The White House has been in talks with the firm since the spring of last year.
By Chris Walker ,
August 28, 2026
A giant sequoia is seen at Yosemite National Park on Friday October 28, 2022.Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
For the past year, the National Park Service (NPS) has been in talks with a private corporation to negotiate a possible land deal, providing the company with a stretch of land located within Yosemite National Park.
The proposed deal, first reported by NOTUS, would benefit Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a real estate investment company, which owns 83 acres of land adjacent to the park. According to sources with knowledge of the proposal, Kingsbarn would be given the land to allow it to develop a road from its property to one of the more popular destinations in the park, a large grove of ancient sequoia trees just five miles away, to which the property doesn’t currently have easy road access.
Per the report, the Trump administration “has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite.” The proposal also has the “full weight” of the Interior Department’s backing, which is causing friction with park staff.
“The political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual,” one source told NOTUS.
The proposal has been in the works since the spring of 2025. Notably, Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum promised lawmakers during his confirmation hearings in January of that year that he would keep national parks intact.
“We need to support and protect every single inch of” U.S. national parks, he said at the time.
Federal rules require that land owned by the government and given to private companies must be done through exchanges of land elsewhere, and Kingsbarn would likely give away some of its land in California to the feds. But such a move has never occurred for land within a national park — indeed, national parks tend to grow in size rather than lose ground.
Even if the deal were a pure land swap, Kingsbarn could receive huge financial windfalls from it if the company built homes or hotels on its property near the park and proposed roadway.
“Obviously this looks kind of unseemly, with the value of this property potentially exploding with the deal,” a source familiar with the proposed exchange said. “It kind of smells, you know. It’s not quite right.”
Cicely Muldoon, the former superintendent of Yosemite National Park who resigned from her position just before Trump began his second term as president in 2025, panned the idea of giving away parts of Yosemite to the real estate company.
“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” Muldoon told NOTUS.
For the past year, the National Park Service (NPS) has been in talks with a private corporation to negotiate a possible land deal, providing the company with a stretch of land located within Yosemite National Park.
The proposed deal, first reported by NOTUS, would benefit Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a real estate investment company, which owns 83 acres of land adjacent to the park. According to sources with knowledge of the proposal, Kingsbarn would be given the land to allow it to develop a road from its property to one of the more popular destinations in the park, a large grove of ancient sequoia trees just five miles away, to which the property doesn’t currently have easy road access.
Per the report, the Trump administration “has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite.” The proposal also has the “full weight” of the Interior Department’s backing, which is causing friction with park staff.
“The political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual,” one source told NOTUS.
The proposal has been in the works since the spring of 2025. Notably, Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum promised lawmakers during his confirmation hearings in January of that year that he would keep national parks intact.
“We need to support and protect every single inch of” U.S. national parks, he said at the time.
Federal rules require that land owned by the government and given to private companies must be done through exchanges of land elsewhere, and Kingsbarn would likely give away some of its land in California to the feds. But such a move has never occurred for land within a national park — indeed, national parks tend to grow in size rather than lose ground.
Even if the deal were a pure land swap, Kingsbarn could receive huge financial windfalls from it if the company built homes or hotels on its property near the park and proposed roadway.
“Obviously this looks kind of unseemly, with the value of this property potentially exploding with the deal,” a source familiar with the proposed exchange said. “It kind of smells, you know. It’s not quite right.”
Cicely Muldoon, the former superintendent of Yosemite National Park who resigned from her position just before Trump began his second term as president in 2025, panned the idea of giving away parts of Yosemite to the real estate company.
“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” Muldoon told NOTUS.
‘America Is For Sale’: Trump Reportedly Trying to Hand Private Developer Part of Yosemite
“Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else.”
This view of Yosemite Valley was captured from Glacier Point, an overlook in California’s Yosemite National Park
(Photo by Tuxyso/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Jessica Corbett
Aug 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Even while repeatedly serving the interests of destructive industries, President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have claimed they are committed to protecting US national parks—but the Republican administration is now working to give a private developer a piece of Yosemite, NOTUS reported on Friday.
Specifically, according to unnamed sources and government documents, federal staffers are working on a potential land exchange to give a quarter-mile strip of land in California’s Yosemite National Park “to a company that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital.”
The developers own 83 acres west of the park, and Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori—whose company did not respond to a request for comment—aims “to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares,” providing “the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests,” NOTUS detailed.
The sources told NOTUS that political leaders at the US Department of the Interior “want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” and that “the political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual.”
The National Park Service, which is part of the department, said that “no final decisions have been made,” but any proposals “would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes.”
The revelation—which came during National Park Week—was met with outrage.
Ripping the possible “secretive, backroom deal,” as “an attack on the American people that own this national park,” Mark Rose, the National Parks Conservation Association’s Sierra Nevada program manager, told NOTUS that “it would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal.”
Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford said in a statement that “Yosemite is not Donald Trump’s to give away. This secretive deal betrays the purpose of our national parks and the promise our government has kept since Abraham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for the public and for generations to come.”
