Addie Leak @addieleak.bsky.social

Yosemite made headlines yesterday. A few things got left out. Yosemite belongs to every American. It is not Trump's to give away. Jeff Pori, the CEO of the company set to gain from this deal, had zero political donations on record — ever — before October 2024. That's before Trump even won the election. Starting that month, he began giving monthly to Trump's campaign and the RNC, more than $4,000 total. He kept paying through the transition. And the moment Trump's people were in power, by spring 2025, a request that had been dead for over 20 years suddenly came roaring back to life. They'd tried this before. In the late 1990s, a different owner of this same land sued for this same access. He lost — first in district court, then again on appeal in 2012. Dead. Over. Then in 2024, Kingsbarn Realty Capital — run by Pori — bought that same land for $4 million and asked for the same road. Told no again. Until Trump took office. Around that same time, Kingsbarn also closed a deal with two companies tied straight to Trump's inner circle — one run by a man who personally underwrote Trump's $175 million bond in his own civil fraud case. Political appointees pushed Park Service staff to make this deal happen. The pressure traced back to Burgum's own office. Two former officials, speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation, confirmed it. There's even a plan to use the Land and Water Conservation Fund — money meant to protect public land — to help pay for it. When two senators, one from each party, sent Interior their own list of projects worth funding this way, Yosemite wasn't on it. It was never even in consideration. Former Yosemite superintendent Cicely Muldoon put it plainly: if this can happen at Yosemite, "it can really happen anywhere in the national park system." The National Park Service oversees 433 sites across the country, spanning more than 85 million acres of public land — all of it belonging to the American people. The Sierra Club is speaking out too. Executive Director Loren Blackford says this plan is "betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of Yosemite to a private developer." Senator Alex Padilla didn't hold back: "This is the most corrupt administration in history." This isn't about one road, or one developer, or one park. It's about whether anything protected in this country is actually protected — or just waiting for the right administration to give it away. 🦋HumanityUnited #DemsUnited