There’s never been any doubt. America is beautiful.

Beautiful, for spacious skies. “For amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plane…”

I learned the song, as a kid. But I was never sure what they meant by “the fruited plane”. Maybe an airplane carrying oranges from Florida?

I later found out it was, “the fruited plain”. I’m still not entire sure what that means.

But America has never been quite as beautiful as the image featured on the new 2026 National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass.

I sort of wish they were smiling, but I understand Washington had ill-fitting wooden false teeth and didn’t smile much. So no complaint from me. I get it: being President is a serious business. And that’s beautiful.

But there’s still a group of people complaining about this new Parks Pass.

Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that alleges the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture violated the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which requires department officials to feature an image on the annual pass chosen from a public photo contest.

We have to admit, the image that currently appears on the 2026 Parks Pass doesn’t look like it was chosen from a public photo contest, unless you consider the mug shot of then-former-President Trump taken in August 2023 at the Fulton County Jail to be part of a public photo contest.

The 16-page complaint from the Center for Biological Diversity claims that the Trump administration has replaced a contest-winning photo of Montana’s Glacier National Park on the annual pass — commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States — with a graphic featuring Washington and Trump.