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National Park Service will void passes with stickers over Trump’s face
The Interior Department’s new “America the Beautiful” annual pass for U.S. national parks.
Department of Interior
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Department of Interior
The National Park Service has updated its policy to discourage visitors from defacing a picture of President Trump on this year’s pass.
The use of an image of Trump on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual picture of nature — has sparked a backlash, sticker protests, and a lawsuit from a conservation group.
The $80 annual America the Beautiful pass gives visitors access to more than 2,000 federal recreation sites. Since 2004, the pass has typically showcased sweeping landscapes or iconic wildlife, selected through a public photo contest. Past winners have featured places like Arches National Park in Utah and images of bison roaming the plains.
Instead, of a picture of nature, this year’s design shows side-by-side portraits of Presidents George Washington and Trump. The new design has drawn criticism from parkgoers and ignited a wave of “do-it-yourself” resistance.
Photos circulating online show that many national park cardholders have covered the image of Trump’s face with stickers of wildlife, landscapes, and yellow smiley faces, while some have completely blocked out the whole card. The backlash has also inspired a growing sticker campaign.
Jenny McCarty, a longtime park volunteer and graphic designer, began selling custom stickers meant to fit directly over Trump’s face — with 100% of proceeds going to conservation nonprofits. “We made our first donation of $16,000 in December,” McCarty said. “The power of community is incredible.”
McCarty says the sticker movement is less about politics and more about preserving the neutrality of public lands. “The Interior’s new guidance only shows they continue to disregard how strongly people feel about keeping politics out of national parks,” she said.
The National Park Service card policy was updated this week to say that passes may no longer be valid if they’ve been “defaced or altered.” The change, which was revealed in an internal email to National Park Service staff obtained by SFGATE, comes just as the sticker movement has gained traction across social media.
In a statement to NPR, the Interior Department said there was no new policy. Interagency passes have always been void if altered, as stated on the card itself. The agency said the recent update was meant to clarify that rule and help staff deal with confusion from visitors.
The Park Service has long said passes can be voided if the signature strip is altered, but the updated guidance now explicitly includes stickers or markings on the front of the card.
It will be left to the discretion of park service officials to determine whether a pass has been “defaced” or not. The update means park officials now have the leeway to reject a pass if a sticker leaves behind residue, even if the image underneath is intact.
In December, conservation group the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., opposing the new pass design.
The group argues that the image violates a federal requirement that the annual America the Beautiful pass display a winning photograph from a national parks photo contest. The 2026 winning image was a picture of Glacier National Park.
“This is part of a larger pattern of Trump branding government materials with his name and image,” Kierán Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told NPR. “But this kind of cartoonish authoritarianism won’t fly in the United States.”
The lawsuit asks a federal court to pull the current pass design and replace it with the original contest winner — the Glacier National Park image. It also seeks to block the government from featuring a president’s face on future passes.
The America the Beautiful National Parks Annual Pass for 2025, showing one of the natural images which used to adorn the pass. Its picture, of a Roseate Spoonbill taken at Everglades National Park, was taken by Michael Zheng.
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Not everyone sees a problem with the new design. Vince Vanata, the GOP chairman of Park County, Wyoming, told the Cowboy State Daily that Trump detractors should “suck it up” and accept the park passes, saying they are a fitting tribute to America’s 250th birthday this July 4.
“The 250th anniversary of our country only comes once. This pass is showing the first president of the United States and the current president of the United States,” Vanata said.
But for many longtime visitors, the backlash goes beyond design.
Erin Quinn Gery, who buys an annual pass each year, compared the image to “a mug shot slapped onto natural beauty.”
She also likened the decision to self-glorification: “It’s akin to throwing yourself a parade or putting yourself on currency,” she said. “Let someone else tell you you’re great — or worth celebrating and commemorating.”
When asked if she plans to remove her protest sticker, Gery replied: “I’ll take the sticker off my pass after Trump takes his name off the Kennedy Center.”
News
Videos From Minnesota Show How Aggressive ICE Has Gotten During Arrests and Encounters With Protesters
Federal immigration agents have broken windows and dragged occupants out of their vehicles. They have forcefully tackled people to the ground. They have pushed and shoved protesters, and deployed pepper spray directly in their faces.
For weeks, residents have documented the scenes unfolding as federal agents pursue President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. The videos have circulated widely and intensified outrage and fear among many Minnesotans.
Marty Kurcias, 76, who was protesting at the airport on Friday, said the aggressive treatment he has seen of Minnesotans was jarring. “It can’t go on like this,” he said, adding, “We don’t abide by cruelty or violence.”
Trump administration officials have defended the tactics as necessary in the face of widespread protests. But the heavy-handed use of force has drawn mounting scrutiny.
The New York Times reviewed dozens of videos taken in recent weeks and identified multiple aggressive tactics that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents used during immigration arrests and in encounters with protesters.
Officers forcibly entered homes without a judge’s warrant.
On Sunday, federal agents were seen dragging a man from his home in St. Paul. The man was later identified as ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record, according to his family. Mr. Thao and his family said that the armed agents did not present a warrant or allow him to show identification at the time of arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Mr. Thao refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified and that he had matched the description of two sex offenders they were seeking.
An internal memo, leaked by a whistle-blower group, showed that ICE officials had drafted guidance saying that their officers could enter homes without a judicial warrant and that they could rely instead on administrative warrants that are issued by a government agency and do not go through the federal court system.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department, acknowledged that officers had relied on administrative warrants to enter homes to conduct arrests.
John Sandweg, who served as an acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, said the practice of entering homes without a judicial warrant would be a significant departure from decades-old ICE policies and procedures.
They interrogated people because of their ethnicity or accents.
