Trump donation could pay for Civil War battlefield repair projects

National Park Service officials have considered using President Trump’s donation to the agency to pay for one of four battlefield repair projects. 

According to documents posted on the Interior Department’s open records site on Tuesday, NPS officials went back and forth in early April on how to appropriate Trump’s donation of $78,333.32, his first three months of salary as president. 

Trump announced the donation on April 3, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke accepted it, saying it would go toward construction work at battlefield sites operated by the Park Service. 

Officials found four battlefield preservation projects at NPS battlefields or military parks “in the ballpark of $100k,” according to internal emails.

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Two are located at the Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi and the Kings Mountain National Military Park in South Carolina. 

Officials also identified potential repair work at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park on the border of Georgia and Tennessee. Virginia Johnson, an Interior official serving as special assistant to the secretary, instructed employees to find a project to fund there, according to the emails.

Two days after Trump made his donation, another Interior employee laid out two specific projects the donation could support: one to repair a museum on the site, and a $78,000 effort to repair 86 feet of a trail there. 

NPS has not landed on which project to fund, USA Today reports.

Trump pledged during his presidential campaign not to take the $400,000 annual presidential salary if elected. 

Trump critics called the NPS donation a publicity stunt, noting that his 2018 budget blueprint proposes cutting the Interior Department’s budget by $1.5 billion, or 12 percent.