In February 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration fired a thousand staffers of the National Park Service as part of its efforts to trim the federal workforce. The cuts, which Trump’s cost-cutting chief Elon Musk oversaw, included new employees of the NPS across the country, who were on their probationary periods.

In California’s Yosemite National Park, almost a dozen staffers received termination notices on Feb. 14, 2025. Then, in late February, photographs spread widely claiming to show a protest from within the park. An image of an upside-down U.S. flag hanging off the side of the famous El Capitan peak in Yosemite, for instance, spread across Reddit and Instagram.

One post stated, “Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.”

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