Internal Interior Department documents, obtained by former CBS journalist Scott MacFarlane and independently confirmed by The Atlantic, lay out a number that should be almost impossible to justify on its own terms: this year’s combined funding allotment for the White House grounds and National Mall totals $423 million. In 2024, under the prior administration, the combined funding for those same two sites was less than $20 million — a more than twentyfold increase in a single year.
That $423 million figure is, by itself, larger than this year’s combined funding for Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Statue of Liberty complex, and Mammoth Cave — seven of the country’s most iconic national parks and monuments, added together, all receiving less this year than the White House lawn and the Mall alone.
AND IT GETS BIGGER
The $423 million figure only covers NPS-administered upgrades to the grounds and Mall. Layer in the full scope of Trump-related construction across Washington — the East Wing ballroom demolition and rebuild, related capital projects — and the New York Times’ own tally puts total known public and private funding tied to Trump-related projects across the capital at $1.2 billion.
WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM, AND WHERE IT DIDN’T GO
This wasn’t simply new appropriated money. Taxpayer funding for projects in the National Capital Region surged 92% over the past year, drawing partly from revolving maintenance accounts and more than $100 million in entrance and use fees collected from national parks across the entire country — meaning money visitors paid specifically to fund the parks they visited helped underwrite polished granite pathways in Washington instead.
Meanwhile, spending on park projects outside the Washington area dropped by $854 million — a 68% decline — over the same roughly eight-and-a-half-month stretch compared to the prior full fiscal year. The regional breakdown: a $254 million reduction for Intermountain Region parks including Yellowstone, and a $235 million drop for Pacific West parks including Yosemite. More than 900 planned park maintenance projects nationwide lost their expected funding as a direct result.
WHAT ACTUALLY GOT CUT — NOT ABSTRACT NUMBERS, REAL DETERIORATING BUILDINGS
The specifics are worth naming, because they’re not luxuries: a $1.5 million roof replacement at the Yellowstone Center for Resources — built in 1891, currently suffering leaks severe enough to cause documented mold growth and health concerns for the staff working inside it — never got funded. Neither did a $424,000 guardrail replacement on the cliff edge of Black Canyon in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park, described in NPS’s own paperwork as fixing a “significant safety hazard for visitors.” Nor did the roughly $3 million needed to keep Acadia National Park’s free shuttle-bus system running. Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, put the trade plainly: “The National Park Service is being used as a piggy bank for Trump’s vanity projects.”
THE PART THAT SHOULD MAKE ANYONE ANGRY REGARDLESS OF POLITICS
Some of the granular spending choices are genuinely petty against this backdrop. A White House pathway connecting the executive residence to the Oval Office cost taxpayers $689,232 — replacing historic Tennessee flagstone with polished, Italian-carved African granite featuring a custom flamed-finish stripe. When reporters asked Trump directly how the walkway was funded, he told them it was “paid for by me.” Budget records reviewed by The Atlantic and confirmed by multiple outlets show that’s false: the walkway was part of a larger $1.3 million project covering adjacent masonry repairs and new door hardware, funded entirely through the same NPS accounts starving Yellowstone’s roof of its $1.5 million fix. A separate $347,503 “rush project” — again at Trump’s personal request — replaced stucco on a colonnade wall specifically to clear space for gold frames and plaques criticizing past administrations.
THE PART THAT’S ALREADY GOING WRONG
None of this spending has even produced quality results. We’ve already documented the Reflecting Pool renovation collapse — a rushed, no-bid contract that a Justice Department court filing itself acknowledged in July was “botched” and led directly to the algae and bubbling disrepair that got an innocent man wrongly charged with vandalism. Interior’s own internal memo had warned of exactly these problems back in June, before the deadline-driven rush job proceeded anyway.
THE THROUGH-LINE
This isn’t a story about whether a president is allowed to renovate the White House — that’s normal, expected, and has happened under every administration. It’s a story about the specific mechanism used to pay for it: money diverted, at scale, from the parks that ordinary Americans actually visit and fund through their own entrance fees, toward gold-leafed doorframes and imported stone pathways in Washington, while a 135-year-old research building in Yellowstone leaks and grows mold because its $1.5 million repair couldn’t compete for funding against a granite walkway upgrade the president publicly, falsely claimed he paid for himself.