Advocacy group says Scott Socha is completely unqualified to lead the National Park Service

President Donald Trump has nominated Scott Socha to lead the National Park Service. Socha is an executive with a company called Delaware North — a Buffalo, New York-based hospitality company that does work in national parks.

According to estimates, the National Park Service has lost around a quarter of its staff due to Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts. It’s also currently in the middle of a controversial effort pushed by the Trump administration to remove certain displays and exhibits at national parks — notably those referencing things like slavery, climate change or the treatment of Indigenous people.

Aaron Weiss is deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, which describes itself as a nonpartisan conservation and advocacy organization. Weiss joined The Show to talk about this nomination — which would require Senate confirmation.

The Show reached out to the White House about Socha's nomination. A spokesperson released a statement:

“Scott Socha is a phenomenal selection to serve as the next director of National Parks and is totally qualified to execute the president’s vision for our nation’s parks. Scott looks forward to implementing America First initiatives, such as increasing park access for American families, reducing permitting burdens, and raising money for conservation projects.”

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Aaron, first off, what do you think of Scott Socha being nominated to lead the National Park Service?

AARON WEISS: The first thing you have to know about Scott Socha is that he is completely unqualified for the job. The law says that the director of the National Park Service "shall have substantial experience and demonstrated competence in land management and natural or cultural resource conservation."

Scott Socha works for Delaware North. They're a hotel and restaurant company that runs hotels and snack bars in many national parks. But he has never done any land management. He's never done natural or cultural resource conservation. So simply from that perspective, he is not qualified to do this job. And that may have serious downstream effects.

BRODIE: Like what?

WEISS: It is possible, it's conceivable that there could be court challenges. If he is confirmed, then anything he signs, anything he does, could potentially be challenged in court because he is not legally able to do the job.

For an example, to look at another department, the Defense Department says you have to be out of uniform for at least seven years before you can become the Defense secretary. That's the law. And in three cases in history, starting with George C. Marshall in 1950, and again James Mattis 2017, Lloyd Austin, 2021, Congress passed a law excepting those Defense secretaries from the existing requirements.

So unless Congress, and that is to say the House and Senate, is going to pass a new law excepting Scott Socha from the requirements, there is a very real possibility that if he's concerned, you end up with a giant legal mess anytime he tries to do anything as the Park Service director.

BRODIE: Is there a chance that if he is confirmed that one of those legal challenges would come from you?

WEISS: We're not a litigation group. We're a small team that pays attention to a lot of these issues. So we are not someone who would sue.

But certainly any of the agencies, any of the tribes that are potentially affected, there are lots of potential plaintiffs out there, if it came to that.

BRODIE: OK, so let's take his background and sort of legal qualifications and set that aside for a moment. Just in terms of his background, obviously he has experience with national parks, not land and resource conservation.

I'm curious what you make of sort of his background and how that could, in theory, inform how he might run the Parks Service.

WEISS: Well, the company that he has spent the last 27 years at is called Delaware North. Before that, it was a company called Emprise. It has a history going back 100 years. They're in the concessions business. This is a company that figured out pretty early on you could get very rich by having exclusive contracts to sell peanuts and beer at sports stadiums.

And then in the '90s, they realized you could also make a lot of money having those kinds of exclusive contracts in America's national parks. That's the experience that Scott Socha brings to the table. And I would expect he would extend that to anything he tried to do as the Parks Service director.

Doug Burgum, the secretary of the Interior, has said that he sees America's public lands as a balance sheet. He doesn't see them as a resource to be protected. He doesn't see them as something to be treasured and passed down to future generations. He sees lands, including national parks, in terms of dollars and cents.

So, in terms of that privatization agenda, putting a guy from the company that sells peanuts and rents hotel rooms in our national parks in charge of the parks themselves is just another step on this privatization agenda.

BRODIE: When you look at the state of the National Park Service at the moment, what do you see?

WEISS: This is an agency that has been devastated by the last year. It started with what's now known as the Valentine's Day Massacre, when DOGE fired thousands of employees across the National Park Service and the broader Interior Department. The agency has not recovered from that. There were some Band-Aids that got put on over the summer, having folks step in, try to backfill some of the front facing jobs that were cut.

But at the end of the day, this is a woefully understaffed agency and there is no help on the horizon. There is no indication that Secretary Burgum plans to fully staff our parks ever again. Those cracks are going to begin to show. And that's where having someone who has spent an entire career in the privatization business, that's a huge concern at this moment in time.

BRODIE: Well, given sort of the financial situation at the parks, do you think there's any role for even a little more privatization in an effort to maybe preserve a particular park or an element of a park or maybe even the entire system?

WEISS: Parks will always have a need for partners, for things like restaurants or hotels. But the core functions of our national parks, the resource management, telling America's story, providing those sorts of visitor services, that has to come from the Park Service itself.

Because the moment you take that away and you create an incentive for privatization, an incentive to jack up rates for visitors, to further raise the bar that it takes to get there, America's national parks should be for everyone and for all Americans.

And the more you privatize that, the more you are taking those opportunities away from working Americans.