How much is Trump's cut?
Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams
Specifically, according to unnamed sources and government
documents, federal staffers are working on a potential land exchange to give a
quarter-mile strip of land in California’s Yosemite National Park “to a company
that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate
developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital.”
The developers own 83 acres west of the park, and Kingsbarn
CEO Jeff Pori—whose company did not respond to a request for comment—aims “to
build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central
thoroughfares,” providing “the land exceptionally rare private access to a park
that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests,” NOTUS
detailed.
The sources told NOTUS that political leaders at the US
Department of the Interior “want us to be responsive to the property owner and
their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” and that
“the political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual.”
The National Park Service, which is part of the department,
said that “no final decisions have been made,” but any proposals “would be
subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and departmental policies,
including required environmental review and public notification processes.”
The revelation—which came during National Park Week—was met
with outrage.
Ripping the possible “secretive, backroom deal,” as “an attack on the American people that own this national park,” Mark Rose, the National Parks Conservation Association’s Sierra Nevada program manager, told NOTUS that “it would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal.”
Sierra
Club executive director Loren Blackford said in a statement that
“Yosemite is not Donald Trump’s to give away. This secretive deal betrays the
purpose of our national parks and the promise our government has kept since
Abraham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for the public and for generations to
come.”
“For more than 150 years, each generation has carried
forward the responsibility to protect this sacred landscape and pass it on
intact,” Blackford continued. “The Trump
administration is betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of
Yosemite to a private developer. We will use every tool at our disposal to stop
this corrupt giveaway.”
While the looming land swap could move forward without any
sign-off from Congress, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared
Huffman (D-Calif.) was among those who spoke out on social media Friday.
“Our parks belong to all of us,” the congressman emphasized. “These places should be protected for every
generation, not sold off to Trump’s ultrawealthy friends to profit off of. I
will fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be
up for grabs if this domino falls.”
Columnist and self-described “recovering attorney” Wajahat
Ali declared, “America is for sale,” and American Immigration Council
senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said,
“Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the
president above everyone else.”
While other critics condemned the reported efforts as “disgusting,”
“sickening,” and “shocking,”
journalist Chris D’Angelo commented,
“I would say this is shocking, but things have been headed in this direction
since Trump reentered office.”
After Trump won a second term in 2024—having secured
campaign funds from Big
Oil, and run on a promise to “drill, baby, drill”— one of his early actions
post-inauguration was declaring a “national energy emergency” intended to boost the climate-wrecking fossil fuel
industry.
Since then, while cashing
in on his second presidency—including via stock transactions made this year as fuel prices
soared due to his illegal war with Iran—Trump has continued to push policies
that help polluters and other rich allies. For example, last week the
administration delivered a “one-two punch” to national forests,
taking aim at a pair of rules intended to protect such lands.
The Center
for Biological Diversity warned this
week that the Trump administration’s proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area
Conservation Rule would “open pristine public lands to road construction,
commercial logging, and industrial development,” and, according to the group’s
analysis, put 400 species on an “extinction fast
track.”
“More roads mean more sediment in streams, more
fragmentation of wildlife habitat,
more human access to places wildlife depend on for refuge, and more wildfires in forests
already facing unprecedented climate change-fueled risk,” the center stressed.
“The roadless rule has held that line for a generation. Without it the losses
to wildlife, water,
and the wild places that define the American landscape will be irreversible.”
