Summer travel is just ramping up, but our country’s pride and joy is being put through the wringer.
Since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, the National Park Service has been gutted. Staff have left or been laid off, historical signage has been removed, and funding to maintain and operate the parks has been slashed.
Still, Trump doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The administration’s proposed 2027 budget would cut more than a fourth of the remaining annual budget for national parks.
Despite this, Trump still wants Americans to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday by visiting the underfunded parks system (and he’s stamped his face on the annual national parks pass).
He’s hoping Americans follow the example of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the former reality TV star whose new YouTube show, The Great American Road Trip, captures Duffy’s travels around the US.
But the parks aren’t ready for it, experts warn. A funding shortfall could further damage the experience and preservation of America’s most visited parks, but journalist Stephanie Pearson tells Today, Explained that she’s most worried about the damage visitors can’t see.
Pearson has written for Outside Magazine for decades and authored two books on our national parks. Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram asked her how the parks are doing in light of big cuts from the Trump administration.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
How are our parks doing? Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is encouraging Americans to hit the road. I think a place Americans tend to go when they hit the road is to the national parks, especially in the summertime. What will they find when they go?
It’s a moving target. There’s a lot happening in parks right now. There is almost a quarter of full-time National Park staff have lost their jobs. That’s more than 4,000 positions.
When you lose a quarter of your park staff, what do you end up losing?
A lot of the public-facing people will still be there. People may not necessarily notice that. They’re still going to be greeted at visitor kiosks. They’re still going to have information people.
Where they’re really diminishing is in scientists, biologists who are studying the flora and the fauna or the wildlife, people who are critical pieces of these parks who are trying to balance visitation with wildlife, for example. Infrastructure people who are taking care of the parks and maintaining them. The way that’s translating is that people who are left have a lot of hats, and they have to do a lot of different things.
And can they? Do they?
It’s amazing what the National Park Service staff is continuing to do. Anyone who sees someone in a National Park Service uniform should probably go up and give them a hug or, you know, a high five or something.
You have to ask before you give them a hug, though. You don’t wanna make their lives even worse.
Yes, very true. But I would say that I think their jobs are really hard right now. And so just to keep that in mind. However you want to do that, send them good vibes.
I don’t know if you watched the trailer for Sean Duffy’s Great American Road Trip, but he really seems to be emphasizing that this country has so much to offer, and especially its natural beauty, its parks.
I imagine the maintenance and the infrastructure of our national park system is included in that marketing campaign that they’re on right now. And you’re telling me that the parks are struggling in that regard.
Yes, they are struggling in that regard, and it’s all documented. You can do your own research and see where these cuts are being made. And I do agree with Duffy. I think it’s an amazing, amazing park system, but it is being drastically reduced in terms of the budget that is going toward it and the workforce that they have.
They are hiring seasonal employees, but what they’re doing is they’re increasing “seasonal employee” to mean a nine-month position. So they’ll get maybe health insurance, but they won’t get other benefits. But what that means is they’re just not a full-time workforce and so a lot of them are also being shifted to different positions.
Can you give us some specifics on what conditions might be like at some of these parks that are really struggling and understaffed? I mean, are you not able to use a porta-potty in a park? Are there no facilities to speak of at this point?
There are facilities, and these parks are not closing down. But, for example, at Yosemite National Park, the first weekend of May, it took an hour and a half to get to the entrance for people. When they got in the park, what is also happening is they’ve lifted all the reservation systems.
[At] some of these iconic parks — Yosemite, Glacier National Park, Acadia National Park — you used to have to make a reservation to drive your car, for example, on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. They have lifted those, and so it’s sort of a free-for-all.
It all depends on which park you’re going to. There are parks that are in the system that are a lot less visited; for these iconic parks where everyone seems to want to go all the time, there’s going to be a lot of people who want to see the same things that you do.
Beyond budgetary cuts to these parks, there’s also a bit of an agenda here to sort of reshape the culture and historical educational programming at our national parks. How’s that going?
It’s being implemented as we speak. In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. And what that does is, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum put it, is to eliminate depictions at the Park Service that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, including in colonial times.
What that means is Acadia National Park climate change signs have been taken down. The [Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail] had to do a big review, and the Park Service staff identified, which was the mandate, I think something like 80 things that they needed to take out of that park.
It’s happening in places, in parks all across the country. For example, Stonewall in New York City — they pulled down the [pride] flag, but it went back up because New York City officials wanted it to go back up.
Do you think this could be an added incentive to get out there this summer and see these parks despite the gas prices, because it’s America 250 and the parks are being ruined, so you may as well see ‘em before they’re trashed?
It almost breaks my heart to even think that. I still have some hope. I have hope that they will not be trashed. I have hope that people on both sides of the aisle understand the value of these parks. I am a proponent of understanding our American history because there’s so much to offer through these parks. You’re going to gain some understanding when you visit Ancestral Puebloan land in New Mexico or you see the geology of Big Bend National Park.
I am really hopeful that people understand the value of these places. In Big Bend National Park, people are rallying around the fact that they’re trying to build a border wall through it. People have rallied, on both sides of the aisle, to say, We do not want a border wall in Big Bend National Park.“ And so I think that there is hope that people will rise to this occasion.
What you’re saying in Big Bend is that you can only push people so far, and they will eventually stand up if you go too far.
Absolutely. I think Teddy Roosevelt is a perfect example of this. Teddy Roosevelt is the conservation president. Teddy Roosevelt was changed, fundamentally changed, by the Badlands landscape. And that’s my hope that people go to these landscapes and are fundamentally changed and understand what we have to lose here.