“For more than 150 years, each generation has carried forward the responsibility to protect this sacred landscape and pass it on intact,” Blackford continued. “The Trump administration is betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of Yosemite to a private developer. We will use every tool at our disposal to stop this corrupt giveaway.”
While the looming land swap could move forward without any sign-off from Congress, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) was among those who spoke out on social media Friday.
“Our parks belong to all of us,” the congressman emphasized. “These places should be protected for every generation, not sold off to Trump’s ultrawealthy friends to profit off of. I will fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be up for grabs if this domino falls.”
Columnist and self-described “recovering attorney” Wajahat Ali declared, “America is for sale,” and American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said, “Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else.”
While other critics condemned the reported efforts as “disgusting,” “sickening,” and “shocking,” journalist Chris D’Angelo commented, “I would say this is shocking, but things have been headed in this direction since Trump reentered office.”
After Trump won a second term in 2024—having secured campaign funds from Big Oil, and run on a promise to “drill, baby, drill”— one of his early actions post-inauguration was declaring a “national energy emergency” intended to boost the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry.
Since then, while cashing in on his second presidency—including via stock transactions made this year as fuel prices soared due to his illegal war with Iran—Trump has continued to push policies that help polluters and other rich allies. For example, last week the administration delivered a “one-two punch” to national forests, taking aim at a pair of rules intended to protect such lands.
The Center for Biological Diversity warned this week that the Trump administration’s proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would “open pristine public lands to road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development,” and, according to the group’s analysis, put 400 species on an “extinction fast track.”
“More roads mean more sediment in streams, more fragmentation of wildlife habitat, more human access to places wildlife depend on for refuge, and more wildfires in forests already facing unprecedented climate change-fueled risk,” the center stressed. “The roadless rule has held that line for a generation. Without it the losses to wildlife, water, and the wild places that define the American landscape will be irreversible.”
This article has been updated with comment from the Sierra Club.
“Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else.”
This view of Yosemite Valley was captured from Glacier Point, an overlook in California’s Yosemite National Park
(Photo by Tuxyso/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Jessica Corbett
Aug 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Even while repeatedly serving the interests of destructive industries, President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have claimed they are committed to protecting US national parks—but the Republican administration is now working to give a private developer a piece of Yosemite, NOTUS reported on Friday.
Specifically, according to unnamed sources and government documents, federal staffers are working on a potential land exchange to give a quarter-mile strip of land in California’s Yosemite National Park “to a company that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital.”
The developers own 83 acres west of the park, and Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori—whose company did not respond to a request for comment—aims “to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares,” providing “the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests,” NOTUS detailed.
The sources told NOTUS that political leaders at the US Department of the Interior “want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” and that “the political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual.”
The National Park Service, which is part of the department, said that “no final decisions have been made,” but any proposals “would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes.”
The revelation—which came during National Park Week—was met with outrage.
Ripping the possible “secretive, backroom deal,” as “an attack on the American people that own this national park,” Mark Rose, the National Parks Conservation Association’s Sierra Nevada program manager, told NOTUS that “it would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal.”
Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford said in a statement that “Yosemite is not Donald Trump’s to give away. This secretive deal betrays the purpose of our national parks and the promise our government has kept since Abraham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for the public and for generations to come.”
“For more than 150 years, each generation has carried forward the responsibility to protect this sacred landscape and pass it on intact,” Blackford continued. “The Trump administration is betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of Yosemite to a private developer. We will use every tool at our disposal to stop this corrupt giveaway.”
While the looming land swap could move forward without any sign-off from Congress, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) was among those who spoke out on social media Friday.
“Our parks belong to all of us,” the congressman emphasized. “These places should be protected for every generation, not sold off to Trump’s ultrawealthy friends to profit off of. I will fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be up for grabs if this domino falls.”
Columnist and self-described “recovering attorney” Wajahat Ali declared, “America is for sale,” and American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said, “Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else.”
While other critics condemned the reported efforts as “disgusting,” “sickening,” and “shocking,” journalist Chris D’Angelo commented, “I would say this is shocking, but things have been headed in this direction since Trump reentered office.”
After Trump won a second term in 2024—having secured campaign funds from Big Oil, and run on a promise to “drill, baby, drill”— one of his early actions post-inauguration was declaring a “national energy emergency” intended to boost the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry.
Since then, while cashing in on his second presidency—including via stock transactions made this year as fuel prices soared due to his illegal war with Iran—Trump has continued to push policies that help polluters and other rich allies. For example, last week the administration delivered a “one-two punch” to national forests, taking aim at a pair of rules intended to protect such lands.
The Center for Biological Diversity warned this week that the Trump administration’s proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would “open pristine public lands to road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development,” and, according to the group’s analysis, put 400 species on an “extinction fast track.”
“More roads mean more sediment in streams, more fragmentation of wildlife habitat, more human access to places wildlife depend on for refuge, and more wildfires in forests already facing unprecedented climate change-fueled risk,” the center stressed. “The roadless rule has held that line for a generation. Without it the losses to wildlife, water, and the wild places that define the American landscape will be irreversible.”
This article has been updated with comment from the Sierra Club.
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