Thank you, John, for this helpful overview. NPS has always felt like a bipartisan treasure-- something we all agree on--until now.
It troubles be on so many levels. I have so many questions... Do these people in leg and exec branches simply not care about future generations-- including their own grandchildren and great grandchildren???
Do these people fail to visit parks, battlefields, and other precious protected national gems??? I feel confused and sad. I have turned to 5calls.org to voice my concerns. Thanks again for your stories, John.
The goal of the Republican Party is to intentionally underfund our federal land management agencies, with two goals. First, to have fewer budgetary restraints on giving even more tax breaks to billionaires. Second, to degrade the condition of and the user experience on our federal lands so they can say, “Hey, we can’t afford to manage those public land, so we need to sell them off.”
I have not been to Cuyahoga, and Mather was famously capricious. I was thinking of covering this next week. As a preview, I will say that as a Chicago resident, he was a huge fan of park status for the Indiana Sand Dunes.
Thank you, John, for this helpful overview. NPS has always felt like a bipartisan treasure-- something we all agree on--until now.
It troubles be on so many levels. I have so many questions... Do these people in leg and exec branches simply not care about future generations-- including their own grandchildren and great grandchildren???
Do these people fail to visit parks, battlefields, and other precious protected national gems??? I feel confused and sad. I have turned to 5calls.org to voice my concerns. Thanks again for your stories, John.
Thanks, John. I thought I understood the US Parking service and its origins. Turns out, not so much. Appreciate this distilled primer.
It’s vital that we don’t normalize what the trump administration or the Republican Congress is doing, and view it as just a variation on the usual push-and-pull of normal government operations. As with DOGE, what the trump administration, aided and abetted by a generally spineless Congress, is doing is unprecedented and represents an extreme far-right agenda. The High Country News provides more info: https://www.hcn.org/articles/trump-asks-congress-to-cut-at-the-heart-of-the-west/?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2025-05-13-Newsletter
The goal of the Republican Party is to intentionally underfund our federal land management agencies, with two goals. First, to have fewer budgetary restraints on giving even more tax breaks to billionaires. Second, to degrade the condition of and the user experience on our federal lands so they can say, “Hey, we can’t afford to manage those public land, so we need to sell them off.”
So, who gets to say what's "traditional?"
You know as much about Mather as anybody. What would he have thought of a place like Cuyahoga NP?
I have not been to Cuyahoga, and Mather was famously capricious. I was thinking of covering this next week. As a preview, I will say that as a Chicago resident, he was a huge fan of park status for the Indiana Sand Dunes.
I keep missing the Dunes.
I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say.