landmark July 3.

"We do anticipate there being a military flyover of some kind," said Ian Fury, communications director for Noem, Politico reported Wednesday.

[...]

Officials at the Pentagon have started discussions about the flyover, but haven't moved into the planning stage yet, a defense official told Politico.

"At this point it's just direction from the [White House] on what they want to do," the official said.

  The Hill

After all, he's going to need something more than a scaled-down Independence Day parade in DC to sustain his ego.

Trump said last month that he would attend the first fireworks display at the monument in 11 years after lifting environmental restrictions preventing such displays.

You read that right. There are environmental restrictions intended to preserve the national monuments. He doesn't give a shit. His image needs bolstering. He needs campaign ad material.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Assisting the rapture

Karen Pence needs to make use of a floor-length mirror before she leaves the house.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA

At the urging of a controversial team of advisors, the Trump administration is mulling proposals to privatize national park campgrounds and further commercialize the parks with expanded Wi-Fi service, food trucks and even Amazon deliveries at tourist camp sites.

Leaders of the Interior Department’s “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee say these changes could make America’s national parks more attractive to a digitally minded younger generation and improve the quality of National Park Service facilities amid a huge maintenance backlog. As part of its plan, the committee calls for blacking out senior discounts at park campgrounds during peak holiday seasons.

“Our recommendations would allow people to opt for additional costs if they want, for example, Amazon deliveries at a particular campsite,” said Derrick Crandall, vice chairman of the committee and a counselor with the nonprofit National Park Hospitality Assn. “We want to let Americans make their own decisions in the marketplace.”

But the group’s proposals face angry opposition from conservation organizations and senior citizen advocates, who call them a transfer of public assets to private industry, including businesses led by executives appointed to the Outdoor Advisory Committee.

[...]

“The cost of a senior pass already jumped in recent years from $10 to $80, and this proposal would further hurt older Americans who want to visit national parks. Enough is enough[,” said Bill Sweeney, senior vice president of government affairs at AARP.]

[...]

Crandall and the advisory committee were somewhat surprised by the backlash, especially from groups representing retirees and the elderly.

“If we’d known there’d be a big pushback to proposed blackouts on senior discounts, we might have dropped that off the list,” Crandall said. “All we’re saying is that it may not make sense on peak days like July 4 weekend to let seniors compete with a family with kids for a campsite.”

  LA Times

How old are these people? Twelve? They were surprised by AARP pushback!

Since taking office, President Trump and his administration have sought to privatize an array of public services, including parts of the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Postal Service. At the same time, the White House has sought to reduce spending for many public services, such as its plan to cut the National Park Service’s budget by $481 million in 2020.

Critics say the administration is engaged in a self-fulfilling prophesy, arguing that private industry can deliver better than the public sector even as the White House starves public agencies of resources. But what really angers opponents is how corporate donors and businesses with a vested interest in park privatization have been invited by the Trump administration to offer proposals for further concession opportunities.

I don't know what you do about that last part, because industry "advising" government has been going on as long as I can remember.

According to a memo first published by the Washington Post, business services officials of the National Park Service in 2017 warned that four people nominated to serve on the panel had potential conflicts of interest.

Three of them were selected as members: Crandall, whose association includes some of the largest concessions management companies in the U.S.; Jeremy Jacobs Jr., co-chief executive of Delaware North Cos., Yosemite National Park’s former facilities operator, whose family has donated at least $167,700 to Trump’s campaigns and political committees; and Bruce Fears, president of Aramark, which holds a $2-billion contract to run hotels, eateries and campgrounds at Yosemite.

[...]

Other committee members include Jim Rogers, former president of Kampgrounds of America, the largest privately owned campground system in the world, and Brad Franklin, government relations manager at Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, a producer of electric-powered bicycles.

[...]

The committee’s proposals would make their concession contracts more profitable than ever. They call for “categorical permissions” to sidestep environmental impact reviews for campground expansion and development, and new policies to ensure that concessionaires be compensated for investments and assets when a competitor is awarded its contract.

[...]

Bernhardt says nearly $12 billion is needed to meet the National Park Service’s maintenance needs. But Gentile, in a 2017 analysis, determined that only $1.3 billion of the backlog is considered priority maintenance by the service, and about $389 million is earmarked for concession facilities within national parks.

