“A government of laws, not of men.” John Adams’s vision for the United States seems kind of quaint in these days when “mostly peaceful” demonstrations come with arson, body counts, and multi-million-dollar property damage. Our laws are enforced selectively — especially, it seems, when it’s the Department of the Interior (DOI) and its National Park Service (NPS) doing the enforcing.

When most Americans hear the words Department of the Interior, they think of the people in charge of managing our national parks and lands. While that is part of what DOI does, an equally important aspect of the mission of the department is preserving our cultural heritage through the NPS and the U.S. Park Police (USPP).

Unfortunately, under the current Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, NPS has failed in both of these missions, most spectacularly the latter. These failures by the agency drove Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) to file a complaint with the DOI inspector general’s office regarding multiple incidents of DOI’s dereliction of duty in protecting our nation’s cultural heritage, not to mention the safety of law enforcement and civilians, in the Washington, D.C. area.

Since the Biden-Harris administration took the reins of power in 2021, DOI has done little to nothing to address the vandalism and even destruction of several key American cultural touchstones by unruly special interest-driven protesters, even though permits issued by NPS have come with restrictions and obligations on the part of the protesters. In tandem with this inaction by the department, NPS also failed to provide USPP with needed resources to maintain law and order within our national parks.

The examples stand out like a neon light: DOI’s own headquarters was invaded by climate protesters in October 2021 as part of a week of larger protests taking place around D.C. Records obtained by PPT revealed that DOI had at least six days prior knowledge of the protesters’ intent for disruptive “civil disobedience,” yet still understaffed and under equipped security at their officers. The violent invasion of the DOI headquarters saw Native American activists take over the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices and post about it, demanding that President Joe Biden dissolve the agency and cede 110 million acres of American land to various tribes.

The most concerning part is that one of the groups that helped plan the protest, the Greater Chaco Coalition, includes the Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA) — of which Secretary Haaland’s daughter, Somah Haaland, is an employee. PPT previously brought to light Secretary Haaland’s apparent favoritism of PAA in her role at DOI, with such favoritism leading activist groups to see the secretary as one of their own.

Additionally, American monuments on our public lands have been vandalized by protesters spewing pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans. This June saw thousands descend upon Washington, D.C., and surround the White House to intimidate President Biden over his support of Israel. Protesters attacked USPP officers and vandalized statues of Revolutionary War heroes including Marquis de Lafayette in Lafayette Square, all while proclaiming their hatred of the U.S. and Israel. Some of these protesters even wore the same green headbands worn by Hamas terrorists. 

Photos showed the graffiti scrawled on our monuments. Anti-Semitic slogans of “Zionism kills,” “f–k Israel, stand with Hamas,” and more defaced the statues honoring our nation’s heroes. When NPS officers attempted to perform their duties and arrest a protester who had begun to climb one of the statues, they were attacked by other protesters.

Then, a month later, the ANSWER Coalition — the same group responsible for the violent June protests — helped to organize another protest that descended into violence and vandalism, this time at Columbus Plaza outside Union Station.

DOI was derelict in its duties that day. First, both NPS and the department appear to have ignored USPP requests for additional manpower and resources. Only 29 officers were assigned to a protest expected to bring in over 5,000 people by a group that conducted a violent demonstration just a month prior. Second, the ANSWER Coalition was not forthright with information in its permit application, but DOI granted it anyway. The ANSWER Coalition then violated the department’s requirements. 

The protesters illegally destroyed federal property when they burned the American flag flying at the plaza; defaced the statue of Christopher Columbus and the Freedom Bell with terrorist slogans including “Hamas is coming,” “welcome to the Intifada,” and more; and attempted to attack an attorney who tried to save the flag. The 29 officers who tried to intervene were attacked and overwhelmed by the thousands of protesters who knocked them to the concrete. And to put salt in the wound, NPS revoked the ANSWER Coalition’s permit at 3:37 p.m. — less than a half hour before the permit’s expiration time of 4 p.m.

Adams’s vision for “a government of laws, not of men” has been an aspirational and foundational goal for the United States, but that vision now seems to be eroding. Allowing certain protestors to continually, and without consequence, commit violence to people and the property NPS and DOI are charged with protecting, violates not only that vision and the law, but simply encourages more violence and destruction in the future. 

Whether the refusal of Secretary Haaland’s Interior to stand up to those who commit these acts is due to a lack of competence or will or to ideological sympathy with the protestors — in an era where the public’s trust is treated as a political currency instead of as the foundation of our government, allowing special interests to run roughshod over our shared culture — is abhorrent and demands investigation.

Michael Chamberlain is the director of Protect the Public’s Trust.