You Can’t Defund Stupid

Your guide to everything going on with public lands right now. Hope you’re sitting down.

It’s President’s Day, and I’m writing this from our home in Bozeman where my view of the Bridger Range’s wooded slopes and rocky summits is completely unobscured by the merest fleck of snow. Not only does that mean the skiing is bad-to-impossible, but if this keeps up, it’ll lead to a really scary summer full of wildfire. That’s particularly relevant now, because the Environmental Protection Agency just repealed its endangerment finding, the entire legal basis for fighting climate change. And even while humanity has apparently thrown in the towel on its efforts to head off a worst case scenario future, my very own Senator looks he’s about to succeed at his long-running attempt to destroy our state’s elk populations, my Blackfeet relatives are experiencing cultural erasure in the national park that was stolen from them even while the administration is trying to erase queer history, and the most popular Wilderness in the country looks like it’s going to be destroyed forever.

All of this is, of course, taking place against the background of yet another government shutdown. This time a partial one, impacting the Department of Homeland Security only. Democrat lawmakers are trying, from their position in the minority, to do something, anything about ICE. But that agency was funded to the tune of $170 billion, enough money to get it through 2029. So, the shutdown will only impact unrelated agencies like the TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.

The prognosis for Dems is not good on this one. While all of us regular people are obviously desperate for them to do something, anything about Trump’s war on the American people, postponing pay for workers at unrelated essential agencies just doesn’t seem like the right choice, even if it was the only choice. I don’t expect to Republicans to bend this time, and the optics may start to get really bad as the mid-terms get closer and closer every day.

Park Service Removes Pride Flag At Stonewall

Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn represents the origins of the modern LGBT rights movement, and was officially declared a National Monument by President Obama in 2016. This is apparently part of an order to remove “non-agency flags” from park sites, and is the second time Stonewall has been targeted for cultural erasure by the Trump administration. Last February, the word “transgender” was struck from the Monument’s website.

New Yorkers reinstalled a pride flag almost immediately, and NPS has yet to remove that. Chuck Schumer says he plans to introduce legislation that would declare the pride flag a “congressionally authorized symbol,” which would prevent it from being removed from any federal property in the future. But again, without a majority in Congress and with Republicans behaving as poorly as possible, such a bill’s chances are slim.

Park Service Removes Blackfeet, Crow History Signage

Similarly, NPS has also recently removed educational signage in Glacier National Park and at Little Bighorn National Monument that conveyed the history of massacres of Indigenous people by the U.S. Government.

I’ll let the Blackfeet Tribal Council take it from here:

Blackfeet people no longer have control of our own story.

U.S. National Parks Ordered to Remove Signs Addressing Native American Mistreatment and Climate Change.

As of January 2026, the Trump administration has directed the National Park Service (NPS) to remove or revise signs, exhibits, and educational materials across numerous U.S. national parks that address the mistreatment of Native Americans, climate change, and other contested historical realities. Parks impacted include Glacier National Park and the Little Big Horn.

At Glacier National Park, materials documenting the mass slaughter by the U.S. Army’s 1870 Baker (Marias) Massacre of the Piegan Blackfeet have been specifically targeted for removal. This includes both a brochure and a physical sign that acknowledged this history.

According to a Washington Post report cited by Reuters, interpretive materials in at least 17 national parks have been flagged for removal or editing. The National Park Service is implementing an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which requires federal agencies to review public-facing materials to ensure alignment with what the administration describes as “shared national values.” The U.S. Department of the Interior has confirmed that signage across the entire national park system is under review.

Civil rights, Indigenous, and environmental organizations warn that these actions undo decades of progress toward honest historical acknowledgment. In Glacier National Park—Blackfeet’s homeland is where climate change is visibly reshaping glaciers, ecosystems, and lifeways—the removal of this information risks erasing essential context about the park’s past, present, and future.

This is not merely a change in signage. It is a narrowing of whose history is allowed to be told—and who gets to tell it.

Republicans Rush Forward With Boundary Waters Destruction

Minnesota’s Boundary Waters hold special importance to me as the location of some significant adventures my dad took me on as a little kid, and are where I plan to scatter his ashes when he passes. I’m not alone, BWCA is the most visited Wilderness Area in the entire country.

That’s why uproar over Republican attempts to fill its waters with sulphuric acid, forever destroying the 1,700 square mile area’s pristine environment and the abundant wildlife that supports is so strong. Nevertheless, the GOP persists, and it looks like next week’s Senate vote to permit a Chilean business to construct a heavily-polluting copper mine in the region’s headwaters will be successful.

