What Trump's latest order means for national parks like Yosemite
The order instructs the Department of the Interior to raise entry fees for non-U.S. residents at all national parks and federal lands that currently charge admission. This includes the annual 'America the Beautiful' pass, which provides access to hundreds of federally managed sites.
'It is the policy of my Administration to preserve these opportunities for American families in future generations by increasing entry fees for foreign tourists, improving affordability for United States residents, and expanding opportunities to enjoy America's splendid national treasures,' Trump wrote in the order.
The changes could affect heavily visited parks in the West, including Yosemite — which welcomed nearly 4 million visitors in 2024 — and Muir Woods National Monument, a popular tourist destination just north of San Francisco.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the increased fees will help fund long-overdue infrastructure repairs and upgrades across the National Park System.
'This will ensure our parks stay accessible, sustainable, and protected for generations to come,' he posted on X.
Beyond fee hikes, the order grants Americans 'preferential treatment' in recreational access — including lotteries and permit systems — potentially impacting popular experiences such as Yosemite's Half Dome hike or backcountry camping.
Trump also revoked a 2017 directive by President Barack Obama that prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion in public land management. The now-revoked policy aimed to improve access for underserved communities and elevate underrepresented historical narratives.
That effort had been expanded under the Biden administration. Before leaving office, former National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said the agency worked to ensure 'every American sees a reflection of themselves in the parks.'
At the same time, the administration is proposing a 30% cut to staffing and operations at national parks, according to budget documents reviewed by advocacy groups such as the National Parks Conservation Association.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump to make major Russia address Monday
Friday, President Donald Trump dialed into NBC to say he's cooking up a major statement on Russia for Monday. He didn't hold back on Putin's recent missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and said he's ready to unleash Senator Lindsey Graham's tough new sanctions bill whenever he sees fit. He also let slip a neat little trick: the U.S. will send weapons to NATO, NATO will pick up the tab, and then funnel those arms straight to Ukraine. It keeps Washington from footing the entire bill directly but still gets critical gearair-defense systems, artillery shells and the likeinto Ukrainian hands faster. All of this comes on the heels of Marco Rubio sitting down with Russia's Sergei Lavrov at the ASEAN summit. With tensions rising on the ground, Monday's announcement could reshape how the U.S. and its allies back Kyiv going forward. That's likely to be a jolt or potentially positive move for the stock market, that's been mostly choppy this year. However, of late, the investor enthusiam has recovered, with S&P 500 racking up record highs. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Keep your shoes on
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Why the TSA waited five years after Reid's abortive shoe bombing to institute its shoes-off rule has never been clearly explained, but in all that time no one else has tried to take down a plane using explosive footwear. Nor have any passengers ever been caught with a shoe bomb in the nearly two decades after the rule went into effect. Advertisement In other words, there has never been any evidence that making millions of travelers shed their shoes contributed to anyone's safety. It was all things rather than bad people — with screening for forbidden bottles of shampoo or corkscrews or lighters as if they posed deadly threats, instead of monitoring for behavior that represents a real threat to planes and their passengers. Advertisement From the day it was created, the TSA has specialized in fighting the last war and in overreacting to one-time long shots. One Islamist radical tried to hide explosives in his shoes, so hundreds of millions of travelers had to start removing their shoes. Another would-be terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to hide a bomb in his underwear, so we all had to submit to full-body scans or (for several years) pat-downs. British officials learned of a plot to I often reflected in the years after 9/11 that if Osama bin Laden's terrorists had destroyed not four airliners on that terrible day but four crowded movie theaters, then Americans would have had to radically change the way they went to the movies — advance reservations would have become mandatory, audiences would have had to get to the cineplex (with photo ID) two hours early, and X-ray equipment operated by a vast new federal bureaucracy, the Theater Security Administration, would have scanned everyone entering and leaving. But at airports there would be no interminable security lines, a box cutter in your carry-on wouldn't raise any eyebrows, and you could