A former National Park Service ranger is touring visitor centers with flyers containing the history the Trump administration removed from the walls.
Melissa Dalley quit the National Park Service in April. Now she visits Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier as a civilian, telling strangers about exhibits, signs and brochures that have disappeared while the Trump administration reviews park history for material that "inappropriately disparage[s] Americans."
Dalley's mission began in 2025, when she was still working for the Park Service. She watched "from the belly of the beast" as the agency lost roughly 25% of its workforce, restricted communication policies, stripped individual parks of their social media accounts, eliminated communication jobs and more. "I just felt like I was jumping up and down and screaming and waving my arms, and nobody could hear me or see me," she said. "The Park Service has been entirely cut off in every avenue that we have that's meaningful to connect with the public."
Things escalated with Secretarial Order 3431, which in May 2025 directed federal agencies to remove content that "inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living" and to instead highlight beauty and grandeur. Signs were posted in parks asking visitors to report so-called inappropriate content, while parks had to flag their own materials for anything that didn't comply.
Since then, signs, brochures and exhibits have been removed from national parks, though the Interior Department says many of those removals were for maintenance, not order compliance. Despite a preliminary injunction in June of this year that required the government to restore changed or removed materials, a federal appeals court reversed the decision in July, allowing the Trump administration to continue reviewing and removing interpretive materials.
This is what happens when the official ranger cannot discuss the missing history; the visitor with a flyer can.
Damn that's a good person. i fear she might have to be brave as well once the suck-up rangers are sent after her. Has *any* media person confronted any trumpy sycophant with the whole Orwellian "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth"? @#$!
Can someone do this at the Smithsonian? It a big ask, but it would be awesome.