Now They're Trying To Give Away Your National Park Sites
The White House Plans to Offload National Park Sites. This Is How You Can Stop It.
In a scene straight out of the kind of movie where you mutter “that would never happen,” it’s happening.
The White House is now actively pursuing the disposal of National Park Service sites.
Let me repeat that.
They’re not just underfunding the National Park Service. They’re not just demoralizing and gutting its staff. They are trying to get rid of it, piece by piece.
No, this is not hyperbole. This is in the official White House budget. They’re proposing a $1.2 billion cut to the National Park Service, including $900 million from operations, and using that fabricated shortfall as a justification to start offloading sites they deem too obscure or too local for federal protection.
In other words: they’re creating a budget hole on purpose so they can say, “We can’t afford these parks anymore.”
It’s not just insane. It’s obscene.
This Is Not About the 63 National Parks
Let’s clear this up right away: they’re not coming for Yellowstone. At least not yet.
This plan targets the rest of the National Park System, the 370+ sites that aren’t labeled “National Parks” but are no less significant.
National monuments. Battlefields. Seashores. Historic sites. Recreation areas.
Places that tell the story of who we are. That protect sacred ground. That preserve drinking water, wildlife corridors, recreation access, and irreplaceable cultural history.
According to the National Parks Conservation Association, it would take eliminating roughly 350 of these sites to achieve the desired $900 million in “savings.”
Doug Burgum, Trump’s Interior Secretary, casually told reporters at a Senate hearing that only the 63 congressionally designated national parks will be left alone. The rest are fair game. He then rattled off some transfer ideas.
To talk that way, to openly float giving away our national treasures, as if they’re excess furniture, is vile.
This Isn’t About Saving Money, It’s About Getting Rid of the System
Let’s not pretend this is about fiscal responsibility. It’s not. It never was.
The National Park Service has been chronically underfunded for decades. Everyone in Washington knows that. Everyone in state government knows it. And still, the agency manages to protect America’s most treasured places for pennies on the dollar, while generating billions in economic activity for surrounding communities.
If you actually cared about debt or fiscal restraint, this is the last place you'd cut. But here we are.
Cutting $1.2 billion from the budget of a beloved and cash-strapped agency that turns every taxpayer dollar into local jobs, small business revenue, and public access isn’t misguided, it’s a despicable lie. This isn’t about tightening belts. It’s about destroying the idea of public stewardship.
It’s also a window into just how wildly unhinged this second Trump administration has become. It shows how far they’ve drifted, and how completely indifferent they are to what the public actually wants.
The last Trump administration passed the Great American Outdoors Act, a rare bipartisan acknowledgment of the Park Service’s maintenance crisis. But now, just a few years later, they’re trying to rip that progress out at the root and erase the agency itself from most of the map.
So no, this isn’t about managing parks better. It’s about getting them off the federal books. It’s about shrinking the federal footprint. It’s about breaking apart what most Americans, and much of the world, consider America’s Best Idea.
And once that’s done?
Drilling. Mining. Logging. Privatization.
You think Texas wants Big Thicket National Preserve so they can run it like Shenandoah? Or so they can build pipelines through it?
Western Hardliners Are Salivating. Everyone Else Is Screaming No.
Some red-state lawmakers and land transfer advocates are already celebrating. They’ve been waiting for this moment since the Sagebrush Rebellion.
But most states? They don’t want it.
Maryland, North Carolina, New Mexico, Colorado, and others have said they don’t want to take on management of these federal sites. They have a hard enough time managing their own park systems. They don’t have the staff, the funding, or the capacity to absorb federal sites. And they shouldn’t have to.
Yes, many have said they’d step in to try to save parks if forced to, but every one of them has emphasized that they want the federal government to continue managing these places.
Because they know what happens when federal stewardship vanishes: the sites degrade, protections collapse, and the land becomes a dangerous political football.
We Just Fought Off One Land Grab and Here Comes Another
Just over a week ago, we won a crucial battle: we stopped House Republicans from including the sale of 460,000 acres of public land in the reconciliation bill.
That was a huge victory over an unprecedented attempt to sell off a massive chunk of our public land.
But the reconciliation bill is still moving forward. And it’s still packed with poison.
A few of the highlights:
NEPA and ESA waivers for Arctic drilling
Mandatory mining and reinstatement of leases in the Boundary Waters watershed
Provisions banning judicial review of leasing decisions
Language letting industry pay to fast-track their own environmental reviews
It’s a public lands death machine, and we’re still fighting it.
But we can barely catch our breath. Before that battle was even over, the Trump White House came out with this deranged attack on the National Park Service.
We’re fighting a war on so many fronts. And that’s the point. To exhaust us. To bury us. To keep the firehose going full blast so that no one can track all the ways they’re trying to dismantle everything we love, let alone try to stop it.
But we are tracking it. And we are fighting back.