arrive for your flight 20 minutes before departure. We would still be as vulnerable to a hijacking-massacre as we actually were on 9/11 — but almost no one would be thinking about that because the 'last war' would have taken a different form. Advertisement Former TSA administrator And even that they aren't very good at. The government's own 'red team' tests — in which undercover inspectors try to smuggle weapons or contraband through security — have As Americans who travel abroad are aware, other countries never deemed it necessary to adopt the shoes-off rule. That includes countries in which the threat of terrorism is far more acute. In Israel, for example, security screening begins even before passengers enter the terminal, officials make a point of engaging in dialogue with almost everyone who's catching a plane, and travelers remain with their luggage until after the security check is completed. But nobody has to take their shoes off or remove their laptop from their bag to be scanned separately. Security agents there are watching for nervousness, inconsistencies, or suspicious behavior. They aren't preoccupied with confiscating bottled water or whether you're wearing a belt. Advertisement The TSA's ritualized absurdities have come at a steep cost. They waste billions of dollars annually. They consume countless hours of passengers' time. They treat everyone like a potential terrorist. To prove that no one is exempt, they have gone to the extreme of patting down Nearly a quarter-century after 9/11, there is no evidence that any of this has ever prevented a hijacking. 'TSA has played next to no role in the biggest counterterrorism stories of the past two decades,' journalist Darryl Campbell, who writes extensively about air travel and airline security, wrote in 2022. It is widely agreed that the two most effective deterrents to another hijacking have nothing to do with airport checkpoints. One was a physical change: the locking and reinforcing of cockpit doors, so that no terrorist could ever again breach the cockpit during flight. The other was psychological. The passengers on 9/11's United Flight 93, by overpowering the terrorists and forcing them to crash the plane into a field, prevented a far greater catastrophe that day — and thereby taught future travelers of the importance of fighting back. Advertisement The end of the shoes-off rule is long overdue. But it's just one small retreat in a long war of make-believe. The TSA remains fixated on creating the illusion of security rather than actually providing it. If the agency truly wants to protect travelers, it should abandon its theater of confiscated water bottles and trampled dignity and learn to focus instead on what truly keeps passengers safe. But until that happens, we can at least keep our shoes on. It's a start. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
MAGA comes for one of its own: Pam Bondi
That has parts of MAGA world, which has been obsessed with Epstein since he died by suicide in a New York jail while awaiting trial on federal child sex trafficking charges in 2019, in a twist. 'This is Jeffrey Epstein; this is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history,' Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said during an Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Greene said that Ghislaine Maxwell, a close Epstein confidante convicted of federal child sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison, had 'a little black book' of more than 2,000 names, including 'famous celebrities, world leaders, foreign leaders, and very rich businessmen.' Advertisement Among Epstein's high-profile friends were Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Trump, who once called the mysterious and mysteriously wealthy man with a private island Advertisement From Vice President But some, like far-right extremist For years, right-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed that Epstein was murdered in his jail cell to protect the identities of those who may have been blackmailed by him. Now far-right figures ranging from Before he was reelected, Trump was asked during a While Trump said that he would do so, he also hedged, claiming that he would be wary because 'you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there 'cause it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.' (He didn't elaborate.) But he added that it would be 'interesting' to find out more about Epstein's death, which he called 'a weird situation.' Advertisement The joint DOJ/FBI memo confirmed that Epstein died by suicide. Now, neither Trump nor anyone in his administration wants to talk about the alleged Epstein client list that was before it wasn't. At a recent Cabinet meeting, he 'I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas,' the president said, referring to the catastrophic flash floods that have killed at least 120 people. 'It just seems like a desecration.' As much as Trump wants this subject buried, not all of MAGA is ready to let this go away quietly. This even led to the odd sight of Karoline Leavitt, Trump's press secretary, being From the attorney general's neglect of due process for immigrants being snatched from communities nationwide to her willingness to Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
