Environmental conservation initiatives have become synonymous with the left, but it has not always been this way. In the 20th century, American presidents from both sides of the aisle favored expanding recreational parks. While environmentalism as a broader movement has become more politically polarized, national parks remain a rare point of unity. Even though there have been threats to US national parks due to mining, logging, and fracking, there has also been a surge of bipartisan support: Polling from 2025 indicates that Americans across the political spectrum want to protect public lands.
Such popularity should come as no surprise. Nature-based tourism has been important for economic growth around the globe, promoting biodiversity, climate mitigation, and lower unemployment in countries that have become ecotourism hotspots. The financial return on public parks, especially in the United States, is undeniable: In 2023, national parks added $55.6 billion to the nation’s economy and supported 415,400 jobs.
President Donald Trump’s federal spending cuts and mass-layoff attempts have hit the nation’s parks hard. Similarly, through attempts to slash government spending in Argentina, President Javier Milei has been mounting attacks on the country’s protected lands and glaciers despite public dissent. Some have even suggested that Trump’s recent attempt at slashing programs and federal jobs is inspired by Milei. These two recent cases exemplify how Trump and Milei’s comparable spending-reduction agendas affect national park services. Protected parks are not only collateral of funding cuts—they have also been excessively and explicitly targeted in favor of private logging and mining despite their popular benefits.
Milei assumed office in 2023, slashing national park jobs and environmental programs as part of his economic “shock” campaign to reduce national debt and inflation. As a result, many public preserves are severely understaffed, unsafe, and potentially on the road to closure. In 2023, Milei proposed legislation that would have repealed protections for rural land and mining regulations. He then set his sights on glacier laws, seeking to limit locally-designated protected regions and dismantle the National Parks Administration and the environment ministry.
This February, Trump cut 1,000 National Park Service jobs while also impounding the funding necessary to operate park visitor centers and museums across the country. Attorney Sam Evans of the Southern Environmental Law Center forecasted that these “irresponsible mass firings will result in closed campgrounds, trails and roads… hurt local economies… [and] increase threats from wildfires.” Meanwhile, an executive order called for expanding timber cutting across 280 million acres of public lands. A wildfire scientist commented: “This Trump executive order is the most blatant attempt in American history by a president to hand over federal public lands to the logging industry.” The order could face legal challenges, though, as it infringes upon the Endangered Species Act. Additionally, a judge has already ruled that the federal workforce cuts lacked legal grounding and should be reversed. In his previous term, President Trump tried shrinking 10 national monuments—such as Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument—by up to 85 percent, though this was eventually reversed by former President Joe Biden. Trump claimed this effort would “free up” the land for other uses—uncoincidentally, it would have given mining companies access to a wealth of uranium deposits.
Weakening the agencies that manage our national parks has been a tactic used by Republicans in the past; however, Trump and Milei’s current actions represent a shift from a subtle attunement to industry interests to an explicit alignment with them. Despite large swathes of the public being opposed to Trump and Milei’s anti-conservation agendas—and given the successful efforts to prevent implementation—the two leaders remain determined to appease extractive industries through renewed attempts to defund and shrink national parks.
However, giving unprecedented primacy to private sector interests seriously risks public support in a way unparalleled by previous leaders: “The Trump administration’s attack on federal natural resource agencies is not conservative; it’s un-American,” ecologist Timothy O’Connell wrote in a letter published by The Washington Post, and Trump is losing support of MAGA voters because of it. Meanwhile, Argentinians acknowledge that Milei is “opposite to all previous rulers,” a quality that originally helped him get elected. Since entering office, however, his popularity has plummeted, and as one journalist puts it, “Milei doesn’t have a lot of support in Congress, especially for his unpopular policies.”
While aggressively gutting environmental efforts, both Trump and Milei are also spreading right-wing rhetoric on environmental issues through instituting government-wide doctrines censoring language around climate change. Milei instructed Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology not to discuss “climate change” and “sustainability.” President Trump has likewise been working to remove mentions of the climate crisis on government websites.
Not only are Trump and Milei’s efforts to demolish national treasures emblematic of a greater anti-environment movement, but their persistence also illustrates a larger trend: Their administrations will continue to prioritize the interests of private companies, even if the resulting actions conflict with the leaders’ respective political parties, the law, national economic benefits, and public interest.