Dr. Lucky Tran, who’s had bylines in The Guardian and the Washington Post, declared that this was a brilliant protest. Apparently, some Yosemite National Park workers spent last week flying the “distress flag” thousands of feet off the ground. That’s one accomplishment they can put in their emails today: “Flew flag upside down to protest the reduction of bloat in the federal bureaucracy.”
State Parks seems to be taking DOGE’s cuts hard. As we reported Friday, Alec MacGillis of ProPublica told us of the epic tragedy out of Yosemite National Park, where “the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms” was laid off.
CBS News also ran the story of a park worker who lost his dream job on Valentine’s Day:
National Park ranger fired from “dream job” on Valentine’s Day pens emotional viral letter: “Things are not ok”
https://t.co/Zzj7JiV45K— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 19, 2025
Li Cohen reports:
When Brian Gibbs woke up on Valentine’s Day on Friday, it was just another morning of getting to do what he loved at his “dream job” as an education park ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. By that afternoon, the father and husband said he was “absolutely heartbroken and completely devastated” to have been one of hundreds of National Park Service employees suddenly fired from their jobs.
…
“I am of the place where I first told my spouse I loved her. I am a college kid’s dream job,” he wrote [on Facebook]. “…I am a voice for 19 American Indian cultures. I am the protector of 2500 year old American Indian burial and ceremonial mounds. I am the defender of your public lands and waters.”
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Your propaganda is losing it’s edge
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 19, 2025
Speaking of Mollie Hemingway:
The New York Times ran approximately seventy stories on Mrs. Alito’s distress flag, in which they claimed there was one reason–and only one reason–to fly the flag this way and that it was in solidarity with J6 protesters. So I guess the Yosemite employees are J6ers? pic.twitter.com/ulx1K2Zel0
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 23, 2025
The Washington Post actually sent a reporter to Justice Samuel Alito’s home in 2021 but didn’t think it was a story … until 2024.
seems more to prove the point that the bureaucracy no longer believes itself accountable to democratically elected leaders, to be honest https://t.co/XxDWqewAr2
— Carl Paulus (@CarlPaulus) February 23, 2025
I guess no one thought they’d actually have to say it, but step one to pushing back against DOGE is to stop proving its point over and over again.
— Carl Paulus (@CarlPaulus) February 23, 2025
Okay so “hung flag upside down in national park” is one bullet point. What are the other four?
— Random (@RandompostsonX) February 23, 2025
If they have time to do that, then there are too many workers at that park.
— ThatsHedley (@BPBLCMUDU) February 23, 2025
They think they’re a branch of government.
— LBS (@NY_LBSS) February 23, 2025
After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, a lot of official Twitter accounts changed their bios to, “The official resistance against Trump” and changed their avatars.
Maybe someone at the park should check the restrooms to see if anyone’s locked in, seeing as they laid off the only guy with the “institutional knowledge” to unlock them.
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