{"id":465542,"date":"2026-02-13T04:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465542\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T04:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:31:10","slug":"trump-nominates-hospitality-executive-to-lead-national-park-service-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465542\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump nominates hospitality executive to lead National Park Service | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has nominated the hospitality executive Scott Socha \u2013 whose company once sued to claim trademark rights<\/a> to the name \u201cYosemite National Park\u201d \u2013 to lead the National Park Service.<\/p>\n

The nomination of an outsider with business ties to the agency he\u2019d oversee comes at a pivotal moment for the service, which lost a quarter<\/a> of its staff under the so-called \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d civil sector purge and which has been the subject of the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive efforts to erase mention of historical events<\/a> from its sites that portray Americans in an unfavorable light, such as regarding slavery.<\/p>\n

US national parks have historically been overseen by people with experience in conservation and land stewardship, with nominees over the past three decades typically emerging from within the agency ranks.<\/p>\n

Socha, by contrast, spent the last 27 years working at Buffalo-based Delaware North, a food and hotel management company that provides hospitality services in seven national parks and runs lodging operations in five national park gateway communities, according to the company\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Socha has overseen the development of enterprises in and near national parks since 2017. His nomination requires Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe private park concessionaire executive [Scott] Socha has zero experience in public service or conservation,\u201d Jayson O\u2019Neill, spokesperson for Save our Parks, wrote in a statement. \u201cInstead, he\u2019s made a career out of extracting maximum profit from our national parks, not protecting them, making it abundantly clear he\u2019ll be doing the bidding of special interests and corporate interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delaware North is well-known in conservationist circles for a trademark lawsuit involving Yosemite national park. After the company lost a $2bn bid to renew its contract to operate Yosemite\u2019s hotels and restaurants to competitor Aramark in 2016, Delaware North sued, arguing that the company held intellectual property rights to various names used at the park worth more than $50m \u2013 including the terms \u201cYosemite National Park\u201d, \u201cAhwahnee Hotel\u201d and \u201cCurry Village\u201d.<\/p>\n

The two landmarks were briefly renamed, until the lawsuit was settled in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenators must approach this nomination with the utmost skepticism given Scott Socha\u2019s history and the current state of our national parks,\u201d Aaron Weiss, the deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities, wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur public lands belong to all Americans, not the concessionaires who try to trademark and cash in on the names of our nation\u2019s crown jewels.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has nominated the hospitality executive Scott Socha \u2013 whose company once sued to claim trademark rights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-465542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}