National Park Rangers Banned From Warning Hikers About Deadly Trails, While Trump Redecorates DC

Trump’s Interior Department has told National Park Service employees they can no longer release information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands. Everything now routes through the Department’s communications office, which decides what the public gets to know.So when a 72-year-old man died of heat on a popular Grand Canyon trail on June 12, the rangers who wanted to warn the next hikers were silenced. Four days later, a couple in their late sixties died of heat on that same trail. About 300 million people visit these parks every year, and roughly 350 of them die. The people who know which trail, on which day, have been ordered to keep it to themselves.Here is where the safety money went. The Park Service could not find $424,000 for a guardrail on a cliff edge in Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a project its own employees flagged in writing as a significant safety hazard for visitors. It did find $689,232 to rip out the White House walkway and replace it with polished African granite, carved in Italy. When a reporter asked Trump who paid for it, he said, “Paid for by me.” He did not. It came out of the National Park Service, the same budget as that guardrail.The Park Service also spent $347,503 redoing a wall so Trump could hang portraits of past presidents next to plaques of his own opinions about them. And this is bigger than the walkway. Spending across the Washington capital region jumped 92 percent in a year, covering fountains, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and a Fourth of July fireworks show, while parks across the country lost the money to keep visitors safe.Meanwhile Trump has clawed back funding from more than 900 park projects, some parks losing nearly 70 percent of their approved funds. He has bused rangers off the trails to Washington for his Freedom 250 events. The Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office, and his 2027 budget calls for cutting another 31 percent. He also asked for $10 billion to beautify Washington, nearly eight times what the entire Park Service spent on projects in 2025. Even the Senate took that one back out.Original reporting by Michael Scherer at The Atlantic. The policy hiding park deaths was reported by Wes Siler and by Jake Spring at the Washington Post.Sources:https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/06/national-parks-trump-white-house-renovations/687700/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/06/24/internal-memo-tells-staff-stay-mum-deaths-national-parksHeather Cox Richardson Wes Siler More Than Just Parks @ Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe