With their recent budget proposal, the Trump Administration has put into writing their intent for the future of America’s national parks. The Trump Administration’s 2026 budget proposal proposed a $1.2 billion decrease to the National Park Service (NPS) budget, a cut of about one-third of its normal allotment from Congress. The majority of this cut stems from a $900 million proposed slash to NPS operations, about a two-thirds decrease.
The way that the Administration aims to cut this much in funding to our national parks is simple: they plan to eliminate hundreds of historical and cultural parks.
To quote the budget proposal directly: “The [NPS] responsibilities include a large number of sites that are not “National Parks,” in the traditionally understood sense, many of which receive small numbers of mostly local visitors, and are better categorized and managed as State-level parks.”
The National Park Conservation Association (NPCA) estimates that in order to cut this much of the NPS operating budget, the Administration would need to eliminate 350 of the 433 NPS units. That includes hundreds of national monuments, battlefields, historical parks, and cultural sites.
And why? They claim there is an “urgent need” to abandon sites that protect American heritage. But what is that need?
There is no economic need for these cuts. National parks are wildly beneficial to their regions and the nation. The title of “national park” elevates the status of many smaller historical parks across the nation, attracting visitors to those communities. And many of these parks will close if they fall into the hands of states or local entities that don’t have the funds to run them.
There will be an economic cost to cutting them from the NPS.
There is also no cultural or historical need for eliminating these parks. Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated recently at a Congressional hearing that the NPS sites to be eliminated are mostly “historic sites, cultural sites that … have got low visitation … that might better fit into a state, historic society site or some other designation.”
Burgum’s implication is that US history isn’t national. That American history is regional, state, or local. He and the Administration he represents are using dismissive language about American history and the parks that preserve it–claiming that these sites have no visitation and are only interesting to local history societies.
Again, why? Why is this Administration trying to discard national historical parks in particular?
The answer is that in order to invent a false history of a nation, you have to erase the real one. This is their aim.
For example, trans Americans are Americans, have always been Americans, and are a part of American history. Many of their stories, names, and contributions to American history and culture have been recently removed from NPS and other government websites by this Administration.
In order to weave the false narrative that trans people are mentally ill, brand-new, and/or dangerous, this Administration is attempting to delete the contributions of trans Americans to our nation and to the world from all monuments, websites, and records. (But so we are clear: trans women in particular were key players in the early LGBTQ+ Pride movement and first Pride marches and parades.)
And it’s not just trans American history that they want to delete or rewrite–it’s all of American history. They want to delete the history of all Americans but the white, cis-gendered, straight men, and even that history they want to rework to be greater, to be never criticized, to be a crafting of authoritarian and Aryan purity and perfection. In doing so, they are imitating the work of other fascist regimes.
In addition to cutting entire national park sites from US protection, another of the tools this Administration has for rewriting history is to question the credibility of or discredit experts and the facts they present to the public.
Secretary Burgum has recently issued an order that all NPS sites must post signs asking visitors to report to the Administration national park staff who say anything “negative” about their park’s history. American history isn’t always sunny, and this order is a deliberate attempt to keep park rangers from telling accurate history out of fear.
Signs like these will also sew doubt in the minds of visitors about the accuracy of the information that parks present. It will sew doubt about the accuracy of American history overall, which gives this Administration an opening to weave their own version.
The Trump Administration is attempting to insert their own bigoted nonsense into conversations about American history. They do this because they believe it will buoy their claim to absolute power. They do this to intimidate and silence those who disagree with them. They do this because they are incapable of comprehending that America can be both great and flawed, that understanding and accepting the complexity of our nation is our greatest tool for growing into a better one.
The only way to grow as a society is the same as for an individual—by looking at your faults and taking accountability. By looking at your strengths and celebrating them. By looking at your progress and still acknowledging that you have so much farther to go.
This is what our national historic and cultural sites protect: the growth of America. They are the lines of our height etched on the wall of a nation. These parks root our history into the ground; they mark it so we can see how far we’ve come. And how far we have to go.
There is a reason why this Administration is all about regression (making America “again” into some fictional thing it never was in the first place) while their foes are called “progressives.”
This Administration is literally fighting American progress. They would have us ignore how far we’ve come, ignore our own achievements, ignore the moments that have actually made us great.
America declared its independence from a king and installed the first attempt at democracy in the modern era, a movement toward toppling tyranny which spread over much of the world. Americans fought for the end to slavery, marched for their right to vote, and died to protect America.
Americans invented flight, connecting the world in ways never thought possible. We’ve created art and theater and music and poetry and ideas that have spread throughout the nation and sometimes the globe, making humankind infinitely richer.
We have made errors, significant ones. Americans have enslaved people, committed genocide, and interred innocent people in concentration camps, to name just a few.
All of these achievements and wrongs are enshrined in our national historical and cultural parks. If we are to honor and grow our nation, then we must fight to protect them–all of them. The “negative” and the positive, all of these American stories help inspire us and correct our course as we move forward, aiming to be a better nation.
Want to learn more? Check out our essay on why cutting these parks isn’t about “states’ rights.”
Inspired to fight for America’s national historical and cultural parks? Read our essay on ways to help.