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us department of the interior
National Park Service Grants Free Access on Trump's Birthday—And Ends It for Juneteenth, MLK Day
Critics have ripped the decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Dec 05, 2025
"Why is MLK Day not worthy of a fee-free day anymore?"
That's what Kati Schmidt, communications director for the National Parks Conservation Association, wondered in an email to SFGATE, which reported Thursday on the National Park Service's recently announced free admission days for 2026.
"That has become a day of service throughout the country as well as celebrating an American hero who has several park units celebrating his legacy," Schmidt noted of the federal holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. each January.
In addition to MLK Day, three other previously free days were left off the US Department of the Interior's announcement last week about "resident-only patriotic fee-free days." Visitors will now have to pay park fees on National Public Lands Day, the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act—which President Donald Trump signed in 2020—and Juneteenth.
cool that the official position of the administration appears to be that black people don’t really count as americans
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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 5, 2025 at 8:20 AM
In 2021, Congress passed and then-President Joe Biden signed legislation designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. After returning to the White House in January, Trump declined to recognize it on this past June 19.
As SFGATE reported:
"This policy shift is deeply concerning," said Tyrhee Moore, the executive director of Soul Trak Outdoors, a nonprofit that connects urban communities of color to the outdoors. "Removing free-entry days on MLK Day and Juneteenth sends a troubling message about who our national parks are for. These holidays hold profound cultural and historical significance for Black communities, and eliminating them as access points feels like a direct targeting of the very groups who already face systemic barriers to the outdoors."
Moore told SFGATE that his organization works to push back against "these kinds of systemic attempts that disguise exclusion as administrative or political decisions."
"Policies like this reinforce inequalities around access and visibly show how systems can create obstacles that keep communities of color from feeling welcomed in public spaces," he said.
Olivia Juarez, public land program director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos, said in a statement that "we condemn the omission of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Juneteenth, National Public Lands Day, and the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act from the list of free entrance days."
"The Great American Outdoors Act permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which enhances outdoor recreation access for all people from national public lands to neighborhood parks," she pointed out. "These observances are patriotic days that celebrate freedom and safety in the outdoors. They should be celebrated as such by removing a simple cost barrier that can make parks more accessible to low-income households."
Other critics have ripped the free day decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Journalist Jennifer Schulze said: "I love our national parks but don't go on his birthday. Find a state park to visit instead."
Along with the free admission changes, the Trump administration is under fire for putting the president's face on the new "America the Beautiful" annual passes—a display that may be illegal—and for hiking prices for foreign visitors to national parks.
Utah-based Juarez and GreenLatinos California state program manager Pedro Hernández both denounced price hikes for noncitizens—a move that notably comes as the administration pursues Trump's promise of mass deportations.
"By imposing higher fees on people without state-issued ID," Hernández said, "the Trump administration is advancing a xenophobic policy that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations like international students, newly arrived immigrants, and families seeking asylum."
"This approach eviscerates the true meaning of public lands and sends a clear, exclusionary message that our most cherished national parks have become yet another pay-to-play system," he added. "People should be welcomed—not priced out from our public lands."
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Trump Ripped Over 'Reckless' Plan to Drill for Oil Off California, Florida
"Donald Trump and Doug Burgum are once again trying to sell out our coastal communities and our public waters in favor of corporate polluters' bottom line."
Nov 20, 2025
While other governments are gathered in Brazil for the United Nations climate summit, the Trump administration on Thursday announced plans for new oil drilling off the coasts of California and Florida, drawing sharp denunciations from defenders of the planet and all life on Earth.
After running on a promise to "drill, baby, drill" and raking in campaign cash from Big Oil, President Donald Trump launched his pro-polluter agenda on the first day he returned to office. Doug Burgum, the billionaire fossil fuel industry ally appointed to lead the US Department of the Interior, advanced that agenda on Thursday with his "Unleashing American Offshore Energy" order.
Burgum ordered the department to terminate the Biden administration's 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program—which had the fewest sales in history—and replace it with a "new, more expansive" plan "as soon as possible."
While the department said in a statement that "under the new proposal for the 2026-31 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, Interior is taking a major step to boost United States energy independence and sustain domestic oil and gas production," critics quickly pointed out the pitfalls of the Trump administration's planet-heating ambitions.