We stopped the 460,000-acre land sale. Now we fight to keep our national park sites. A sentence I never thought I’d be saying.
This Is Politically Radioactive
Even some Republicans are weary of this NPS scheme. Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, a staunch conservative, said bluntly: “Let’s not screw up the national parks because that’s something the American people will never forgive us for.”
He’s absolutely right.
The American people love the National Park System. They will not forgive the party that tries to gut it.
Let that be a warning. This is not a left-right issue. It’s an American identity issue.
And any politican who supports offloading national park sites, anyone who thinks these places are “expendable” will wear that stain forever.
This Can Be Stopped
This is the good news. There is a very real and very achievable way to stop this. I know that’s surprising to hear, but it’s true.
The White House just put this out there as part of their budget plan. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is openly spitballing which parks to give away like they’re cheap trading cards. Knife River Indian Villages. Theodore Roosevelt’s Birthplace. A battlefield somewhere, maybe. Who knows.
If Americans of every political background stand up and say, Hands off our national park sites, there’s a chance they back off. They may try to walk it back if they get enough blowback, pretend they only meant a site or two, or kick the can down the road.
But we can’t just hope they walk it back. We have to make sure they can’t come back for it later. So we don’t just ask for a reversal.
We lock the door.
The Firewall: A Legislative Rider to Stop the Theft
This plan is part of the Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 budget, not the reconciliation bill. That means it goes through the standard appropriations process, where it needs 60 votes in the Senate.
This is where we hold the line. This is where the whole scheme can be stopped.
Democrats have the power to block this. But they can’t just block the budget cuts.
They must include a rider in the bill that prevents the sale or transfer of any of our public lands. No more excuses that their hands are tied.
Here’s the exact language they need to include and the exact language we need to demand that they include:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no officer or employee of the United States shall transfer, convey, relinquish, withdraw, downgrade, or otherwise dispose of any lands or interests in lands administered by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or U.S. Forest Service, except as expressly authorized by an Act of Congress enacted after the date of enactment of this Act.”
That’s it. That’s the firewall.
No backdoor deals. No budget gimmicks. No sudden land handoffs to the states. If they want to give away even one acre of your national parks or public lands, they’ll have to bring it to the floor, and they will lose.
And if Trump doesn’t like it? If the GOP throws a fit and refuses to include it in the must-pass appropriations bill? Let them shut down the government over it.
Let them explain to the American people that they shut down the government because they weren’t allowed to give away our national park sites.
Go ahead. See how that plays.
Could Republicans Repeal the Rider Later?
Yes, but it wouldn’t be easy.
They’d have to try to repeal the rider in a future reconciliation bill, but:
It would need to pass Byrd Rule scrutiny (not guaranteed)
They would need near-total party unity
It would spark massive public backlash
It would likely come in mid-to-late 2026, right before the midterm elections
And here’s the most important point: if Democrats retake the House in November 2026, which polling and conventional wisdom suggests they will, they’ll be seated by January 3, 2027.
That means the window for Republicans to repeal the rider and execute a site transfer is only a few months long, under massive scrutiny, with enormous political risk.
And even if they somehow manage it, the courts could step in. The public could rise up. The damage could still be stopped. But only if the rider exists in the first place.
This Is It
If you’ve been wondering whether there would be a defining moment in this fight for America’s public lands, this is that moment.
The future of the National Park System is on the line. The very idea of public land, land held in trust for all people, for all time, is on the line.
This is our chance. And we have to seize it.
Call your senators. Flood their inboxes. Tell them no budget passes without this rider. Tell them if they don’t protect our public lands, we will never forgive them.
I can't stress how much selling these lands will STILL affect the big, untouchable National Parks.
The land surrounding those parks provides a buffer and habitat for the park's wildlife. You can't have Zion without Grand Escalante National Monument. Or Arches and Canyonlands without Bear's Ears National Monument. Not to mention the Dixie National Forest outside Bryce Canyon or Flathead National Forest outside Glacier. Grand Teton without the Grand Teton National Forest and Wilderness doesn't exist, nor does Yellowstone.
Even when they start talking about relatively remote lands in Nevada, it's still impacting migratory patterns. Destroying any of these habitats WRECKS the neighboring parks. Period.
There is no way to sell any of it piecemeal. And with this administrations attempts to gut science and environmental funding, there won't be anybody to say how much damage has been done after the sale is completed. This is a complete disaster for the park system if it is allowed to happen.
Now the most corrupt administration in American history has put all of its crooked cards on the table. This government of, for and by the wealthiest one percent would rob us of all of our beloved national park sites so that they can loot and pillage these sacred places. This despicable collection of greedy monsters would turn this wonderful land of ours into a trash pit if it meant more for themselves and less for everyone else. That’s how little they think of the rest of us. And they think even less of our democracy. It’s time for all of us to raise our voices and let our congressional representatives know that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. It’s time to send TACO and his gang of thieves a message that our country is not for sale anymore to the highest bidder.