The Trump administration has terminated all six board members of the federal agency that oversees the Presidio, a beloved San Francisco national park that sits at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The board members, all of whom were appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., were fired on Wednesday, and new members have not been installed, Lisa Petrie, a spokeswoman for the agency, the Presidio Trust, said in an email on Saturday.
“We have a long history of wonderful leaders serving the Presidio, and we look forward to welcoming and working with the new members,” Ms. Petrie said.
In February 2025, President Trump issued an executive order calling the Presidio Trust an “unnecessary governmental entity” that should be “dramatically” shrunk. That order also targeted three other agencies — the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace — that the administration has already taken steps to dismantle.
The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries about the firings and its plans to appoint new board members.
The move was part of a push by the administration to reshape the federal bureaucracy that has also included firings of government workers and efforts to take control of nominally independent institutions. Those efforts have been slowed down by lawsuits.
Last year, a federal judge blocked the president’s takeover of the Inter-American Foundation, an independent agency created by Congress in 1969 to fund development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Last month, a federal court blocked the administration’s attempt to dismantle the U.S. African Development Foundation, created in 1980 to provide grants to community groups and small enterprises that help marginalized groups in Africa. A lawsuit over the administration’s efforts to upend the U.S. Institute of Peace, established in 1984 to prevent deadly conflict abroad, is working its way through the courts.
The Presidio, a 1,500-acre former military base, includes hiking trails, museums, campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, housing and an 18-hole golf course. Some 9.5 million people visit the site annually, according to a 2025 Presidio report, making it one of the country’s most visited national parks.
The trust is led by a board of directors, six of them appointed by the president. A seventh board member is chosen by the U.S. secretary of the interior, but that seat has been vacant for years.
The six board members who were fired are Mark W. Buell, Charles M. Collins, Lenore Eccles, Patsy Ishiyama, Bonnie LePard and Nicola Miner. The terms of three members were set to expire in May 2027, while those of the other three expired in May last year.
Mr. Buell said he received a “curt email” from the White House Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday indicating he was terminated effective immediately. He said he had been expecting his termination months earlier and was hopeful the president would appoint new members soon.
He called the trust “the very best example” of how a military base could be converted to result in “a huge economic and cultural success.”
The Presidio employs a staff of ecologists, building stewards, utility workers, tech professionals and others. The National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit group, also help to oversee the park.
The Presidio Trust was created through a 1996 law that charged the trust with rehabilitating and leasing the Army buildings that had been shuttered by the Department of Defense after the end of the Cold War.
Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, played a central role in the creation of the trust, and the park is in her district. She told The San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the terminations, that she was “disappointed” with the firings and said that the Presidio would “continue to be protected by the strength of the legislation which created it.”
The trust has not received a congressional appropriation since 2013 and is funded through rent from its businesses and residents.
In a statement on social media, State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, described the Presidio as a “success story” and called Mr. Trump “the Destroyer President.”
“He tears down institutions that make the world better,” the statement read, listing off Medicaid, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, United States Agency for International Development and the National Institutes of Health, “and replaces them with nothing since he’s incapable of building.”
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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