“Bernhardt’s claim is disingenuous,” Gentile said. “The concessionaires, and not taxpayers, should be paying for upkeeping their for-profit gift stores, hotels and campgrounds.”

You mean they're NOT?! WTF?

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned two years later amid investigations into his real estate dealings in his home state of Montana, organized the advisory committee in 2017. Up until then, federal land agencies and outdoors enthusiasts had reached something of an accord on privatization issues.

Zinke's stink is still on the system.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Truly surprising legislation

The Senate on Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country and establishing four new national monuments honoring heroes including Civil War soldiers and a civil rights icon.

The 662-page measure, which passed 92 to 8, represented an old-fashioned approach to dealmaking that has largely disappeared on Capitol Hill. Senators from across the ideological spectrum celebrated home-state gains and congratulated each other for bridging the partisan divide.

[...]

It’s a paradoxical win for conservation at a time when President Trump has promoted development on public lands and scaled back safeguards established by his predecessors.

[...]

The lower chamber is poised to take it up after the mid-February recess, and White House officials have indicated privately that the president will sign it.

  WaPo

Unless somebody who wants to plunder all the public land gets to him first.

The measure protects 1.3 million acres as wilderness, the nation’s most stringent protection, which prohibits even roads and motorized vehicles. It permanently withdraws more than 370,000 acres of land from mining around two national parks, including Yellowstone, and permanently authorizes a program to spend offshore-drilling revenue on conservation efforts.

[...]

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who co-authored the bill, inserted a provision that allows native Alaskans who served in Vietnam to apply for a land allotment in their home state.

Luckily we don't have to worry that Trump might actually read the bill.

The legislation establishes four new monuments, including the Mississippi home of civil rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers and the Mill Springs Battlefield in Kentucky, home to the decisive first Union victory in the Civil War.

[...]

Perhaps the most significant change the legislation would make is permanently authorizing a federal program that funnels offshore drilling revenue to conserve a spread of sites that includes major national parks and wildlife preserves, as well as local baseball diamonds and basketball courts. Authorization for the popular program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), lapsed months ago due to the partial government shutdown and other disputes. Liberals like the fact that the money allows agencies to set aside land for wildlife habitat. Conservatives like the fact that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill for it.

[...]

Congressional funding for the program has “fluctuated widely” since its inception in 1965, according to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report. Less than half of the $40 billion that has piled up in the fund during its five decades of existence has been spent by Congress on conservation efforts.

[...]

The measure also expands the boundaries of more than a half-dozen national parks and adds three units, including two Civil War sites in Kentucky, the Mill Springs Battlefield and Camp Nelson.

The package adds acreage to Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks while protecting 350,000 acres of public lands between Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley, increasing the connectivity of the three sites.

[...]

[I]t makes all federal lands open to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting unless otherwise specified.

[...]

The public lands package would also protect nearly 620 miles of rivers across seven states from damming and other development, often delegating management of the waterways to local authorities.

[...]

The bill reauthorizes and funds the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act through 2022, which provides habitat protection for more than 380 bird species, and codifies a signature program of President Barack Obama’s. That program, the Every Kid Outdoors Act, allows U.S. fourth-graders and their families to visit national parks free.

Definitely lucky he won't read it.

Some people don't deserve this earth

As soon as I saw a picture of a Joshua Tree in a tweet saying the park was staying open during the shutdown without being properly staffed, I said to myself, "People will be cutting down those trees." Sadly, I was right.



People are so fucking disgusting.

A photo of a protected Joshua tree chopped down at its base by vandals went viral Thursday as the partial government shutdown extended into its 20th day, leaving national parks unstaffed and vulnerable to damage.

The photo of the felled tree, taken by the National Park Service (NPS) in Joshua Tree National Park and later shared online, amplified calls for the parks to be closed until the government reopens.

NPS officials said the tree was an example of many cut down by vandals who sought to drive their vehicles off the designated paths.

“While the vast majority of those who visit Joshua Tree National Park do so in a responsible manner, there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure,” an NPS Tuesday press release read.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The new House

Democrats on Monday unveiled legislation designed to re-open the federal government, without providing money for Donald Trump’s border wall.

[...]

Monday was the 10th day of the partial government shutdown forced by Trump’s demand for a wall. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers face increasing hardship and key government functions are cast into ever-increasing doubt.

[...]

