‘Hell, absolute chaos’: PA National Park Service employees fired by Trump administration

Less than one month ago, Jessica Fair was working at her dream job as the historical architect at Valley Forge National Historical Park and Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.

Now, Fair is unemployed and unsure what’s in store for her. 

Fair was one of about 1,000 National Park Service employees whom the Trump administration fired on Valentine’s Day, leaving the remaining employees of one of the country’s most beloved public agencies to grapple with caring for more than 85 million acres of parkland. Former Pennsylvania employees of the Park Service described the process as hellish and chaotic.

“There was an air of anxiety in the Park Service for the last six weeks, but, maybe naively, we thought we were safe,” said Fair, who lives in Malvern with her husband and three children under the age of 8. 

The hope that she’d be able to keep her job was rooted in the fact that, since September of last year, Fair had overseen the restoration and preservation of all the historic buildings at Valley Forge, which played a pivotal role in the Continental Army’s defeat of the British in the Revolutionary War, and Hopewell Furnace, which showcases what the American iron industry was like from the 1770s to the 1880s. Notably, Fair was in charge of the house that served as George Washington’s headquarters during the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778.

This historic preservation work, she said, seemed especially important in the lead-up to 2026 events marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Then, however, came Feb. 14. That morning, Fair received a text message from a friend with a link to a Washington Post article that reported the Trump administration planned to fire 1,000 probationary employees of the National Park Service. By the end of the day, Fair’s supervisor let her know that she would be terminated. In total, Valley Forge lost four employees and Hopewell Furnace lost one.

In the weeks following, Fair has repeatedly spoken about the firings and was U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s guest at President Donald Trump’s March 4 speech before a joint session of Congress. 

She’s also had to think about her future. Asked if she would go back to the National Park Service should her job be restored, as has happened with some other NPS positions since the Feb. 14 mass firing, Fair said, “Under this administration, I’m not sure I would return. What I plan to do next I’m really not sure. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next for me.”

‘The complete dismantling of the National Park Service’

The mass firing of National Park employees, which reportedly includes staff at each of Pennsylvania’s 19 sites overseen by the National Park Service, comes at a time when the Trump administration has been purging thousands of people from federal positions across the country in agencies that include the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. Among those fired Feb. 14 from the Department of the Interior, which includes the National Park Service, were 400 U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees and 800 Bureau of Land Management employees. 

The Trump administration’s mass firings are illegal, according to a March 7 lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, and the National Parks Conservation Association, an independent organization that advocates for the nation’s national parks, is calling on the administration to restore the parks jobs that were cut.

Former and current employees at the national parks, historic sites and other areas overseen by the NPS described scenes of chaos following the firings, from California’s Yosemite National Park having no one to rescue people locked in bathrooms to canceled rentals at Gettysburg National Military Park and long lines throughout a national park system that drew a record high number of visitors last year.

“We are seeing the complete dismantling of the National Park Service as an agency,” said Edward Stierli, the mid-Atlantic region senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association. 

“I think for historic sites, whether it be Independence [National Historical Park] or Gettysburg or Valley Forge or even Johnstown, these are places that document and tell the story of some of the most important stories in American history,” Stierli continued. “And if you don’t have the people to do that job, the money to operate the visitor services, to make them publicly available, then what is a park anymore?”

In Pennsylvania, former NPS employees spoke of plummeting morale and a prevailing sadness and anger among park workers. Some of those fired had been living in NPS-provided housing, which they had now lost, becoming homeless, according to a fired employee. That employee worked for the NPS in Pennsylvania and requested anonymity out of fear that the Trump administration would retaliate against their remaining colleagues and them and of being unable to get their job back should that become a possibility.

Those interviewed for this story also spoke of chaos and confusion due to the actions of the Trump administration. At the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia, where three of the approximately 11 people who worked there were fired on Feb. 21, at least one unpaid volunteer was offered a buyout by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

When speaking with the Pennsylvania Independent for this story, fired National Park employees often became emotional. They had studied for and dreamed of the jobs they had held just weeks before; some had moved to Pennsylvania to take them; and now those jobs were suddenly gone. 

“It’s been hell, absolute chaos,” said Alli Pryor, a West Chester resident who was fired Feb. 14 from her job as a museum technician at Valley Forge. “Even before January, before the new administration took over, I had trouble sleeping, and I’ve been going to doctors to get that fixed, and finally was starting to settle down.” 

“If you say you love America, why are you destroying a point of pride for us?” said Pryor, who as a museum technician would care for such items as Revolutionary War-era guns and swords. “Every one of the employees who was fired is almost critically essential for not only the well-being of the parks and the visitors, but for the parks’ efficiency.”

The fired employee who requested anonymity said the administration is succeeding at achieving a goal set by Russell Vought, the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget: to traumatize federal workers.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video first shared last October and transcribed by ProPublica and Documented. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. 

“We want to put them in trauma,” Vought said.

That, former NPS workers said, is exactly what is happening. 

“It’s very clear that they’re really running on that motto. They’re definitely doing their best to traumatize the federal workforce,” said the anonymous employee, who was also fired Feb. 14. 

‘The selling off of public lands is a real threat.’

The Trump administration has made it clear that the mass firings in February are just the beginning. This week, The Hill reported that the administration is looking at reducing the NPS payroll by 30%, something that Stierli said he had expected to happen.

“We’re already crying out, Enough, and now we’re looking at a future that’s even weaker because that is the plan that the administration is putting forward,” Stierli said. “And I know this is across the entire federal government, but for people who are visiting national parks this spring and summer, they’re very much going to notice that.

“If that deep of a rift comes, then we’re not talking about what kind of operations that parks will change. We’re talking about, are some parks going to be able to open, period,” Stierli said. “Many of the historic sites, particularly in Pennsylvania, they didn’t have any staff to begin with. They were already understaffed. Some of them had 20% fewer staff than they did even maybe 10 years ago. If you have a staff of a dozen people, and you lose three people and then you lose another six or seven people, then you’re looking at, how are we even going to open the doors to the visitors?”

The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia is the country’s first urban wildlife refuge. It has for decades provided free programming about the environment, history and more to people of all ages.

Jaclyn Rhoads, the vice president of the Friends of Heinz Refuge, a nonprofit organization that works to assist in the operation of the refuge, said the firing of three of its employees has left the facility to figure out what programming it will have to cut. Rhoads said she expects further cuts will be made at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Rhoads is among those questioning whether the mass firings are an indication that the administration will sell public land to private developers or other entities.

“It’s unfortunate, but I would say nothing is impossible,” Rhoads said. “I want to say John Heinz will still be there because the people demand it, but, anymore, I feel like people should not take that for granted. The selling-off of public lands is a real threat.”

“It threatens our existence. It threatens our nation,” Rhoads continued. “We can’t lose these places. Once we lose them, they’re gone forever.”

The anonymous fired NPS employee said even if the federal government doesn’t sell national park land, national parks could be lost as a result of the Trump administration’s attacks on public lands. 

“The main thing that is occurring right now is the destabilization of American institutions, in this case, the Park Service,” they said. “That destabilization, if it continues, will result in the loss of our national parks. It will result in the government not being able to maintain them. I can’t comment on whether or not it will result in the sale of land, but any kind of privatization that does occur could have long-lasting impacts, not just on the landscape, but on public health.”