President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Thursday, May 23, 2019 (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
Under Trump, the National Park Service has allowed thousands of park projects across the country languish while only the handful that he considers to be priorities have been fast-tracked, wrote The Atlantic's Michael Scherer on Thursday.
Citing internal documents and interviews, Scherer reported that Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum has established a "White House priorities" docket that pushed pavers for Lafayette Park, removing a golf course fence and gilding equestrian statues near Memorial Bridge. By contrast, he has delayed indefinitely more than 1,500 projects including an archaeological survey of the Civil War-era Camp Nelson National Monument and building wildfire-resistant dumpsters.
In addition to these projects suffering because of deliberate deprioritization, the Department of Government Efficiency has cut staffing so severely that even matters that might be addressed as a matter of routine are neglected due to a lack of resources, Scherer added. By contrast, the White House insists on prioritizing a $25 million helicopter replacement, landscaping near Camp David and drones for regional law enforcement.
"Trump continues to add more projects to the list—or expand projects already on it," Scherer continued. "Take, for example, the brick pavers in Lafayette Park outside the White House gates. In May, Trump said that the park renovation would be funded by 'a contribution that I made,' even though internal documentation shows public funds being used. After the Fourth of July celebrations, the NPS agreed to pay an additional $1.5 million to replace more of the brick pavers in that park. Then, in August, the president told reporters in the Oval Office that he was still deliberating on whether the brick pavers were good enough."
He concluded, "'Now we have a big decision to make,' he said. 'Do we take the pavers that are red—you know, the red-brick pavers—and do we change them into a granite, to gray granite? They’re beautiful, but they’re not the original. So we’re gonna have to make that decision.' The National Park Service, no doubt, will be ready to follow the president’s lead if he pivots."
As president, Trump has repeatedly prioritized his personal pet park projects and other renovations over issues like affordability that matter most to Americans. This includes his construction of a border wall through Big Bend National Park, his destruction of the White House’s East Wing and West Wing Colonnade and his plans to seize the Smithsonian.