#BREAKING: The Trump admin just released its plan to expand offshore drilling on the West, Gulf & Alaskan coasts of the U.S.This move threatens beloved beaches, precious marine life & countless coastal communities across the country – despite bipartisan public opposition. https://oceana.ly/4pn13t1
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— Oceana (@oceana.bsky.social) November 20, 2025 at 4:14 PM
"Donald Trump and Doug Burgum are once again trying to sell out our coastal communities and our public waters in favor of corporate polluters' bottom line," declared Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford in a statement. "Americans across the political spectrum have made it clear they oppose offshore drilling. We know the risks are far too great, threatening ecosystems and coastal economies with the risk of spills that would take decades to clean up."
"Despite overwhelming bipartisan opposition, Trump and Burgum are moving forward with their reckless plan to serve their ultimate goal of handing over our public lands and waters to Big Oil CEOs," Blackford continued. "These lease sales are privatization in everything but name—a 'keep out' sign is the same whether an area was sold or leased. The Sierra Club will continue to stand with coastal communities and work to stop this reckless plan dead in the water."
“Trump's plan would risk the health and well-being of millions of people who live along our coasts. It would also devastate countless ocean ecosystems. This admin continues to put the oil industry above people, our shared environment, and the law,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Brettny Hardy.
— Earthjustice (@earthjustice.org) November 20, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, also blasted the administration's plan for as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales.
"Trump's war on marine life continues with this absolutely unhinged attack on our coasts," she said. "Auctioning off nearly the entire US coast to Big Oil will inflict oil spill after devastating oil spill, harm whales and sea turtles, and wreck fisheries and coastal economies. I'm confident that Americans across the political spectrum will come together to fight Trump's plan to smear toxic crude across our beaches and oceans."
Unlike the Trump administration, the center's energy justice director, Jean Su, is at COP30 in Belém. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat expected to run for president in 2028, also attended the UN conference last week.
"Trump can't stand it that Gov. Newsom showed him up here in Brazil, and I think that explains the timing of this reckless plan to drill our oceans," Su said. "To Trump, this plan is political theater to spite Newsom and the climate talks. But this isn't an episode of The Apprentice. This plan would do immense damage to people and wildlife, damage those of us at COP30 are fighting like hell to defend against."
While Florida is led by a Trump sycophant, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom joined conservation and climate campaigners in calling out the administration's drilling plans. The Democrat said that "Donald Trump's idiotic proposal to sell off California's coasts to his Big Oil donors is dead in the water. We will not stand by as our coastal economy and communities are put in danger."
Trump is rolling out the red carpet for offshore oil and gas—which will inevitably spill into the ocean and increase costs at home. Trump is doing this while sabotaging offshore wind, the energy source that does the exact opposite. He’s not “unleashing American energy”—he’s underwriting Big Oil.
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— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) November 20, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Two other California Democrats, US House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman and Sen. Alex Padilla, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, similarly said in a joint statement that "with this draft plan, Donald Trump and his administration are trying to destroy one of the most valuable, most protected coastlines in the world and hand it over to the fossil fuel industry."
"They didn't listen to Californians. They didn't listen to communities up and down the West Coast. Instead, Trump wants to take a wrecking ball to our communities while trampling over anyone who stands between him and what billionaires demand," the lawmakers continued. "These lease areas are not only irreplaceable, but allowing drilling in these areas would undermine military readiness and pose risks to national security. But Trump doesn't care."
"Californians remember every spill, every dead dolphin and sea otter, every fishing season wrecked by contamination. We built stronger, cleaner, more resilient coastal communities—and a burgeoning $1.7 trillion coastal economy—in spite of all that. And we're not going to stand by and watch it get destroyed by Trump's oil and gas pet projects," they added. "This plan targets California and the whole West Coast because they think we will roll over. They are wrong. We're going to fight this with everything we have."
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Trump Admin Has Hired 100+ 'Fossil Fuel Insiders' to Fill Top Energy, Environmental Agency Roles
One of them described her job as offering “concierge, white-glove service” to oil, gas, and coal companies seeking permits from regulators.
Oct 08, 2025
A top energy adviser to President Donald Trump admitted in an August interview that the administration is offering "concierge, white-glove service" to fossil fuel companies while blocking and defunding clean energy projects.
The comments, reported Tuesday by the Washington Post, came from Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser for Trump's National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), which was established within the Department of the Interior in February.
"We're like this little tiger team, concierge, white-glove service, essentially," Kelm said on the Lobby Shop podcast, "We were put together very particularly with the president's priorities in mind on energy. So keeping coal plants open, establishing critical mineral mining domestically, and then that broader supply chain."
