Update on National Park Service Firings and What is Still to Come

(Source: WJTV12

It’s been roughly three weeks since the Trump administration fired roughly 1,000 National Park Service sites without warning or cause. A group calling itself Rough Rangers has published a spreadsheet detailing these firings by individual park.

A number of sites have been hit hard, including Vicksburg National Military Park, which lost seven employees.

On July 4, 1863, after laying siege to the river town for 47 days, General Ulysses S. Grant finally forced the surrender of an entire Confederate army. The victory came one day after Union victory at Gettysburg. It is one of the largest Civil War battlefields in the NPS system and includes numerous monuments and extensive earthworks, all which need to be maintained.

On top of this, the park has experienced extensive erosion over the past few years. According to the American Battlefield Trust:

It has been nearly three years, and one-third of the park remains closed to visitors, deemed unsafe and inaccessible. Swift action by Congress and the National Park Service is imperative to restore, rebuild and reopen this national treasure before the cumulative impact of the damage is insurmountable.

It is worth pointing out that I have not heard a single word from the American Battlefield Trust on these recent cuts. Why the silence?

The worst may be still to come.

Yesterday it was reported that the Trump administration is eyeing a 30% reduction in the NPS workforce. This includes the employees, who have already been fired.

The National Park Service has more than 20,000 employees, including both permanent and seasonal workers when parks staff up for the busy summer season. The source familiar with the planned cuts said they would be made to the 16,000 members of the permanent National Park Service workforce.

As I pointed out before the total NPS budget constitutes one-fifteenth of one percent of the entire federal budget. According to the NPS’s own records, our parks contributed $55.6 billion dollars to the US economy and supported 415,000 jobs across the country in 2023.

On top of this, visitation was up in 2024 as well, but apparently the NPS has been directed not to issue any public statement confirming this fact. Apparently, our government doesn’t want you to know that Americans actually care a great deal about these places.

These cuts have nothing to do with cutting budgets or streamlining government. There has been zero transparency from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE. Plenty of claims have been made, but where are the audits? Why must the NPS face these specific cuts compared to other agencies or other approaches to cutting the deficit? Given the NPS’s current budget, what real difference will it make to the overall federal budget?

None of this makes sense, except for the fact that these cuts have already impacted visitor access to various sites and which will only get worse as we approach the travel season.

Current cuts have already impacted a number of sites in and around Washington, DC. The San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, in San Antonio, TX (UNESCO World Heritage site) has been threatened with closure. The list goes on and on.

We shouldn’t be cutting the budget for the NPS. We should be spending even more money to maintain our natural, cultural, and historic treasures around the country.

You may not know this, but the United States is currently celebrating its 250th birthday. Here in Massachusetts we are commemorating a number of important events, including the first shots fired in the Revolution at Lexington and Concord. Next year the focus will be on Philadelphia for the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Our founding documents have the potential to unite us around a set of shared values and a shared mission. The sites maintained by the NPS highlight much of our shared history and moments when our fellow citizens struggled to ensure that this nation lived up to those ideals. These places offer opportunities for each of us to see beyond ourselves and our immediate commuities, to see ourselves as part of a broader nation.

Destroying our most precious cultural, environmental, and historic sites does nothing to ‘make America great.’ It only serves to deepen the divide between Americans and deprive us from making meaningful connections with one another through our shared heritage.