According to an anonymous aide quoted by the Associated Press, the House is preparing to vote on the package on Thursday, when the new Congress will convene with Democrats in the majority in the lower chamber for the first time since 2010. It will include one bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels through 8 February, with $1.3bn for border security. Trump has demanded $5bn.

The package will include six other bills to fund the departments of agriculture, interior, housing and urban development and others closed by the partial shutdown. Some bills have already passed the Senate. Those will provide money through the remainder of the fiscal year, to 30 September.

  Guardian

Meanwhile...

Human feces, overflowing garbage, illegal off-roading and other damaging behavior in fragile areas were beginning to overwhelm some of the American west’s most popular national parks on Monday, as a partial government shutdown left the areas open to visitors but with little staff on duty.

[...]

Campers at Joshua Tree national park in southern California’s deserts were reporting squabbles as different families laid claims to sites, with no rangers on hand to adjudicate.

[...]

Joshua Tree said it would begin closing some campgrounds for all but day use. Meanwhile, some visitors have strung Christmas lights in the twisting Joshua trees, many of which are hundreds of years old, the Los Angeles Times reported.

[...]

[At Yosemite, v]isitors were allowing their dogs to run off-leash in an area rich with bears and other wildlife, and scattering bags of garbage along the roads, Snider said.

[...]

“It’s a free-for-all,” Dakota Snider, 24, who lives and works in Yosemite Valley, said by telephone Monday, as Yosemite national park officials announced closings of some minimally supervised campgrounds and public areas within the park that are overwhelmed.

“It’s so heartbreaking. There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here,” Snider said.

  Guardian

Jesus Christ, people. You don't deserve this earth.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The best people

The top-ranking official at the National Park Service (NPS) apologized to the agency’s employees Friday for behaving “in an inappropriate manner in a public hallway” earlier this year.

P. Daniel Smith, who Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke named to the post in January, apologized both to employees who witnessed the behavior and the rest of the staff in an email obtained by The Hill.

[...]

An employee anonymously complained to Zinke that he or she witnessed Smith grabbing his own genitalia in a hallway at the Interior headquarters in January, the Washington Post reported in March.

The complaint said Smith “grabbed his crotch and his penis and acted out as though he was urinating on the wall.” The Post said It wasn’t clear to the employee whether or not he intended the gesture to be sexual.

  The Hill

Who thinks peeing on a wall is sexy?

“I was overheard recounting an experience in Alaska while having a hallway conversation in the [NPS headquarters] offices,” he told employees.

I don't think it was the hearing part that was the problem.

The incident came as the Park Service is on a years-long mission to crack down on rampant sexual harassment and assault among its ranks, particularly in remote areas like Grand Canyon National Park.

[...]

A previous OIG report found that Smith, while working as an aide to then-NPS chief Fran Mainella under the George W. Bush administration in 2004, improperly pressured NPS employees to approve a request by Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to cut down trees that blocked his Maryland mansion’s view of the Potomac River.

They say a fish rots from the head. I don't know about that. But I do know a government does.

Park Service staff is fed up: they quit en masse

It all started on Trump’s first day in office, when he called the acting director of the National Park Service seeking pictures that would prove his false claims about the size of his inauguration crowd. Relations with the agency never improved, as the Trump administration feuded with rogue NPS tweeters, slashed the size of two national monuments in Utah, authorized offshore-drilling around the country (except in Florida), and prohibited NPS from sharing its objections to a bill that would reduce its ability to regulate hunting and fishing in parks, including the killing of bear cubs in Alaskan wildlife preserves.

On Monday night, nine out of 12 members of the national Park System Advisory Board decided they’d had enough. In a one-page letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, board chairman Tony Knowles, a former Alaska governor, tendered their resignations. Their primary gripe: while they are required by law to meet twice per year, Zinke has refused to meet with them or convene a single meeting in the last year.

[...]

Until Zinke names new advisory board members, the U.S. will not have a body that can designate national historic or natural landmarks. In general, though, the Trump administration doesn’t seem that concerned with the status of federal advisory panels. In May Zinke suspended the work of more than 200 advisory boards, committees and subcommittees, pending a department-wide review. Some appear to be operating again, but the status of others is unclear.

  NY Magazine

What are the odds they'll be replaced?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Who else?

