# National Park Service The **National Park Service (NPS)**, created by the Organic Act of 1916 within the [[Department of the Interior]], manages the national parks, monuments, memorials, and historic sites — more than 430 units and 85 million acres, including the National Mall and the Washington, D.C. monuments. Its fee mechanics matter for the KB: under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, up to 20% of entrance-fee revenue can legally be spent at non-fee sites — the legal hinge exploited in the FY2026 [[National Park Service Funds Diversion]]. In Trump 2.0 the agency has been squeezed from both ends: it lost more than 4,000 staff — roughly 25% of its workforce — between January 2025 and spring 2026 (NPCA, April 2026), it carries a **deferred-maintenance backlog of about $23B**, the FY2027 budget request proposed a further **$736M cut** to park operations, and in FY2026 roughly $1B in fees, maintenance accounts, and approved project funds was redirected to presidential vanity projects in Washington — see [[National Park Service Funds Diversion]], [[Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Renovation]], and [[White House Ballroom Project]]. The agency's other 2026 exposure runs the opposite direction — not funds taken out of parks but construction pushed into them. In August 2026 contractors began clearing ground inside Big Bend National Park under a $1.72 billion border-infrastructure task order, made possible by two DHS determinations waiving the environmental and historic-preservation review the Park Service would ordinarily run. See [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]]. The same month, more than sixty trees came down on NPS land in East Potomac Park ahead of a presidential golf-course redesign for which no environmental or historic-preservation review appears to have been completed — and after a federal judge had asked to be told before more than ten were removed. See [[East Potomac Golf Links Redesign]]. ## History and structure The Organic Act of 1916 gave the new bureau a double mandate that has never been fully reconciled: to conserve park resources "unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations" *and* to provide for public enjoyment of them. The system grew from the western scenic parks through the 1933 reorganization (which moved the national monuments, battlefields and the capital's memorials under NPS), the postwar Mission 66 building program, and the Alaska lands act of 1980, which added more acreage than everything before it. Units are managed through regional offices and individual park superintendents; the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit — the reflecting pool, the memorials, Lafayette Square, East Potomac Park — is the one that puts the agency in the path of presidential construction. ## How the money can be moved Three features of NPS funding explain why it has been the easiest agency to raid. Entrance and recreation fees are retained by the agency under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act rather than returned to the Treasury, and up to 20% can be spent at units that do not collect them. The Great American Outdoors Act (2020) created a dedicated legacy-restoration fund for the backlog, a large pot with broad purpose language. And the Interior Secretary holds reprogramming authority within appropriations accounts. Together they mean that money meant for trail repair in one park can lawfully reappear as a memorial renovation in Washington — which is the mechanism documented in [[National Park Service Funds Diversion]]. ## See Also - [[Department of the Interior]] - [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]] - [[East Potomac Golf Links Redesign]] - [[Trump Corruption News Log]] ## See also - [[Federal Land Management Crosswalk]] — the Park Service column: the non-impairment mandate, and the only exit in the federal land system that requires an act of Congress - [[United States Fish and Wildlife Service]] - [[Antiquities Act]]