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Just as digital protesters took credit for raining on Trump’s military parade, national park supporters appear to have flooded the Department of Interior’s feedback portal, possibly frustrating an order by Trump to remove any “negative” history from national parks and monuments.

The signs read, “[Site Name] belongs to the American people, and the National Park Service wants your feedback. Please let us know if you have identified (1) any areas that need repair; (2) any services that need improvement; or (3) any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Responses Forbes reviewed were overwhelmingly positive about the national parks and staff. Of the minority reporting negative information, roughly three dozen comments pertained to “services that need improvement” and raised concerns about shuttle services, reservation systems, parking availability or accessibility for diverse visitors, while others highlighted the need for repairs and a perceived lack of funding and budget cuts. Twenty-six entries expressed concern that the Trump administration was attempting to "whitewash," “sanitize” or “erase” history, with a visitor at Yosemite National Park writing, “We need to know the history of all Americans, not just about white men.” A visitor to Mississippi’s Natchez National Historical Park wrote, “Slavery was a dark time in our nation’s history and we have to come to terms with that” and not “romanticize the Antebellum South.” At Kentucky’s Camp Nelson National Monument, a Civil War training center for United States Colored Troops, one visitor wrote, “So glad that people can learn about the tremendous work that African Americans did to earn their freedom by joining the defense of the union.” A visitor to the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Alabama said the park does “an incredible job of portraying the complicated and dark history of the civil rights movement in a way that is needed for the education of us all.” Several visitors to Alaska’s Denali National Park took issue with President Trump’s renaming of Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, noting that President McKinley never visited Alaska and had no connection to the peak. “The mountain is called Denali,” wrote one, “and no other name than the name that the indigenous peoples came up with before whites murdered and pillaged their way through.” Another added, “You cannot erase indigenous stories. My heart hurts knowing that the families and adventurers visiting this special park will be forced to bear witness to revisionist history as part of a pathetic attempt at signaling power.”

In recent weeks, national park advocacy organizations like the National Park Conservation Association rallied supporters on social media to use the “snitch signs” for positive protest. A Facebook post from June 12 asking supporters to use the QR code to “thank our park rangers for telling the full American story” and “applaud their commitment to protecting and preserving our public lands” was shared more than 500 times. A group of “off-duty, illegally fired or former/retired National Park Service employees” who call themselves “the Resistance Rangers” have also encouraged supporters to “submit your Good Trouble feedback,” an expression associated with the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis. Some of the strongest advocacy appears to be coming from National Park Service employees themselves on forums such as Reddit. In the National Park subreddit, which has 2.1 million members, a ranger posted several weeks ago: “It would be super cool if we could spam this form with positive, kind messages for the rangers. It means the world to us to know we're being supported and that our work is valued.” The post received nearly 350 upvotes and 55 comments. In the National Park Service subreddit, an online community of 22,000 park rangers, a Redditor warned 10 days ago that ‘snitch signs” invite the public to “rat out” information deemed negative by the administration. It received 736 upvotes and 99 comments.

The initiative sprang from President Trump’s March executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which claimed a “revisionist movement” had attempted to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” Trump’s order blamed former President Biden for advancing “this corrosive ideology” in a way that “deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.” The decree called upon U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether, during the Biden administration, signage at federal sites had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” and to ensure that public signage does not contain “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)” and instead focuses “on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.” A May 20 secretary’s order from Burgum gave Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service, 120 days to “remove any content” inconsistent with restoring federal sites “to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”

Small acts of defiance are happening in real life, too. At Colorado’s Granada Relocation Center, one of ten Japanese incarceration camps built in the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a park visitor taped over the “snitch sign” with an alternate account of history, NBC-affiliate KOAA News 5 reported. The facetious narrative began, “It was the Spring of 1942 and President Roosevelt decided to treat people of Japanese descent [to]

Conservationists were handed a win last week, when the Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian blocked a provision that would have mandated the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of federal public lands across the West from being included in the Republican budget bill. That means Senator Mike Lee of Utah and other proponents of the sale must either rewrite the provision so it fits Senate rules or drop it from the budget bill. Lee is reportedly writing a pared-down version of the bill that omits U.S. Forest Service lands but requires the Bureau of Land Management to sell between 612,500 and 1.2 million acres in 11 Western states.

TikTokers Are Claiming Credit For Trump’s Parade Attendance (Forbes)