“It’s crazy. His reputation will never recover from the Snyder experience, because he basically sold out the primary mission of the agency,” says Rob Danno, a ranger with the National Park Service whose career at the agency was temporarily derailed for bringing Snyder’s illicit clear-cutting escapades to the attention of federal investigators. “This was nothing to do with something that would be good for the land. This was always about the view for this billionaire.”

  Deadspin

Perhaps, but it is in keeping with the Trump administration's efforts to deconstruct America.  And to let you make no mistake that's what they're up to.

And why is it these guys look like mobsters?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

THERE he is

Finally, he's on Twitter. And look how sweet and nice he is.

He means turn them over to capitalists.  Five Native tribes are suing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

National Parks so every American can enjoy our natural beauty

If you can afford to get there. And then there's a small entry fee.  But what a wonderful heritage.  And I urge you to go NOW to visit any of the amazingly beautiful national parks in this country  that you can because, this is the Trump era...

Entrance fees during the busiest months at Shenandoah National Park would more than double under a National Park Service proposal issued Thursday. Under the proposed fee change, entries for cars would jump from $25 to $70 between June 1 and October 31. Rates for motorcyclists would go from $20 to $50, while fees paid by individual visitors who hike or bike into the park—or arrive on tour buses—would jump from $10 to $30.

[...]

Sixteen other NPS sites around the country would see similar price jumps during their biggest months, including the Grand Canyon, Glacier, Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.

[...]

The Park Service says the fee increases are meant to cut into the agency’s backlog of deferred maintenance projects, a list of repairs that would cost an estimated $11.3 billion to fix. Barnum says the proposed figures were determined by analyzing historical NPS data sets and the cost of admission at other “family attractions” like amusement parks. (A one-day ticket to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom costs $124, for instance.)

  Washingtonian

Yeah, well, Disneyland isn't publicly owned land, assholes. And the national parks don't have multi-million-dollar rides and exhibits to service.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Representative Will Hurd of Texas have a bill that would create dedicated funding to cover the NPS backlog, but it has gone nowhere since it was introduced in March. And while the Interior Department has said the maintenance backlog is a priority, the White House’s proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year would cut nearly $300 million from the National Park Service budget.

Sure. And when visitation dwindles down to near nothing because nobody can afford to go, there'll be a good argument for selling off the land on the cheap to private interests.  Hey, nobody goes, so there must not be any interest in keeping public parks, right?

We have until November 23 to "comment".

What a disgusting lot of greedy predators we now have running the show.

Big Game

Remember all those wonderful photographs of the young princeling Trumplings, posing with the corpses of the handsome animals they'd plugged while on limo safaris around the world? Remember Junior with the elephant's tail? Well, if the administration run by their father has anything to say about it, wealthy spalpeens like the two of them are not going to have to go to all the fuss and bother of leaving the country to kill animals more handsome than themselves. It appears that the U.S. Department of the Interior has decided to turn the National Parks into free fire zones, the equivalent of taxpayer funded game ranches similar to the one at which Dick Cheney once ventilated his friend's face. McClatchy has all the details.

  Charles P Pierce

“Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act”??

Under the bill, the National Park Service would be prevented from regulating the hunting of bears and wolves in Alaska wildlife preserves, including the practice of killing bear cubs in their dens. It also would be prevented from regulating commercial and recreational fishing within park boundaries and from commenting on development projects outside park boundaries that could affect the parks.

[...]

Agency officials were told they could not repeat their concerns to Congress, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who obtained the memo and provided a copy to McClatchy.

  McClatchy

If this administration doesn't like leaks, it should stop trying to make outrageous rules.

Heather Swift, an Interior Department spokeswoman, rejected that claim. In an email, she said: “At no point did the Department tell the NPS not to communicate with Congress. In fact, the document in question is not even addressed to Congress. The document was an early internal draft meant to express the Department's position on a legislative proposal.”

An early draft which would have been put through had no one leaked it.

In this case, the Trump administration is going to bat for the National Rifle Association and sporting groups that have close ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump Jr. and Trump himself.

“Expanding access to National Parks and public lands for hunting, fishing, and recreation is and remains a top priority of this administration,” said Swift.

[...]

More recently, the Trump administration overturned a National Park Service policy that allowed 20 parks to ban sales of plastic water bottles, to reduce litter.

And look what else is in that proposed act:

Introduced this year by U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., the SHARE act includes a controversial standalone bill, the Hearing Protection Act, which would make it easier and cheaper for gun owners to purchase silencers.

Silencers are "hearing protection."