Trump Wants to Give Away a Piece of Yosemite National Park

President Trump wants to give part of Yosemite National Park to a private developer.

NOTUS reports that the Trump administration is trying to give a parcel of the park, about 0.25 miles long, to Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a real estate developer in Nevada. The government’s proposal has the National Park Service either giving up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, in exchange for land elsewhere in California that is equal in value.

The reason the company wants the land is because it already owns 83 acres just outside of the national park’s boundaries, five miles away from Yosemite’s iconic sequoia trees. It wants to build a road connecting its property to one of the main roads inside the park. If built, the road would give unprecedented private access to federally protected forests.

Currently, the developer’s property has an access road over 10 miles away from one of the park’s entrances, and further away from the popular parts of the park. It’s not known whether the company wants to build a private residence, a hotel, a resort, or something else with its 83 acres—but it would be a 90-minute drive to the Yosemite Valley without another road.

The company’s proposal is fully backed by the Department of the Interior and its political leadership, which is putting pressure on the National Park Service, according to four people who spoke with NOTUS.

“They want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” one anonymous source told the publication. Another said to NOTUS that the “political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual.”

The deal would break a 150-year record of the government protecting national parks and safeguarding them from private interests.

“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” Cicely Muldoon, who served as superintendent of the park for five years and a National Park Service employee for 40, told NOTUS. “Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit.”

President Trump hasn’t given much respect to public lands, opening up some for fossil fuel extraction and reducing the size of national monuments. He’s making a mockery of the legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Stephen Miller has figured out a way to use President Donald Trump’s new favorite aide to push his own agenda.

It seems the White House’s resident ghoul is well aware that Natalie Harp has become the true gatekeeper of Trump. As his “human printer,” she has taken up the task of printing out flattering news coverage and positive social media posts to show the president for his approval to share on his social media accounts.

Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has realized that he can use Harp’s role to his advantage. Two sources told Zeteo that on multiple occasions, Miller showed Harp anti-immigration content with directions to get it posted quickly.

Miller has overseen Trump’s aggressive law enforcement crackdown on immigrants and attacks on birthright citizenship. After his soft ethnic cleansing efforts in Minnesota left two U.S. citizens dead, Miller was forced to take a step away from the spotlight. But that doesn’t mean he can’t influence policies from behind the scenes.

With Harp at the helm, the president’s social media posts have only gotten more outrageous and divisive. When Trump publishes unhinged posts about immigrants, it shapes public sentiment and can elevate any right-wing poster to a policymaker.

It’s been at least 75 days since Senator Mitch McConnell has been seen in public. Yet on Thursday—despite McConnell supposedly being weeks into an intensive rehabilitation routine—his team blatantly refused to provide a progress report.

The last time his office shared details regarding the 84-year-old’s health status was three weeks ago, on August 6, when a press release seemingly penned by McConnell himself explained that he had been discharged from a rehabilitation center to continue his recovery at home.

“On the advice of my doctors, I’ll maintain an intensive regimen of physical therapy from home during the state work period, and I’ll continue to engage with my staff and colleagues on important Senate business,” the statement read.

Two days later, a man entering McConnell’s front door accidentally offered a glimpse inside the senator’s home, revealing boxes for MCombo lift recliners, a line of electric power-assist chairs that help people with limited mobility sit down or stand up.

However, three weeks later, McConnell’s team is still refusing to relay information about the senior party member’s health outlook. When asked by HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery to elaborate on McConnell’s condition or his anticipated timeline to return to the Senate, McConnell spokesperson Stephanie Penn said Thursday that she had “nothing to add” to the August 6 statement.

The Kentucky Republican has been missing in action since he was found unconscious and rushed to the hospital on June 14. For weeks, McConnell’s office has refused to explain his extended hospitalization or elaborate on his eventual return to Capitol Hill.

The first interruption in the total media blackout happened on July 12, when the senator’s office shared a photo of McConnell sitting upright in a chair beside his wife, holding a copy of that day’s Washington Post sports section in his lap.

A statement released by his office alongside the image, written in the first person so as to suggest it was delivered by McConnell himself, specified that he had dealt with a “mild case of pneumonia” during his time in the hospital. He clarified that he had not broken bones, suffered a concussion, or had a heart attack or stroke.

Weeks later, McConnell’s team provided another still image of the senator, though it only added to the brouhaha as the American public clamors for more evidence of life from the sitting lawmaker.

President Trump won’t commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in New York because he wouldn’t be allowed to make a speech.

The New York Times reports that Trump has decided to stay in Washington, D.C., and mark the event at the Pentagon, as the annual commemoration in New York historically hasn’t allowed politicians’ speeches and won’t make an exception for Trump. Vice President JD Vance will represent the administration in New York instead.

Trump also plans to fly to his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, the next day, and taking Air Force One from airports in New York or New Jersey could cause bigger traffic headaches in the region than from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

Initially, White House officials told organizers in New York and Washington that he was going to visit the memorial at Ground Zero. Since 2012, however, politicians have been barred from speaking at the event, as the area’s custodian, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, has sought to keep the annual anniversary solemn and apolitical.

Trump is not known for being solemn, and his speeches throughout the years have not always been appropriate for their audiences. In a 2017 speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree, Trump ranted about political grievances and how great he is. Last year at the United Nations, he told the assembly that some member countries are “going to hell.” In May, he fell asleep in the Oval Office after bragging to kids about his plans for the Iran war, in what was supposed to be a ceremony announcing the presidential Fitness Test.

September 11 was one of the most tragic events in American history, and Trump doesn’t want to go to Ground Zero because he won’t be getting enough attention. That might be good because he wouldn’t respect the gravity of the event, but it also sends a message he’s not taking it seriously. At the Pentagon, Trump will get to rant, rave, and attack everyone he hates for as long as he wants, even though family members who lost people in the 9/11 attacks will be in the audience.

Wyoming’s Republican Governor Mark Gordon is sounding the alarm about the Trump administration’s “aggressive” and “irregular” elections monitoring.

Speaking at a canvassing board meeting Wednesday, Gordon expressed concerns about the Department of Justice’s surprise efforts to monitor election sites in the state during primary elections last week, WyoFile reported.

“To my knowledge, the U.S. Attorney was unaware of it, and it sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,” Gordon said.

“It just was irregular, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into, you know, kind of the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff,” he said.

It’s typical for federal observers to monitor elections, but Gordon claimed that the behavior of those at last week’s voting seemed to overstep the authority Congress had granted to them. “I’m not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think the conduct of this election was phenomenal,” he said.

“I feel very strongly about federal government coming in and taking our guns,” Gordon said. “I don’t like that. And I don’t like federal government coming in and taking our votes either.”

In a statement to WyoFile Wednesday evening, Debra Lee, the chief election officer for Laramie County, recounted two monitors’ behavior after they arrived at a polling station in Wyoming’s most populous district. Lee said she was not aware that they were coming, and they did not offer credentials until requested.

The two monitors arrived at the busy polling station and asked staff questions that appeared to be “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws,” including questions about poll worker training and new election equipment. They also asked to examine their tabulators, according to Lee.

When Lee discovered the monitors intended to interview voters in order to “assess compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights laws,” the election official denied their request. “We do not allow interviews to be conducted in polling places,” she said.

“This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” she concluded.

The controversy follows a set of primary elections where candidates claiming elections are safe as is did extraordinarily well in Wyoming.