With Donald Trump fixated on his makeover of Washington, DC, members of a specialized team that responds to wildfires, natural disasters and other emergencies in national parks have been sent to the capital to work on the president’s pet projects.
The members of the National Park Service’s “incident management team” have helped with projects ranging from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to fountain renovations and removing debris at the East Potomac golf course, according to two Park Service employees and internal documents.
They’ve also compiled highly detailed status reports for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s office. One longtime employee, who spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity over fears of retaliation, said those kinds of “operational details” would normally be handled by lower-level managers, not political appointees like Burgum.
“It’s highly unusual,” the employee said. “Political folks have wanted to know even the tiniest details, and it’s always about schedule. Will it be on time?”
“This is not what a typical secretary of the Interior does,” another employee who recently left the department told CNN.
Burgum has become Trump’s go-to Cabinet secretary for his most highly visible projects and priorities in DC. In interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Interior Department, they described Burgum as taking an unusual, hands-on role in advancing Trump’s effort to “beautify” DC in time for America’s 250th birthday and his culture war with the Smithsonian Institution.
The Interior secretary’s focus on Washington comes as the West confronts the most wildfires it has seen in a decade and a water crisis grips several drought-ravaged states. Traditionally, the Interior secretary’s main job is managing the nation’s 480 million acres of federal lands, including energy production and conservation.
A CNN review of just over 500 social media posts on Burgum’s official accounts between June and early August found that about 70% promoted America 250 events or the president’s construction and restoration projects. Only a couple of posts referenced the Colorado River – even as key reservoirs in the West hit record-low levels.
Burgum also took to the airwaves, talking on television and podcasts about Trump’s DC beautification efforts.
He amplified Trump blaming vandals for the deteriorating lining and algae blooms in the Reflecting Pool – even after DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped charges related to alleged vandalization of the landmark and attributed the bungled installation to bad weather and other problems.
Since Trump tapped Burgum to oversee Interior, the former Republican governor of North Dakota has taken action on public lands by rolling back protections for endangered species and opening more public lands for increased drilling, logging and mining. And last week, Burgum’s Interior Department announced a short-term plan to manage the Colorado River.
But he’s also leveraged the fact that many DC sites Trump wants to renovate are on federal land to become intimately involved with those projects.
At the Smithsonian, a unique public-private trust, the department is taking advantage of the fact that the National Park Service maintains its sidewalks. That’s where the agency plans to install signs warning visitors about “inaccurate information” in exhibits that Trump says promote “woke” ideology.
Interior spokeswoman Katie Martin told CNN in an email that the department “had the honor of being part of this effort” to beautify Washington. She also noted the National Park Service has been working on “many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country” and said the previous secretary under former President Joe Biden “did nothing to revitalize the district and let it decline into an embarrassing state.”
Martin added: “Anyone critical of making our nation’s capital Safe and Beautiful should have their head checked.”
White House outgoing press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement to CNN, called Burgum one of the most “valuable members” of Trump’s Cabinet.
Burgum’s central role on DC projects is partly by Trump’s design, as the president has used the Interior Department to carry out his priorities through executive orders on making DC beautiful and taking “woke” ideology out of the Smithsonian.
“When I look at what he is spending his time on, it’s only the things that are important to the president,” said Laura Daniel Davis, who served as acting deputy secretary of the Interior Department under Biden. “That doesn’t equal the job he is supposed to be doing on behalf of the American public.”
Burgum’s backers say his priorities should be aligned with the president. Jarrod Agen, executive director of Trump’s newly established National Energy Dominance Council, which Burgum chairs, told CNN that the two have a “strong” relationship.
Agen also said the secretary is capable of managing multiple priorities and pointed to what he described as energy-sector successes, including “record oil and gas lease sales, and a streamlined and shortened permitting process.”
But critics say Burgum’s eagerness to please the president is also driven by his personality and his own political ambitions. Some pointed to reports that Burgum initially lobbied to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term.
“He didn’t really want this job, and he’s not that interested in it, and it shows. This was the consolation prize for Burgum,” said Aaron Weiss, executive director for the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group.
