National Park Service Vows to Void 2026 Passes Altered to Cover Trump's Image

For over two decades, America's annual national parks pass has told a simple story. Each year, a photograph selected through a public competition displayed the majesty of the nation's treasures—towering redwoods, serene alpine lakes, grazing bison across endless plains. The America the Beautiful pass was a reminder, carried in millions of pockets and glove compartments, that some things belonged to everyone equally and transcended politics.

That tradition died on 1 January 2026 when the pass reimagined itself as a platform for presidential self-promotion. Instead of Akshay Joshi's contest-winning photograph of Glacier National Park in Montana, the $80 annual pass now displays a side-by-side portrait of Presidents George Washington and Donald Trump, a design choice that has ignited legal challenges, sparked a grassroots sticker protest movement, and prompted the National Park Service to issue unprecedented guidance threatening to void passes that visitors alter with stickers.​

What began as a controversial design decision has escalated into a constitutional clash about whether federal programmes can be weaponised for presidential branding, and whether citizens have the right to resist through civil disobedience. The answer, if recent policy updates are any indication, is no.

National Parks Pass Trump Design Sparks Sticker Rebellion And Legal Pushback

The 2026 pass design represents a dramatic departure from twelve years of tradition. The National Park Foundation typically administers an open-to-the-public photography competition, with the winner automatically featured on the pass.

For 2026, amateur photographer Akshay Joshi had won that honour with his stunning image of Glacier National Park—a landscape of alpine peaks and crystalline waters that perfectly embodied the statutory requirement that the pass 'educate the American people about Federal recreational lands and waters'.​

Yet the Department of the Interior, without public announcement or consultation, replaced Joshi's image with Trump's portrait. The contest-winning photograph was relegated to a newly created 'Nonresident' pass, a tier of access that did not previously exist and appears to violate the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which strictly limits pass categories.

Legal experts have noted that the move bypassed the statutory requirement for a public competition and transformed what has historically been an apolitical badge of access into a symbol of partisan affiliation.​

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, captured the conservationists' outrage with blunt assessment: 'Blotting out the majesty of America's national parks with a close-up of his own face is Trump's crassest, most ego-driven action yet.'

In December, his organisation filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the administration violated the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act by substituting a presidential portrait for a public lands photograph. The lawsuit seeks an injunction forcing the government to restore Joshi's Glacier image and preventing future presidents from using the pass as personal branding real estate.​

But the legal fight has been eclipsed by something perhaps more powerful: a grassroots rebellion.

Trump National Parks Pass Sticker Movement Threatens Park Access With New NPS Policy

What began as individual acts of protest—park visitors discreetly placing wildlife stickers over Trump's image—has evolved into a coordinated campaign. Jenny McCarty, a longtime park volunteer and graphic designer, began creating custom stickers deliberately sized to fit precisely over the presidential portrait. Yet McCarty was operating not from spite but from principle.

'The Interior's new guidance only shows they continue to disregard how strongly people feel about keeping politics out of national parks,' she explained.​

The sticker campaign is raising money for conservation. McCarty pledged to donate 100 per cent of proceeds to environmental nonprofits.

'We made our first donation of $16,000 in December,' she announced. 'The power of community is incredible.'

Across social media, photographs circulated showing passes with yellow smiley faces obscuring Trump's image, wildlife stickers covering the portrait, or the entire card blacked out with marker.​

The question was never whether the stickers violated policy—the pass had always stipulated that altered passes could be voided. But the breadth of the prohibition, and the timing of its clarification, suggests something more intentional.

This week, in an internal email obtained by SFGATE and revealed to staff, the National Park Service updated its policy to explicitly include stickers or markings on the front of the card as grounds for voiding. The change means park rangers now have wide discretionary authority to reject any pass that has been 'defaced or altered', regardless of whether the underlying image remains visible.​

In a statement to NPR, the Interior Department claimed there was no new policy—altered passes have always been invalid, the agency stated, as printed on the card itself. The recent guidance was merely meant to 'clarify that rule and help staff deal with confusion from visitors.'

Yet the timing proved impossible to ignore. The sticker movement had only recently gained social media traction when the clarification was issued.​

The discretionary nature of enforcement means that a park ranger can now reject a pass simply because a sticker left residue, even if the image underneath remains perfectly intact and legible. This gives the government extraordinary power to punish expressions of dissent, albeit subtle ones, at America's most treasured natural spaces.​

A Reflection On Public Space And Presidential Branding

Erin Quinn Gery, a long-time annual pass holder, articulated the philosophical objection many visitors feel. She described the image as 'a mug shot slapped onto natural beauty'. She drew an uncomfortable parallel: 'It's akin to throwing yourself a parade or putting yourself on currency. Let someone else tell you you're great—or worth celebrating and commemorating.'

When asked if she planned to remove her protest sticker, Gery replied: 'I'll take the sticker off my pass after Trump takes his name off the Kennedy Center.'​

Not everyone sees a problem. Vince Vanata, the GOP chairman of Park County, Wyoming, told the Cowboy State Daily that critics should 'suck it up', describing the pass as a fitting tribute to America's 250th birthday in July 2026. '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,' he said.​

Yet that defence actually proves the critics' point. The pass has never been a vehicle for commemorating sitting presidents. It has always been about the land itself—the democratic principle that America's natural treasures belong to the people, not to political figures. That this must now be contested through stickers and litigation suggests something fundamental has shifted in how the government views public spaces.

As the lawsuits progress through the courts and park rangers face the uncomfortable task of determining whose passes to reject at gate entrances, one thing is clear: America's most iconic symbol of public land access has become a battleground for competing visions of what public property means and whose faces belong in those shared spaces.