She described her role in the council as being to help oil, gas, and coal companies navigate "the politicals" of agencies that grant permits for new projects. Companies, she said, "can walk out of our office, and they have all the contacts they need" for regulators in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the departments of the Interior and Commerce.
"We know how to unstick what is stuck," Kelm said. "It's a lot of undoing old policies and getting rid of regulatory burdens."
Mahyar Sorour, the director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Fossil Fuels policy project, responded: "The reality of fossil fuel companies getting white-glove, concierge service from the Trump administration would be comical if it weren't so sinister."
"During the election," she continued, "Trump told oil and gas executives that he would clear the way for more production without any safeguards if they gave his campaign a billion dollars—they did, and now Trump is blocking clean energy and giving the oil and gas industry immense handouts in return."
Since retaking office in January, Trump has sought to expand the production of oil, gas, and coal with reckless abandon, without regard to the impacts of carbon emissions on the planet or other environmental impacts of pollution.
As the rest of the world has surged its use of wind and solar projects, surpassing coal for the first time this year, the Department of Energy made a $625 million investment to "expand and reinvigorate the coal industry," which is the dirtiest form of energy.
And July's massive GOP budget contained billions of dollars worth of handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosted drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandated oil and gas lease sales, and imposed new fees on renewable development.
At the same time, Trump has singlehandedly reduced the US's growth outlook for renewables by 45%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
As the Post reports:
His administration has held up permits for solar and wind projects since July and blocked wind farms outright. The Energy Department last week canceled $7.6 billion in funding for projects aimed at curbing climate change including installation of renewables, grid upgrades and carbon capture projects. That's on top of $27 billion in funding for clean energy that the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to claw back.
Alan Zibel, an energy and environmental policy researcher for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, joked that while the "White House rolls out 'concierge, white-glove service' for fossil fuels... wind and solar aren't even allowed inside the Motel 6."
This is put on stark display by a report co-authored by Zibel, and released Monday by Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, which found that, under Trump, the agencies in charge of regulating energy and environmental policy "have made dozens of hires from the fossil fuel sector, mining conglomerates, and other polluting industries, as well as others who are well-paid to support a dirty energy agenda, such as corporate lawyers and the staffers from far-right think tanks directly tied to Trump's dirty energy agenda."
The report examined 111 executive branch appointees tasked with energy and environmental policymaking across nine agencies and found that 43 are former employees of fossil fuel companies.
While the EPA and Energy Department are each crawling with more than a dozen industry plants, no agency has more than the Interior Department, which has 32 in total.
One of them is Kelm herself, who, according to the report, "has spent her entire career working in Big Oil, most recently doing corporate relations for Shell, and previously in policy for Valero, community affairs for Noble Energy, and other roles for Texas-based oil companies like EnCore Permian and the Permian Basin Petroleum Association."
Far from just lower-level appointees, several agency heads have direct industry ties. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright was formerly the CEO of the hydraulic fracking company Liberty Energy and, according to the report, "regularly makes public statements that downplay the effects of climate change, carbon pollution, and the environmental impacts of fracking."
The administration also contains at least 14 corporate lawyers who worked for fossil fuel interests. David Fotouhi, the assistant secretary of the EPA, formerly worked as a lawyer at Gibson Dunn, which has represented oil and gas giants like the American Petroleum Institute, ConocoPhillips, and Energy Transfer. The law firm also helped to advise polluters like Chevron on how to beat lawsuits from state and local governments seeking to hold them legally liable for spreading misinformation about the climate crisis.
The administration also includes at least 12 officials directly handpicked from right-wing think tanks backed by fossil fuel money. Brooke Rollins, secretary of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), helped found the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) in 2021 with Texas oil billionaire and GOP megadonor Tim Dunn.
The oilman funded Rollins' organization to the tune of $400,000, with the explicit goal of staffing the next Republican administration with appointees who would gut US climate policy.
"It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant' business," Dunn said at an AFPI event in 2023.
"Texas-based billionaires have taken over the Trump administration, providing a steady stream of staffers and an extreme set of policy ideas that consciously favors the most polluting forms of energy," said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, a senior researcher with the Revolving Door Project. "Trump's policies aid the fossil fuel industry's exploitation of the public sphere for private profit while simultaneously sabotaging renewables and ensuring that the US remains trapped in a dirty energy economy."
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