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Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has placed a $1 spending limit on most government-issued credit cards. The limit went into effect in February and is already affecting the management of national public lands. According to reporting by Wired, National Park Service employees have so far canceled roughly 75 trips to oversee crucial maintenance work.
“Unless I want to pay for it myself, I can’t go," said one NPS employee who was planning to go on a trip to oversee road maintenance at a national monument. “Today, instead of focusing on other work, I’m focused on three different contingencies on how to handle this. Do I go? Do I call my engineering team and tell them to reschedule? And if so, when? The project is on an indefinite hold.”
Travel is not the only thing the credit limit is affecting. “We went out and bought cases and cases of toilet paper the night before [the limit went into effect],” an NPS Pacific West Region employee told Wired. The employee said there are currently only four credit cards with spending limits above $1 available for the region, which manages federal land in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada, as well as parks in Arizona, Montana, Guam, and American Samoa. Some national parks also pay for services like internet and cell phone service with credit cards, according to Wired, leaving staff wondering if their work devices could soon be cut off.
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Gutting NOAA puts Americans in danger... Trump and DOGE aren’t ‘trimming the fat,’ they are hobbling the services that all of us rely on every day to stay safe, to do business, and to live our lives peacefully.”
