1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Topic of the day…presidential pork barrel politics. A term generally used when politicians make deals to benefit their home districts to keep constituents happy. But when this president does it, although he insists it’s for the country, it’s anything but. He’s simply found a pot of gold to do with as he pleases. And what pleases him usually has his name or face on it. Preferably in some shade of gold. Royal pork barrel. One pot of gold he seems to be using a lot is from the National Park Service. Example. When asked who would be paying for removing the Tennessee flagstone that paved the West Colonnade walkway connecting the WH residence to the Oval Office with polished black African granite carved in Italy, Trump answered: “Paid for by me.” That was a lie. NPS budget documents show the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232. Part of a $1.3M project that also included new hardware for nearby doors. Last year, the NPS spent $347,503 to replace the stucco on the colonnade wall so Trump could hang pictures of the US presidents alongside plaques featuring his own opinions of them. Documents say the project was a “Rush project at request of POTUS.” Trump has redirected taxpayer money from national parks around the country to his own projects. Leaving the parks unable to make needed repairs or hire staff. Expected funding for more than 900 Park Service projects never arrived—including $424,000 to replace a guardrail on the edge of a cliff in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park that NPS employees identified as “a significant safety hazard for visitors.” For some parks, nearly 70% of approved funds have been pulled back. Trump has also pulled NPS staff to DC for his Freedom 250 events. Which creates a crisis because the Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office. And his 2027 budget calls for cutting staff by another 3,967 full-time employees, or 31%. Our national parks are not only being plundered but they are also being muzzled. What visitors will now not know when they visit parks, will absolutely hurt them. Earlier this year Department of the Interior told its employees that they could no longer share information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands. Instead they would now redirect all such information through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Communications. The Interior Department manages the NPS, Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those agencies are responsible for about 20% of all land area in the US. And hundreds of millions of annual visitors. They spend $88.6B taxpayer dollars annually. More than 300M people visit America’s national parks each year. And about 350 of them die. Not always from accidents. In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, to warn others. Now the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it. It did not release info that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12. NPS employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of extreme heat on the same trail. The Trump administration and its agencies have become the exact opposite of transparent on every measurable metric. And this particular metric leaves we the people to make personal safety decisions based on vague or non-existent info when communing with sometimes dangerous nature. I.E. if we don’t know about a bear attack does it even exist at all? Ignorant bliss will not keep us safe. But the Park Service will have successfully dodged responsibility. And the people’s money will continue to be used instead for presidential decorating. It’s a shame he’s not better at it.