Americans exasperated by the Trump family’s ceaseless trashing of culture and nature can look toward a small country on the Mediterranean for inspiring resistance. As we await with dread the president’s next round of gilded vandalism in our capital, the people of Albania are pouring into the streets of their capital to stop Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump from degrading a gorgeous and vital coastal refuge into yet another garish upper-crust resort.
Over the past week the streets of Tirana have seen throngs of protesters, denouncing the crooked couple, along with inflatable pink flamingos that symbolize the wildlife habitat endangered by their multibillion-dollar profiteering project. The “flamingo revolution” is expected to spread across the nation in coming days as revelations about the real-estate scheme intensified public outrage.
Ever the clueless heiress, Ivanka inflamed the situation still when she told a podcast host when how she and Kushner “discovered” Sazan -- an undeveloped island along the Albanian coastline – while swimming off a friend’s yacht. Describing herself as “captivated” by its pristine beauty, she said the ultra-luxury development she and her husband envision as “the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live, and trying to really build something that’s a tangible manifestation of that.”
To the angry Albanians, however, the grasping and pretentious couple represent the opposite of how they want to live and are instead a “tangible manifestation” of oligarchy’s threat to the natural environment, economic equity and democracy.
The coastal region that Kushner proposes to transform into a “very high-end luxury product” where he would “want to be at with my family and with my friends” is a place of exceptional biodiversity and ancient cultural heritage. It would ravage not only Sazan, Albania’s only island, but the wetlands and habitats in a surrounding marine national park and along the adjoining coast, to make way for hotels, apartment complexes, and a marina.
According to BirdLife International, those waters now shelter the Mediterranean monk seal and hundreds of bird species, including endangered flamingos and pelicans.
The project sponsor is Kushner’s Affinity Partners, financed with dubious investments from his royal cronies in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which has proceeded in the usual high-handed Trump style. “
“From start to finish there has been a total lack of transparency,” said Aleksandr Trajce, executive director of the country’s leading conservation group, the Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA). As he told The Guardian, “We have seen no public consultation or public documentation regarding permits.”
Indeed, the Albanian government has plainly sped the project’s approvals ever since the reelection of Donald Trump in late 2024, granting it “strategic investor status.” Unsurprisingly, the involvement of Kushner and Trump in this bulldozing scheme has provoked suspicion, which led Albania’s independent public prosecutor to announce a probe of legislative changes enabling the swift approvals.
The surging revolt against the Trump-Kushner depredations have forced the Albanian government, led by longtime Prime Minister Edi Rama, to seek talks with the protesters while declaring his iron determination to see the project built. He may well fear that his ambitions to bring his country into the European Union will be jeopardized by its shadows of environmental pillage and possible corruption. As for the flamingo revolutionaries, they may well be encouraged by the fate of a Trump deal slated for neighboring Serbia -- which fell apart last year after top government officials were indicted for abusing their authority in promoting the plan. When Affinity Partners announced the Belgrade development's abandonment in December 2025, it explained that “meaningful projects should unite rather than divide" and cited its "respect for the people of Serbia and the city of Belgrade.”
Perhaps we need a "Flamingo Revolution" on these shores too.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.
- Ivanka Trump ‘Hysteria’ Sends Albanian Leader Into Meltdown ›
- The real reason Ivanka Trump's luxury resort project in Albania is causing controversy ›
- Ivanka Trump on her private island in Albania: "For me, this is not even a business" | Celebrity news ›
- Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s Albanian resort plan sets off days of protests - The Washington Post ›
- Jared And Ivanka’s Sazan Island In Albania Faces Protests—Here’s Why ›
- Protests in Albania grow over Jared Kushner-backed luxury resort | Albania | The Guardian ›
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