Roger Stone backs Muwekma Ohlone bid to claim Presidio control

A bid to pull the Presidio out of its federal trust would change who controls one of San Francisco’s most symbolic public spaces, from lease decisions and redevelopment plans to day-to-day park governance. The stakes sharpened after the White House removed all six Presidio Trust board members on April 8, leaving the 1,491- to 1,500-acre former military base turned park in political limbo and giving Roger Stone’s involvement an outsize national edge.

The Presidio is not just another parcel of federal land. Designated a national historic landmark in 1962, it was placed under the Presidio Trust by Congress in 1996 through the Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act, at the urging of Nancy Pelosi. The trust began operating in 1998 and has long been credited with turning the former Army post into a highly successful park and mixed-use campus. If the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s proposal were carried out, that structure would be upended. The tribe has called for dissolving the trust, restoring the Presidio to the tribe and proclaiming it an Indian reservation.

The tribe launched its #LandBack campaign in March 2025 and asked the Trump administration to return the Presidio. Tribal materials describe the site as ancestral Yelamu homeland and say the tribe has stewarded the land for more than 10,000 years. The request was tied to Trump’s February 2025 executive order, “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which targeted the Presidio Trust. At the same time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs lists the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s federal acknowledgment as denied in a 2002 final determination, underscoring the legal and political obstacles facing the tribe’s claim.

That tension is why the fight now looks like more than a symbolic gesture. Stone, a veteran Trump loyalist, brings the kind of partisan attention that can turn a land dispute into a national proxy battle. But the practical consequences would be local: a new authority could change who signs leases, who oversees redevelopment and how much direct federal control remains over a park that sits at the edge of the Marina, the Golden Gate and some of the city’s most closely watched public land. With the trust board wiped clean and replacements still pending, the question of who governs the Presidio is no longer theoretical.