Priorities.
President Donald Trump is pouring an astonishing $423 million into his crusade to remake the nation’s capital in his own image.
The president, 80, has spent much of his second term rebuilding in D.C., ordering a ballroom at the White House, a South Lawn helipad, a 250-foot “Triumphal Arch,” and an overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The list goes on—and the National Park Service spreadsheets behind it just revealed the massive dent it’s making in public coffers.
This year’s allotment for the White House grounds tops $323 million, according to internal Interior Department documents obtained by former CBS News justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who now publishes on Substack. Work on the National Mall ahead of America’s 250th birthday drew close to a further $100 million.
Trump has blown millions on bulldozing the White House East Wing for his new ballroom.
The combined $423 million is more than twenty times the $20 million the two sites drew under the Joe Biden administration in 2024. “The National Park Service is being used as a piggy bank for Trump’s vanity projects,” said Tim Whitehouse, who leads the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The president also wants a tacky gold-embossed arch erected in his honor.
Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 70, has cut millions of dollars in funding for Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. Jobs still waiting in the queue include tree work at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, an emergency fix to a wastewater plant at Death Valley National Park, California, and new roofs at Mission San Jose in San Antonio, Texas.
Some projects have fared better than others, with Trump's Reflecting Pool refurb mired in green slime.
The workforce has thinned, too. Roughly 2,000 employees left the park service in the year to May after DOGE cuts and other reductions, according to the records obtained by MacFarlane. One employee said anonymously that colleagues were being “forced to prioritize Trump’s vanity projects over our own needs.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-st ... l-funding/
