1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Congress must act now to restore full funding and staffing to the National Park Service and block the Trump administration's impoundment of congressionally allocated park dollars. The Interior Department has blocked over 130 partnership projects worth at least $25 million — money Congress already approved — while the NPS workforce operates at just 75% of its capacity from 18 months ago. That is not reform. That is sabotage. The deferred maintenance backlog at Interior sits at $35 billion. For the cost of the Iran war alone — $40 to $100 billion by most estimates — the administration could have wiped out that entire backlog across the NPS, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Instead, Joshua Tree can't fight wildfires, Yellowstone and Yosemite lose critical partner agreements, and Interior is quietly drafting a "hub and spoke" reorganization that nobody asked for and nobody can explain. As Emily Thompson of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks put it, there is no clear problem this reorganization solves — it will only waste taxpayer dollars and deepen the chaos. Stop the impoundment of congressionally directed park funding. Reject any reorganization plan developed without public input or a clear mandate. Fund the deferred maintenance backlog. Our parks belong to every American — they are not assets to be parceled off to private developers or left to decay while billions flow to foreign wars.