Donald Trump Can't Pronounce Yosemite. That Hasn't Stopped Him from Defiling It.
Susan J. Demas
Last week, I stood at Glacier Point and looked down into Yosemite Valley to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday the best way I know how — Half Dome rising out of the granite, Nevada Falls tumbling into the granite basin, the whole cathedral of stone and sky laid out in front of me. And in that moment, I forgot that I had waited thirty minutes just to find a parking spot.
But the wait told me everything I needed to know about where we are right now. Yosemite is drowning.
The National Park Service’s timed entry reservation system — which required visitors to book a window in advance during peak hours — kept the park’s most congested areas from becoming gridlocked in recent years. It wasn’t perfect. But it worked. The Trump administration eliminated it this year for Yosemite, Arches, and Glacier in the name of cutting “red tape,” in the spirit of its asinine DOGE cuts. Over Memorial Day weekend, social media was filled with video of Yosemite Valley in full chaos — bumper-to-bumper traffic, queues of hikers backed up around switchbacks, parking lots that looked like Black Friday at a suburban big-box store.
The park is supposed to be a refuge. It’s starting to feel like the Mall of America with waterfalls.
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/donald-trump-cant-pronounce-yosemite
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