ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION – NO HARD COPY TO FOLLOW
November 19, 2025
The Honorable Doug Burgum
Secretary
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington D.C., 20240
Dear Secretary Burgum:
I am writing on behalf of more than 4,700 members of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks (Coalition), who collectively represent more than 50,000 years of national park management experience. The Coalition studies, educates, speaks, and acts for the preservation of America’s National Park System. Among our members are former NPS directors, regional directors, superintendents, resource specialists, park rangers, maintenance and administrative staff, and a full array of other former employees, volunteers, and supporters.
The National Park Service has the distinct honor and responsibility to conserve and maintain our country’s most important historic properties for the long-term education and benefit of the American people and other citizens of the world. For decades, this work has been informed and guided by professional historians, architects, archivists, curators, and other cultural resources specialists, some of whom work for the federal government. Other expertise has come from collaboration with other agency and private experts in state and local historic preservation offices and professional societies such as the Organization of American Historians, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the American Council of Learned Societies, itself an umbrella group that includes such members as the American Anthropological Association, the American Historical Association, and the National Council on Public History.
We share concerns, stated by these organizations and by noted individual historians, for the preservation of our nation’s historical heritage and how the many and varied stories of country’s foundation and evolution are told. The Secretary of Interior’s Order 3431, issued in May 2025, called for the National Park Service to review and revise educational materials, programs, and exhibits to avoid alleged “ideological bias,” eroding the agency’s mission to provide information that is evidence-based, inclusive, and tells complex stories associated with the many sites included within the National Park System.
In August, the White House directed the Secretary of the Smithsonian to audit eight of their twenty-one institutions to ensure alignment with the presidential directive to remove divisive historical narratives and present more “uplifting” portrayals of American heritage. Congress established the Smithsonian Institution in 1846 as a unique and independent agency; its archivists, curators, researchers, and exhibit designers and builders are consummate professionals dedicated to rigorous and open historical inquiry and storytelling. Polls and surveys indicate that people acknowledge and desire full and honest presentations of American history, and look to the Smithsonian and to the National Park System as places where they can seek and find such interpretation and education, even when the stories are complicated and contradictory.
The recent razing of the East Wing of the White House is also troubling, not because this or other historic structures are immune to alteration or addition. We, like others, recognize that the White House has been altered multiple times before in its 225-year history. However, the scale of this latest alteration—removing the East Wing and proposing to replace it with a structure that is much larger than the White House itself—is troubling, especially due to the lack of either transparency or consultation with the National Capital Planning Commission and the White House Historical Association.
The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, particularly the sub-standards for Rehabilitation, are, according to the National Park Service and as codified in 36 CFR 67, intended as general guidance for work on all historic properties. We echo the recent [Oct. 21, 2025] request by the National Trust for Historic Preservation that plans for proposed new construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom undergo consultation by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fire Arts, and to invite public comment. There may be legitimate need for a larger meeting space or ballroom on the White House grounds, but as urged by the Secretary’s Standards, the Society of Architectural Historians, and others, new additions should neither destroy the historic fabric of the White House National Historic Landmark nor be incompatible with regarding to existing massing, size, scale, and architectural features. Independent professional and public comment will ensure that any new addition to the White House complex honors the historical significance of the property, which belongs to the American people.
The coming 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding reminds us all of our rich history. Myriad stories and physical manifestations of that history are preserved on the landscape in hundreds of units within the National Park System and other historic sites, as well as in museums across the country. Americans and visitors from around the world look with awe and reverence to these places. We urge you to respect and preserve the White House and other institutions and programs that illustrate this heritage with outstanding scholarship and with deep pride.
Thank you for considering our input on this important issue.
Sincerely,
Philip A. Francis, Jr.
Chair of the Executive Council
Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks
Email: Ed****@********ps.org
Mail: 2 Massachusetts Ave NE, Unit 77436, Washington, DC 20013
Web: www.protectnps.org
Phone: (202) 819-8622