Democrats flipped House seats in the midterm elections, but we must keep fighting to protect our public lands.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is home to 31 species of cacti and is the only place in the U.S where organ pipe cacti grow in the wild (via NPS.gov). The national monument is on the U.S.–Mexico border, and the Trump administration is currently building a second border wall (on the U.S. side of the first wall) through it. The border wall construction is bulldozing protected public lands and sacred Native American sites including burial sites.
As Ryan Deveraux wrote in ProPublica, “Tribal Leaders Warned Border Wall Construction Would Disturb Native American Remains. They Were Right,” on November 2, Congress passed the Real ID Act after 9/11 which allows the Department of Homeland Security to waive any law that might slow border wall construction. DHS has invoked this power a total of 66 times, and 60 of them were under Trump’s two administrations.
DHS is also using the Real ID Act to bulldoze Big Bend National Park for a border wall in Texas. In September, a federal judge heard protestors and ordered a temporary halt to the construction in Big Bend, but the construction has already resumed since then. Our representatives are listening, and we need to continue making our voices heard.
Organ Pipe National Monument image via NPS.gov
There is much to celebrate following the blue wave in the 2026 midterms. We will rebuild and regrow our public lands. Some words of hope from Tiernan Sittenfeld for National Parks Conservation Association, “New Opportunities for Our Parks;”
“[…] this is the biggest change in America’s congressional representation in modern history. Every new seat represents a fresh opportunity to elevate our public lands and inspire the next wave of champions that our national parks so desperately need.”
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