“When the president calls him and wants him to spend all his time on the Reflecting Pool and literally gilding statues in gold, he’s happy to do it because he doesn’t really care about the rest,” Weiss said.
On the water crisis affecting seven states, some stakeholders have described Burgum’s engagement on the issue as “episodic” when they say the complexity of the situation demands sustained engagement. The Interior Department, which is already facing a legal challenge, is still working to determine water usage cuts for states in future years under a 10-year framework.
Colorado River water scarcity affects 40 million people. The river irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland and generates enough electricity to power around 700,000 homes.
As the river shrinks under the strain of overuse, drought and climate change, some stakeholders say the federal government should play a major role in brokering a solution and funding projects that could increase the western water supply, like desalination plants.
One high-level official involved in water negotiations for one of the Western states said Burgum has “hastily” convened a few meetings with governors from the states impacted, followed by “radio silence.”
“He spends a lot of time dealing with those issues in DC, but I think it would be a lot more effective if he dug in and stayed sustained on this issue,” the official said.
The Interior Department pushed back. Andrea Travnicek, the department’s assistant secretary for water and science, told CNN that Burgum has been “front and center” on this issue as the “first Interior Secretary to bring all 7 governors together for discussions on the Colorado River.”
“Every week he knows what is going on related to the Colorado River,” Travnicek added.
With the focus on DC, the administration is redirecting revenue from national park fees to projects in Washington.
And nearly 300 National Park Service staffers on the incident management team that responds to major events and disasters have been sent from parks as far away as California and Alaska to Washington for Trump’s “safe and beautiful” initiative, which also includes crimefighting efforts, according to internal department data reviewed by CNN.
The longtime Park Service employee described that level of support as “crazy abnormal,” considering only about 60 team members were brought in for DC’s annual Cherry Blossom Festival and 45 for this past weekend’s IndyCar race that capped a summer of America 250 celebrations.
While the rotations are voluntary, the employee noted the agency is already stretched thin by DOGE staffing cuts and a hiring freeze.
“It just shows how much DC operations are getting priority above all other park units and staff,” a second Park Service employee said.
According to internal communications reviewed by CNN, the department is requesting “continued support through September ” from the specialized Park Service team to “sustain the great work underway.” It’s unclear what they would be doing, but Trump has said he wants to start renovating a DC public golf course into a championship course next month.
When asked about incident management team members being dispatched to DC for beautification projects, Martin, the department spokeswoman, said this “wholistic approach” is a “common practice.”
At the Smithsonian, the Trump administration’s latest salvo – an executive order directing Burgum to install temporary exhibits or signage outside the National Museum of American History that “corrects inaccurate information presented in the museum” – has drawn bipartisan concern.
In a letter to Burgum this month, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley defended the Smithsonian’s history of “sharing objective historical evidence through research and education, not political narratives.” They also asked about the cost of any new signage and whether Interior would determine what it says.
Several current and former Park Service employees told CNN they were troubled by what they view as an effort to pit two institutions that have long partnered against one another.
“The Smithsonian manages the artifacts, and the Park Service manages the places where that history occurred,” said a former Park Service employee who served in a leadership role. “To force the Park Service to place a derogatory sign outside the Smithsonian is to fracture the storytelling of American history.”
The Interior Department didn’t respond to questions about what any new signage would say and when it would be installed.
The effort also underscores the limits of Trump’s authority over the Smithsonian. After a monthslong review of exhibits; a lengthy report detailing the administration’s findings; congressional hearings led by Republican lawmakers; and public criticism from the president himself, the exhibits that drew scrutiny appear largely unchanged.
The Smithsonian is also trying to preserve its nonpartisan posture, even as some Democratic lawmakers are eager to defend it. “They want to fight for their own independence,” a senior congressional aide with knowledge of the matter said. “They don’t want to be partisan.”
Meanwhile, Burgum continues to tout the work done in DC. In a July interview on the Katie Miller podcast, Burgum pointed to the restoration of the iconic Meridian Hill Park fountain.
“When that opened up — longest cascading fountain in North America — it hadn’t been working for who knows how long,” he said. “Residents of the area that lived there for 20 years didn’t even know it was a fountain.”
