MAINE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS • June 9, 2020
A 3-minute video released on June 5 by the Trump Administration makes the case for repairing the infrastructure in our national parks. It is moving, except for one point. At 2:38 the narrator, impersonating our national parks, says, “I’ll be there for you. Will you be there for me?” while a picture of Donald and Melania Trump flashes on the screen. They undoubtedly did not intend it to be ironic, but it is a good question: Will President Trump be there for our national parks?
So far, under the Trump Administration’s War on Public Lands protections have been removed from almost 35,000,000 acres of your public lands. And Trump is threatening an additional 50,000,000 acres in Alaska and 1,500,000,000 acres of ocean. The Trump Administration has recklessly given hundreds of thousands of acres to oil and gas corporations for drilling and mining while the country is virtually locked down due to the pandemic. Trump has done more damage to our country’s public lands and natural environment than any U.S. President ever. A coalition of nine national organizations recently declared that "Donald Trump has been the worst president for our environment in history.”
But he is not done with the carnage. Trump’s proposed FY2021 proposal calls for slashing funding from all natural resource agencies, including $587 million from the National Park Service annual budget alone, while lobbying Congress to appropriate an additional $2,000,000,000 for a wall that is disastrous for wildlife on the U.S.- Mexico border. And on the same day last Friday that the video was released Trump came to Maine to undo protections for 5,000 square miles in the only national marine monument on our Atlantic coast.
Using taxpayer money to rebrand the Trump gang as caring about our parks to bolster his reelection is worse than fraudulent, worse than a scandal, worse than corrupt. It is a mortal sin.