How DOGE cuts are jeopardizing our national parks, "America's best idea"

When British novelist J.B. Priestley visited the Grand Canyon in the 1930s, he described it as "all of Beethoven's nine symphonies in stone and magic light."

"If I were an American," he wrote, "I should make my remembrance of it the final test of men, art, and policies … Every member or officer of the federal government ought to remind himself, with triumphant pride, that he is on the staff of the Grand Canyon."

In February, as part of the Trump Administration's effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce, approximately 1,000 employees were laid off across the Park Service. When the federal government fired some of the Park Service staff who work at the canyon, this was the scene near the South Rim: