Political appointees are baking cookies, and they have to be warm, mind you, for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. In addition, staff is told to make lunch for “Doug the Diva”and he reportedly uses taxpayer money which used to go go salaries for Park employees as fare for use of a Park Police helicopter for transport.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly dismissed any concern when asked for a comment on this story. “Only The Atlantic could spin baking warm cookies for guests as a bad thing. Cold-hearted people!” she wrote to us in a statement. “Secretary Burgum is doing an outstanding job leading the Department of Interior.”
“These pathetic smears are from unnamed cowards who don’t know Doug Burgum and are trying to stop President Trump’s Energy Dominance agenda,” Interior spokesperson Katie Martin told us in a statement. “Everyone knows Secretary Burgum always leads with gratitude and is humbly working with President Trump.”
Meanwhile and in other news, according to AP, Burgum has issued an order that that National Parks remain “open and accessible” despite workplace reductions— layoffs, buyouts and firings— that will make parks unsafe if understaffed this Summer. Still Burgum states the “American People” should have access to America’s “most treasured places this Summer.
But park advocates and others criticized the move and questioned how park employees could comply, given the Trump administration’s workforce reductions through voluntary separation offers, layoffs and an earlier hiring freeze. Fewer workers can mean shorter hours, delays, closed campgrounds, overflowing trash bins, unkept bathrooms, and risks to public safety, they say.
The park service has lost somewhere near 1,500 permanent employees since the beginning of this year, Rick Mossman, president of the Arizona-based Association of National Park Rangers, said Friday in a statement. And it’s “bracing for another reduction in force expected in the very near future.”