There’s not a lot of good news here. While this will certainly be the subject of protracted legal battle, it’s likely Antofagasta will try to begin work on the mine immediately, gambling that any future legislation or legal action to stop it will be harder once it’s operating.

I’ve explained why that mine is so bad previously, and plan to dive deeper into the area’s significance and fragility in the near future as well.

The Worst NPS Director Possible

The first Trump administration never bothered nominating a director for the Park Service at all, preferring to just let the our nation’s national treasures go neglected. What could be worse? A Director with the experience and motivation necessary to destroy them.

Many services in national parks are operated not by NPS itself, but by private companies operating under concession licenses. Some of these companies are pretty good—Xanterra—and some are downright awful, apparently existing for the sole purpose of milking taxpayers while exploiting park visitors. The worst of those concessionaires is a company called Delaware North.

You may remember Delaware North from its efforts to trademark place names inside Yosemite, then sue NPS over those rights.

So who better to run the park service than a Delaware North executive? Not only does that make Scott Socha ethically and financially conflicted, but it also means he has real world experience bilking national parks for all they’re worth.

This appears to be an effort to fulfill step four in the administration’s seven-step plan to sell off and eliminate national parks in order to further enrich billionaires.

Everyone Welcome The Worst Case Climate Scenario

Last week the EPA eliminated the legal basis for all regulations aimed at addressing climate change. Implemented in 2009, following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling, the endangerment finding established that greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health, providing the justification necessary to curb them.

This will impact everything from vehicle fuel economy standards to regulation of heavily polluting industries. Last Wednesday, Trump held a celebratory event with coal executives at the White House, and announced plans for the Department of Defense to enter into contracts for coal-fired power plants to provide energy for dozens of military bases. This will artificially re-entrench an industry that can no longer provide power at competitive prices.

It’s ironic then that this decision will actually have drastic consequences for national security, and the continued ability for this planet to support human life.

Montana’s Worst-Ever Senators Hate Elk And Trout

Pop quiz: Who’s the most consequential Senator of the 20th century? If you answered Montana’s Lee Metcalf, you’re not wrong. In addition to helping create the Congressional Budget Office, expanding the GI Bill to Vietnam Veterans, and guaranteeing free public school to students nationwide, The Patron Saint of Wilderness helped create the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Clean Water Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and of course the Wilderness Act.

Metcalf’s love for his home state was never more evident than in the Montana Wilderness Study Act, which he passed in 1977, a year before his death. That established nine Wilderness Study Areas totaling 973,000 acres, which still serve as reservoirs of biodiversity today, guaranteeing our state’s abundant populations of native trout and elk, and ample opportunities for sportsmen.

Now, Montana Senator Steve Daines, who famously perverted John Lewis’ Great American Outdoors Act, is being joined by his colleague Tim Sheehy in an effort to eliminate those WSAs in order to turn those areas over to industrial logging. I shit you not, but the title of the bill that would eliminate three of Metcalf’s WSAs is titled, “The Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act.”

Both Daines and Sheehy used hundreds of millions in dark money from outside the state in order to achieve election. And Daines has been working towards his goal of destroying Metcalf’s legacy ever since.

The only silver lining here is that it looks like the remedy for anti-American politicians like these stooges may also come from Montana. The Transparent Election Initiative appears, in its Montana Plan, to have found a legal mechanism for working around Citizens United, which will have the result of eliminating the massive amounts of money polluting American politics.

What Can You Do?

This is not a call your lawmaker moment. As Jimmy Tobias explains on Public Domain, Republicans appear to have learned from their lost opportunity to sell off millions of acres of public land as part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and are rallying party cohesion around all of these disastrous measures. The only remedy is to vote them out this November. With majorities in the House and Senate, and in state houses nationwide (yes, I’m a candidate for Montana State Senate), Democrats would have the power to stop or reverse everything mentioned here. It is not too late to stop this stuff, or even to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. It is up to us to give them that opportunity.

In the meantime, conservation organizations like The Wilderness Society and The Center for Biological Diversity are planning to try and postpone the worst harms by challenging all of this in court. If you want to spend some money fighting back, donations to either organization are a good place to start.

Top photo: George A. Grant. Dedication ceremonies of the Logan Pass Highway (Going-to-the-Sun Highway), on the summit of Logan Pass, Glacier National Park, July 15, 1933. Blackfeet (Blackfoot) and Flathead Indians smoking peace pipe as part of the dedication exercises.

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.