Staff Report –
Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., advocacy organization, announced Tuesday that it is suing the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to force the release of documents it requested under the Freedom of Information Act containing communications between Superintendent Raymond McPadden, appointed in 2025, and senior Interior officials.
The organization frames the suit as a search for the political direction behind recent decisions at the park and says the government never responded to its request for information under the law. It mentions budget cuts and crowding at Yosemite and other parks, and a Trump administration proposal to sell a piece of Yosemite land to a private equity firm planning a private road into the park to serve a luxury real estate development on the park’s outskirts.
Co-president Robert Weissman said the public deserves full disclosure about the agenda shaping policy at the country’s most extraordinary places.
“After getting no response to a public records request, Public Citizen is suing the Department of the Interior and National Park Service seeking disclosure of agency records that may provide insight on the Trump administration’s controversial management of this iconic national park,” the group says in a press release.
The filing lands in a year when Yosemite dropped its reservation system, saw parking lots fill by 7 a.m. on weekends and holidays and drew criticism about over crowding from across the state.
The lawsuit asks only that the documents be released and does not challenge any park policy directly. The descriptions of the land proposal and the budget cuts are Public Citizen’s own, and its announcement did not include a response from Interior or the Park Service.
Read the full legal complaint here.
Public Citizen’s Freedom of Information Act records request was prompted by the appointment of a new superintendent at Yosemite National Park in 2025, they say. The request seeks communications between Yosemite National Park Superintendent Raymond McPadden and top Interior officials in Washington D.C.
Since then, the Trump administration has proposed selling off a piece of Yosemite National Park to a private equity firm with a plan to build a luxury real estate development on the park’s outskirts. Budget cuts and crowding issues also plague Yosemite and other national parks.
“As Trump builds monuments to himself in Washington, D.C., the administration’s mismanagement and misuse of national parks like Yosemite is rightly under scrutiny,” said Robert Weissman, Public Citizen Co-President. “We need full disclosure about the political agenda influencing policy affecting our nation’s most extraordinary places.”
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Reporting from Active NorCal.
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