Doug Burgum Is Letting National Parks Fail As America’s 250th Birthday Approaches
Critical Park Fees & Public Funds Diverted for Triumphal Arch, Police Deployments as New Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Birthday Bash
HELENA, MT – Doug Burgum continues to raid national park entrance fees and public funds for Donald Trump’s D.C. vanity projects and his private UFC birthday party. Burgum recently opened a short, abbreviated ten day comment period to push through a massive and costly Triumphal Arch on George Washington Memorial Parkway grounds. Meanwhile, new reporting highlighted how park police are being diverted to protect the UFC Freedom 250 fight on the White House South Lawn, a ‘deeply corrupt’ event being challenged in court for violating the law.
“Doug Burgum is taking needed money out of our national parks to build monuments to Donald Trump, simple as that,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson. “Every dollar spent on the Arc de Trump or his own birthday party is a dollar stolen from our national parks and the Americans who cherish them. The millions of families who pay park entrance fees want that money to support America’s Great Outdoors, not Trump’s ego.”
The latest lawsuit, seeking an emergency temporary restraining order over the private UFC event slated for next week, contends Burgum’s latest Freedom 250 event, celebrating Trump’s own birthday, violated federal laws that protect the ‘use of the national capital’s most sacred monumental spaces’ by private entities. The event also failed to conduct legally required environmental reviews mandated by Congress. Burgum’s non-transparent and partisan pay-to-play Freedom 250 scheme faces other lawsuits, congressional investigations, and controversy.
Burgum and the administration have repeatedly violated the National Park Organic Act, often under the guise of trumped up national security claims. The law requires the park service to ‘conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’
Meanwhile, parks and public lands across the nation face billions in deferred maintenance and many are struggling to meet the challenges of summer tourist season after Burgum, along with Trump’s DOGE, hollowed out the agency. The unaddressed backlog in Western states is over $17 billion, and critically needed park projects are being ignored.
Western States Park & Public Land Deferred Maintenance Backlog:
The misallocation of entrance fees by Burgum is part of his fail-by-design plan to push for the selloff of public lands and the privatization of national parks. Burgum established Trump’s Freedom 250 pay-to-play scheme using the National Parks Foundation. This administration’s use of public funds for the benefit of Trump, his family members, administration officials, and private corporations is unprecedented. Reckless spending by the Trump administration has recently pushed the national debt past $39 trillion.
To speak with Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill, email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.
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