As predictable as a taco deal on Tuesday, President Donald Trump did as we all expected and terminated the board of directors for the Presidio Trust. All six members, who happened to have been appointed by President Joseph Biden, were excused effective immediately last week; three of them had terms that already expired, but the other three were not set to term out until 2027, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. No new appointees were announced to replace any of the seats on the seven-person board. This puts the independent federal agency that manages the national park site in limbo.
If you’re doing the math, there’s a missing seventh board member in this fiasco. Perhaps it’s a clue for what’s in store. The president of the United States appoints only six seats, leaving the seventh for the secretary of the interior to fill. However, Secretary Doug Burgum has yet to name anyone to the role, even after visiting the urban park last year and singing the praises of the private-public management partnerships.
The 1,500-acre recreation hub is one of the country’s greatest public parks. It deserves better than neglect from its federal leaders, who now stand to answer for any service disruptions impacting the more than 9 million people who visit each year.
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The crowd applauds during a set by Fogo Na Roupa on opening day of San Francisco’s Presidio Tunnel Tops, July 17, 2022.
Kevin Kelleher/Special to SFGATE
Pedestrians pass over the northbound tunnel of San Francisco’s Presidio Tunnel Tops on opening day of the 14-acre public green space, July 17, 2022.
Kevin Kelleher/Special to SFGATE
The president’s playbook is familiar; after his hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center board, its members voted to shut it down for two years. No one can outright close the Presidio, however. It was established through the Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act of 1996 and doesn’t rely on federal funding to operate. The Presidio Trust will still operate without the board, since its members serve in an advisory capacity, but will nevertheless lack leadership — especially with its CEO stepping down this year and the ongoing search for a replacement.
The president started singling out the Presidio soon after his second term began, and it’s not hard to imagine his motivation. Not only is it one of San Francisco’s most celebrated spaces, with its thriving housing, recreation, and cultural and commercial endeavors, but it’s a gift Nancy Pelosi shepherded for her constituents. The former speaker of the House was instrumental in turning the decrepit military base into a recreational haven in the 1990s, and she continuously champions it.
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The president, in turn, repeatedly tries to punish Pelosi through the Presidio. In 2023, she earmarked $200 million in funding provided in the Inflation Reduction Act for the Presidio. Even though the national park site supports itself, mostly through property leases, the funding addressed deferred maintenance. After Trump returned to office, congressional Republicans tried to rescind it, but their effort was futile. The federal investment was contracted and allocated, and it has supported infrastructure projects in the park for the past two years.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at the official ribbon cutting of Presidio Tunnel Tops in in San Francisco on July 16, 2022.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
During his first administration, Trump anointed multiple spots on the Presidio Trust board, but none were more politically motivated than the ill-fated tenure of Dr. Michael Weiner. Trump waited for Pelosi’s 80th birthday in March 2020 to announce the appointee: the botanist and host of the ultra-conservative “Savage Nation” talk radio show. Otherwise known as Michael Savage, Weiner infamously referred to Pelosi as “Mussolini in a skirt.” Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown called it a “backhanded presidential present for the San Francisco Democrat,” in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Weiner’s stint on the Presidio Trust board is mostly remembered as fraught and fruitless. Mother Jones dug through a trove of his emails to reveal that he didn’t understand how the Presidio worked (it’s an entirely self-sustaining business). Weiner also complained bitterly about minor to-dos, like a short required ethics chat with a staff attorney and a “standard financial disclosure form.” His time on the board barely left a dent, as the Biden administration asked for his resignation in May the following year.
Weiner pedaled his unceremonious termination into multiple guest spots and column inches in right-wing outlets. On his website, he characterized his ousting from the Presidio Trust board as a “communist power play” from the Biden administration.
I asked Weiner on Sunday in an email if he cared to comment on the latest Presidio Trust board termination. He responded: “We should remember that Biden was the first President in history to have fired all of Trump’s appointees on the Trust! He set the precedent.”
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However, Weiner is playing loose with the facts, since only he and retired Adm. Thomas Fargo were dismissed early from the board, and two other Trump appointees termed out in 2021. The board was also swiftly replaced with new members, avoiding a dearth in leadership like we see now.
Mark W. Buell, who was terminated from his position on the Presidio Trust board last week, speaks at an opening ceremony of the Outpost Meadow Picnic Area in San Francisco on July 16, 2025.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Something else to pay close attention to is the so-called “Freedom Cities” initiative that Trump has called for in the past, and whether any new directors begin to pursue it. This was first proposed for the Presidio by urban policy writers who were pandering to Trump in the weeks leading up to his second inauguration.
Like reopening Alcatraz as a prison, the “Freedom Cities” proposal is an unserious but lingering threat since the Presidio is also part of the national park system, leaving it somewhat vulnerable to whoever is in the White House. It calls for adding 120,000 residents to the Presidio through “Paris-level density and six-story apartment buildings.” It’s also an outrageous interpretation of the Presidio Trust Management Plan, which allows the trust to consider removing and replacing certain non-historic buildings with new housing — something the former Biden-appointed board was already developing before its members were fired.
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Visitors enjoy a meadow at Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco on July 16, 2022.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The plan is called the Letterman Residential Project, and it would add 196 apartments at a site once occupied by the U.S. Army’s closed Letterman General Hospital. Renderings for the proposed project show two-story, walk-up buildings with burgundy roofs to match the nearby historic buildings. There’s no telling how a new board, whenever appointed, could alter or distort this vision.
The “Freedom Cities” initiative will likely fizzle. But there are savvier vultures circling the Presidio right now, eager to take advantage of Trump’s mismanagement and hammer out developments that could upend the public park.
I’m not alone in these concerns. Last year, Lucia Bogatay, president of the Presidio Historical Association, told the San Francisco Examiner that even after its decades as a national park site, developers are still “salivating” to get a hold of the precious real estate that abuts the Golden Gate Bridge.
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I don’t know who exactly is drooling over the possibility of development right now, but I assume they were ecstatic this week to read that the Presidio Trust board had finally turned over — and that there may be fewer serious adults on the board to manage it.
The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.