Administration officials have repeatedly said that the operations in Minnesota have targeted violent criminals and people who pose a serious threat to the community. But immigration agents have confronted and interrogated people because of what they assumed their race or ethnicity to be.
A video posted on social media and additional footage provided to The New York Times show one man, Ramon Menera, questioned by immigration agents who told him they were asking for documentation because of his accent.
Mr. Menera told The Times that he is a U.S. citizen and that the agents released him after he provided them with his passport card.
In July, a federal judge prohibited immigration agents in the Los Angeles area from targeting people based on assumptions about their race or ethnicity, but the Supreme Court lifted the order in September.
They broke windows and dragged occupants from their cars.
Immigration agents are taking sharp measures to detain and arrest people. That includes people who do not appear to be a danger to the community and in some cases people who are not the targets of immigration enforcement operations at all.
A widely shared video taken in Minneapolis shows immigration agents dragging a woman, later identified as Aliya Rahman, from her car, after one agent shattered the window on the passenger side.
The Homeland Security department later said that the woman was an “agitator” who ignored multiple commands to move her vehicle away from the scene. Ms. Rahman told CNN that she was not there to protest, and that she had received conflicting commands.
Another video shows one agent breaking the window of a car after a man inside refuses to open the door. Multiple agents then tackle the man, later identified as Orbin Mauricio Henriquez Serrano, to the ground.
Shattering a window and pulling someone out of their car can escalate an encounter significantly, said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. It would be suitable only in a situation in which the federal agents had probable cause to suspect that the target had committed a violent crime like murder, rape or robbery, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether the man fit that description. The Homeland Security Department said only that he was an undocumented immigrant from Honduras who failed to obey officers’ orders.
They used force on people who were already restrained.
The Times found multiple instances of several agents tackling someone to the ground and proceeding to handle that person aggressively, in one instance placing a knee on the person’s neck.
In another case, video shows five immigration agents holding a man to the ground as one agent repeatedly strikes the man in the face with his knee.
A strike to the head is generally considered deadly force, justified only to defend against imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person, said Christy Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law. “There was nothing in that video that indicated that was the situation,” she said.
The available video does not show what led up to the encounter. Ms. McLaughlin said in a statement to The Times that the man had violently resisted arrest. She added that officers are trained to use the minimum necessary amount of force.
They met protesters with force.
Immigration agents have increasingly clashed with protesters in recent weeks after a federal officer shot and killed a woman, Renee Good, on Jan. 7. Protesters have gathered in small groups and in large crowds, honking car horns, blowing whistles and yelling at and filming ICE agents. Immigration agents have been filmed exchanging insults and jeers with the protesters.
Videos showed multiple cases when agents were quick to use physical force with protesters, shoving or tackling them. In one instance, an agent gets out of a car, walks up to a protester who is standing in front of the agent’s car and shoves him into the middle of the street.
Ms. Lopez said that the First Amendment gives people the broad right to protest, record and yell things, even profanity, at officers.
In a statement to The Times, Ms. McLaughlin characterized the protesters as “rioters and terrorists,” and said that they had assaulted law enforcement and vandalized federal vehicles.
They deployed chemical irritants at close range.
Videos also documented multiple occasions when, in confrontations with protesters, immigration agents deployed chemical irritants with little to no warning — firing directly in people’s faces.
A federal judge in Minneapolis cited several episodes of “gratuitous deployment of pepper spray” in a ruling last week that ordered agents not to retaliate against peaceful protesters. A federal appeals court temporarily lifted those restrictions on Wednesday.
In a video of a protest taken on Jan. 7 near where Ms. Good was killed, federal agents can be seen on multiple occasions hitting protesters in the face with pepper spray and other irritants at close range. Earlier in the video, one of the protesters throws a snow ball at one of the agents, and some protesters are blocking an agent’s vehicle.
They continued to operate with anonymity.
In many of the videos The Times reviewed, immigration agents drove in unmarked cars, and wore ski masks, neck gaiters or other face coverings. Many also wore a cap and shades, further obscuring their identities, a practice that has been common in immigration operations across the country.
Federal officials have said that face coverings protect the agents and their families from retaliation, such as having their home address or contact information shared online.
But the practice runs counter to protocols for most other law enforcement personnel, like police officers whose uniforms include badge numbers. And critics have suggested that the agents have been emboldened to act with impunity, knowing that their identities are hidden and that it would be difficult to hold them accountable.
Demonstrators march during the nationwide “Stop ICE Terror” rally through downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 20, 2026 in protest against US President Donald Trump’s policies.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
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Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
So much has happened since ICE ramped up efforts in Minneapolis. It can be hard to get a sense of the big picture. Two NPR reporters on the ground do just that.
It’s been nearly two months since ICE descended on the streets of Minneapolis. In that time, Renee Macklin Good has been shot and killed, children have been detained, and the federal government’s campaign to arrest undocumented immigrants has only grown bigger, more aggressive, and more intense.
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.
Each step of the way, Minnesotans have protested what’s been happening in their state.
This episode was produced by Michael Levitt, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro.
It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Eric Westervelt.
Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
new video loaded: President Trump Rescinds Canada’s Invitation to His ‘Board of Peace’
transcript
transcript
President Trump Rescinds Canada’s Invitation to His ‘Board of Peace’
President Trump on Thursday rescinded his invitation to Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” an organization he founded to oversee the Gaza peace deal, after Prime Minister Mark Carney made comments critical of the United States.
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Canada and the United States have built a remarkable partnership in the economy and security and in rich cultural exchange. But Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. They should be grateful to us. Canada, Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark. The next time you make your statements. Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu. We stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.
By Nader Ibrahim
January 23, 2026
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