The Battle over Trump’s Face on the National Parks Pass Takes a Weird Turn

A few days before Christmas, an artist named Jenny McCarty invited a handful of friends to her home in Boulder, Colorado, for an unorthodox holiday party.

People stationed themselves around the dining room table in an assembly line. One by one, they packed McCarty’s National Parks-inspired protest stickers into packages, marked the parcels with correct addresses and postage, and then placed them in a box marked READY TO SHIP.

McCarty, 34, buzzed around the room handing out quesadillas fresh from the oven, and filling people’s cups with hot tea.

“People wore Santa hats—we felt like helper elves mailing off Christmas presents,” McCarty told Outside. “Some people stayed for four hours or so. Others stayed all day.”

When the party was over, the friends had mailed off 1,000 stickers.

I wrote about McCarty back in December, and how her stickers have become an act of civil disobedience for those who disagree with the Trump Administration’s staffing and budget cuts to the U.S. National Park Service. 

Back in November, the Department of the Interior (DOI) released the designs for the 2026 America the Beautiful National Parks Pass—the plastic card that gains entry to all 433 sites managed by the NPS. One of the new designs featured the visage of George Washington alongside that of Donald Trump. A nonprofit called the Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for the protection of endangered species, has filed a lawsuit over the design, arguing that a federal law requires the pass image to be chosen via a photo competition.

Enter McCarty, a Colorado artist who paints pictures of—among other things—national park landscapes. She created stickers from her art that can be placed over the photo of Trump and Washington, transforming the pass from an item of political inspiration to one inspired by nature.

In the month or so since McCarty launched the idea, she has sold close to 7,000 stickers.

McCarty is donating the earnings from sticker sales to nonprofit groups that work with the NPS. She told Outside she recently sent a check for $16,000 to the National Parks Conservation Association, the nonprofit that advocates for protecting the parks.

“I’ve never seen that type of business for my other artistic products,” McCarty said. “It’s cool. I’ve heard other artists are selling similar stickers—it’s fun to see people iterating and improving on the idea.”

McCarty’s stickers generated a glut of national media attention, but also major pushback from the governmental agencies overseeing the passes. On January 5, SFGATE reported that the DOI quietly distributed an internal memo about stickers placed on America the Beautiful Passes. According to the news outlet, the memo said that NPS can void a person’s pass if it has a sticker on it, and that placing a sticker on the pass constitutes a form of alteration.

“Altering a pass can cover up important information and required security features necessary to prevent fraud,” the memo said.

NPS employees can use their own discretion on whether to void a person’s pass if, instead of Trump’s visage, it boasts a hand-drawn image of a grizzly bear, or a cute picture of a pika.

When I asked McCarty how she felt knowing that her artistic work had inspired potential policy change within the U.S. government, she laughed. She said she wished the DOI would share any new policies with the public.

“If they’re making an official rule about stickers on passes, it would be great if the public could know,” she said. “If there are rules that the public needs to abide by, then they should make them public. By keeping it behind closed doors, they are just making it harder on NPS rangers.”

A Department of Interior spokesperson told Outside that altering a pass will result in it being voided—a longstanding policy.

“The most recent interim update for the 2026 pass year did not change that policy,” the spokesperson said. “It provided additional clarification to help avoid confusion and support visitor interactions due to the volume of questions received from staff and visitors.”

McCarty said the reported DOI rules won’t deter her efforts. On her social media page, she recorded a video showing how sticker buyers can sidestep the policy. They can place the sticker on the pass partially, or put the pass in a clear plastic credit card sleeve and place the sticker on the sleeve.

“If a ranger wants to see if your pass has been altered, you can just take it out of the sleeve,” she said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

She’s still offering the stickers through her business website, Sage Leaf Studios. And she’s still holding packing parties every few weeks. Friends and even random people who have messaged her on Instagram now sit around her dining room table, stuff packages, and share anecdotes from their recent trips to NPS sites.

“We’re planning two more in January,” she said.