Trump Orders DEI Out of National Park Bookstores

The Trump administration is instructing National Park Service leaders to review their gift shops for “equity-related” content by Dec. 19, according to a memo obtained by KQED.

The memo, signed by National Park Service Acting Director Jessica Bowron in late November and sent out to staff this week, directs national park staff to “review all retail items available for purchase.”

According to the memo, the merchandise review complies with January 2025 executive orders from President Donald Trump and the Department of the Interior that address what the White House calls “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” related to DEI and what the administration terms “Gender Ideology.”

In response, national park advocacy groups expressed frustration at what they see as the Trump administration’s latest attempt to weaponize the country’s treasured public lands — and to rewrite history in favor of their political ideology. 

“Going after gift shops is just one part of the administration’s deeply troubling pattern of silencing science and hiding history in our parks,” said National Parks Conservation Association Senior Director Alan Spears in an email to KQED.

“Park Service staff should be managing parks, not censorship campaigns,” he wrote.

One park service superintendent, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation and losing their job, said the communication they’ve received from higher-ups clarifies that national park staff will not only have to review, but also carry out the removal of content by the deadline.

In response to KQED’s questions about the memo, the Interior Department confirmed in an email that it is “conducting a common-sense review of retail items to ensure our gift shops remain neutral spaces that serve all visitors.”

“If any items are found to be inconsistent with the Order, they are being removed from sale,” a department spokesperson wrote.

Merchandise now in spotlight

The memo is the latest issued this year, following a directive over the summer requiring parks to review their signage and bookstores for materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

That order focused on content that casts Americans in a negative light, which resulted in the removal of a sign at Muir Woods National Monument spotlighting the contributions of Indigenous people and women to the park, among others.

The order also targeted slavery-related exhibits at multiple East Coast parks, and, according to the author of a book on California’s water crisis, led to Yosemite National Park halting purchases of their work to sell in the gift shop.

That widespread effort to review parks’ content is still underway, and the additional merchandise content under review includes anything that highlights diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility or environmental justice, according to the November memo.

The memo instructed national park staff to notify the groups that run gift shops, often concessionaires or nonprofit partners, of the review requirement and coordinate with them in the process.

Staff were also instructed not just to review any materials currently on display in park bookstores, but also all merchandise plans, including materials on backorder or currently out of stock, according to the superintendent.

Staff do not have to read books for sale in parks in their entirety to perform the review, according to the anonymous superintendent. Instead, they said, staff are directed to scan a book’s title and table of contents for any “equity-related” content.

‘Guidance without guidance’

NPS staff are now tasked with completing their own review of materials, which may include removing some items to review them. Any materials found to be “non-compliant” must be removed from sale immediately, according to the memo.

The superintendent said it has been frustrating to continue receiving this “guidance without guidance,” which leaves determining concepts like “equity-related” up to the interpretation of NPS  staff. “It’s not easy, depending on the content of your park,” they said.

“Without further guidance, it’s putting a lot of pressure on, ultimately, the park superintendents to make these decisions about removing,” the superintendent continued.

“And book-removing can be, in general, pretty controversial with the public. So, when the public gets mad that something’s removed, the [Department of Interior] can say, ‘Oh, well, the superintendent chose that and they chose the wrong thing. We didn’t tell them they had to do that.’”

Additionally, all of the bookstore stock already goes through a review process — one signed annually by the superintendent.

“So, obviously, we thought these [books] were good things to have, that made sense in our park,” they said. “My initial reaction is: ‘I don’t have anything to remove because we’ve already vetted everything.’”

While the instructions don’t say staff have to report what they flag or remove to higher-ups, at least one regional office has offered assistance with reviewing content.

The superintendent, who said they’ll likely take responsibility for implementing the memo at their park, doesn’t expect that any of their questions about what does or does not qualify as “equity-related” will get answered, based on their previous experiences requesting clarity around these orders.

Not least because some of the content parks flagged earlier under the original signage review are still pending, they said.

Instead, they plan to consult with their staff who review merchandise and go from there.

Chronic understaffing and a hiring freeze at national parks remain challenges, said Jesse Chakrin, executive director of The Fund for People in Parks, not to mention that staff are still catching up after the monthlong government shutdown that furloughed them and their work.

This latest directive, the superintendent said, is also making the nonprofit and for-profit groups that run the bookstores nervous about money.

“They’ve invested money in this inventory, and now they can’t sell it,” they said. “So, there’s a financial hit.”

“I’m very curious who decided this was a priority,” they said.

Chakrin called the action outlined in the memo “a waste of time, and with goals that seem antithetical to the story of what these parks represent,” built on executive orders that “misrepresent” diversity, accessibility and environmental justice.

Chakrin sees both the original signage review order and this new merchandise directive as “two peas in a pod,” aimed at stories like those of the Buffalo Soldiers, which are objective facts of history at many parks, but which now may be flagged for removal because of the administration’s agenda.

For the staff now tasked with executing it, Chakrin called it a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.

“It’s such an unenviable position to have to try and execute these orders in a way that satisfies the administration and also doesn’t undercut your values and your business relationship with a concessioner and your staff’s morale, which is already in the toilet,” he said. “I just don’t envy the superintendents that have to make these decisions.”