“For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

That is what is written in stone over the entrance of the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

But what no one can see is the little asterisk that Trump stuck there… *Unless there is a profit to be made.

Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer

The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.

NOTUS

By Anna Kramer

August 28, 2026

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.  

National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.

The courts once turned them down... but now they are trying a different route: a swap.

Because the ranch is basically landlocked, it takes around 90 minutes to drive around to the park entrance, which is why the previous owner's requests failed. But this new land-exchange tactic changes everything, turning a 90-minute detour into a matter of minutes.

The Sierra News Online writes,

Opponents Warn About Precedent

Critics of the current proposal say the issue extends well beyond the amount of acreage involved.

California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff have objected to the potential exchange, while conservation organizations and former park officials have raised concerns about allowing national park property to facilitate private development.

Among those speaking out is John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.

Buckley told NOTUS there is no current residential population at Hazel Green requiring access to Yosemite and argued that the primary reason for the proposed connection is to make new development of the property more feasible.

Critics have also raised concerns about additional traffic, wildfire risk, impacts on natural resources and the precedent that could be created if Yosemite land were exchanged to facilitate private development along the park boundary.

The Yosemite local of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents park employees, has also opposed the proposal, saying employees are concerned about potential effects on park resources, visitor safety and an already strained workforce.

Kingsbarn argues that the exchange should be viewed differently.

The company says Hazel Green is already privately owned and can be developed independently of Yosemite. Its position is that providing a shorter route to the park would reduce miles driven over existing roads and that an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.

Then there is that phrase: “... an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.”

The debate is over what “an equal-value land exchange” means. Proponents see it as X acres for X acres, but conservationists see it differently. They see it as thousands of acres of wilderness that will now have a road through it, and you cannot place a price tag on that.

The Guardian reported that,

And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite National Park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.

To let any bit of it be sold off for the benefit of a corporation’s planned development on the park’s western border would compromise the inviolability of national parks and sacrifice public good for the sake of private profit. This is of course the ongoing agenda of the Trump administration.

Then there is the fact that it is a National Park… that Congress has set aside for the people of the United States. And this will turn the public land into private land.

Public lands belong to all of us, a gift from the past because people worked hard to protect these forests, mountains, canyons, and a trust for the future, because the public should include everyone in this country alive now and everyone yet to come.

The Trump administration’s ruthless efforts to turn over public lands for mining and logging and fossil fuel exploitation while it also dismantles the Forest Service and Park Service is about turning long-term well-being for the many, human and more-than-human, into short-term profit for an elite.

And here is the kicker… it will be a private road. That means only the billionaires can drive on it to their million-dollar condos, benefiting just a small number of the nobility.