In December, the White House announced that beginning January 1, 2026, national parks will stop honoring free admission to visitors on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and on Juneteenth, and will instead begin honoring free admission to visitors on Flag Day/President Trump’s Birthday, both being on June 14.
Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP, responded, “Trump is doing what he usually does. He seeks to distract and divide us by undermining progress attributed to the Black community. By doing this, he’s hoping we’ll forget about his failures on the economy. But we’re not buying it.”
The official account of the NAACP added: “Removing free access to the National Parks on MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth is exactly as racist as you think it is.”
Removing free access to the National Parks on MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth is exactly as racist as you think it is.
— NAACP (@NAACP) December 8, 2025
With MLK Jr. Day being honored in most states on Monday, January 19, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom — a unrelenting Trump critic — announced today on social media: “BREAKING: As Donald Trump cancels free admission to National Parks on MLK Day, California will be offering FREE entry at more than 200 participating state parks. Honor MLK. Get outdoors. And stick it to an old man with a fragile ego.”
BREAKING: As Donald Trump cancels free admission to National Parks on MLK Day, California will be offering FREE entry at more than 200 participating state parks.
Honor MLK. Get outdoors. And stick it to an old man with a fragile ego.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 16, 2026
Note: President Trump has long had the National Parks system in his sights as a place to enact his anti-DEI agenda and also to increase profitability, charging the Secretary of the Interior with developing “a strategy to increase revenue and improve the recreational experience at national parks by appropriately increasing entrance fees and recreation pass fees for nonresidents in areas of the National Park System that charge entrance fees or recreation pass fees as defined in 16 U.S.C. 6801.”
In July, Trump revoked the Presidential Memorandum of January 12, 2017 (Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Our National Parks, National Forests, and Other Public Lands and Waters), which was designed to, according to President Obama: “ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to experience and enjoy our public lands and waters, that all segments of the population have the chance to engage in decisions about how our lands and waters are managed, and that our Federal workforce — not just the sites it manages — is drawn from the rich range of the diversity in our Nation.”