Ranger fired for hanging transgender flag in Yosemite and park visitors may face prosecution [View all]

Source: AP

By MATTHEW BROWN and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
Updated 11:03 PM CDT, August 19, 2025

A Yosemite National Park ranger was fired after hanging a pride flag from El Capitan while some park visitors could face prosecution under protest restrictions that have been tightened under President Donald Trump.

Shannon “SJ” Joslin, a ranger and biologist who studies bats, said they hung a 66-foot wide transgender pride flag on the famous climbing wall that looms over the California park’s main thoroughfare for about two hours on May 20 before taking it down voluntarily. A termination letter they received last week accused Joslin of “failing to demonstrate acceptable conduct” in their capacity as a biologist and cited the May incident.

“I was really hurting because there were a lot of policies coming from the current administration that target trans people, and I’m nonbinary,” Joslin, 35, told The Associated Press, adding that hanging the flag was their way of saying, “We’re all safe in national parks.”

Joslin said their firing sends the opposite message: “If you’re a federal worker and you have any kind of identity that doesn’t agree with this current administration, then you must be silent, or you will be eliminated.”



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/yosemite-ranger-fired-demonstrations-pride-flag-2cf7e3d5af7f99857b968342634a6d68