(July 2, 2026) – As the song goes, “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.”
That old saw applies to the gala goings-on that kicked off this week and continue throughout the summer at the amazing new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, N.D. The festivities include a visit from the president, an exclusive VIP reception, a multifaceted public opening, a lecture featuring five North Dakota governors, interpretive tours and more.
It really is a big deal for North Dakota and, for that matter, the nation. The TR library is truly unique and has been marvelously planned, funded and constructed. It sets on a bluff overlooking a beautiful Badlands landscape that TR himself once viewed from horseback. In design, architecture and location, the library is a world-class accomplishment.
That being said, there is a disconnect — obvious to any thinking person — between the deeply American conservation and stewardship values Theodore Roosevelt championed and the rapacious policies and wrong-headed neo-mercantilism of the Donald Trump administration. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who was a two-term governor of North Dakota, is complicit in the Trump disconnect.
Indeed, it is more than merely a disconnect. As an all-in member of Trump’s boot-licking Cabinet, Burgum has shed whatever environmental sensibilities he once had in order to serve his tone-deaf master. The priorities of the Burgum/Trump Interior Department would be anathema to Teddy Roosevelt.
Not only has Interior cut thousands of jobs in the National Park Service, the Forest Service (including wildfire fighting capacity) and other agencies, it also has failed to address billions of dollars of deferred maintenance in the parks. The shortfall in North Dakota, as reported by the North Dakota Monitor, includes about $75 million of backlogged work in the TR National Park, the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site and Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site.
Meanwhile, Interior’s resources have been diverted to the president’s ego-stroking projects in the nation’s capital, among them an $16.4 million (and counting) Reflecting Pool fiasco that is both a joke and an embarrassment. In typical fashion, the president dispatched park police to arrest “vandals” whom he says caused the failure of his pool rehab project. But the debacle was his no-bid incompetent attempt to fix a problem of his own making. And there is no evidence of vandalism.
Consider three of Secretary Burgum’s signature stunts:
- He has defended turning the national parks into tattletale venues where visitors are urged to report people who might say something the Trump gang determines is un-American. Is the new assignment for park rangers to be the speech police? Is there a Trumpist manual of “offensive” speech? If so, who wrote it?
- The secretary seems determined to sell off the nation’s natural resources. When criticized about that initiative, he cranked up to full condescension mode and suggested critics don’t understand the economics of the nation’s public lands. He is hubristically patient with us rubes who apparently “don’t know nothin’” about the value of public lands.
- Burgum says only 5% of public lands under Interior’s purview qualify as “special places.” Does that mean he’s eyeing the other 95% for profit-making business deals? Does it mean North Dakota’s vast wildlife refuges, protected prairie wetlands and federal historic sites are up for grabs to the highest bidders?
The contrasts are painfully clear: Roosevelt the trust-buster, Trump the grifter. Roosevelt the patriot, Trump the felon. TR the conservationist, Burgum the salesman. TR a visionary who expanded and enhanced the parks and public lands, Burgum a corporate exploiter who is neglecting the parks and is eager to sell off Americans’ birthright.
“A hot time in old Medora tonight?” Sure, there is much to celebrate about the TR library and all that it represents for North Dakota’s history and Roosevelt’s life-changing time in Dakota Territory. It is a magnificent tribute to one of our greatest presidents.
But this much is sure: Roosevelt’s legacy on conservation is honorable. The record being compiled by Trump and Burgum is not. It is easy to imagine that if TR had been in Medora when Burgum and Trump arrived, he’d have rounded up his Rough Riders and run the president and the secretary out of town. That would really qualify as “a hot time in the old town….”
Jack Zaleski previously served as Editor of the Devils Lake Daily Journal for 20 years. He is now a columnist at the North Dakota Monitor. To view his original column online, visit https://tinyurl.com/34p6s8uz. North Dakota Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: [email protected].