CNN is reporting today that Trump has rejected California’s request for disaster relief funds following the record-breaking destructive wildfires. Western Values Project’s research has found that President Trump has repeatedly cut federal funding dedicated to preventing and mitigating the spread of wildfires. 

The report shows that Trump has often rebuked experts within his administration and withheld funding for political reasons. And he’s blamed state officials in an attempt to shirk responsibility – even though most of the fires are occurring on federal lands – all while padding the pockets of logging companies.  

Critical legal cases and rulings that impact Indigenous peoples’ rights, tribal sovereignty and their lands could also take a dark turn if Trump places corporate activist Judge Amy Coney Barrett onto the nation’s top judicial court. Barrett is a professed disciple of the late Justice Scalia. The former justice sided against Tribal interests 86% of the time, according to an analysis by the Native American Rights Fund.

Today, Western Values Project Director Jayson O’Neill testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources’ virtual hearing: Interior’s Royalty Cuts: Thoughtful Policy or Industry Giveaway? The hearing focused on the public costs and lack of public benefits of the royalty cuts the Trump administration has offered oil and gas drillers operating on public lands during the coronavirus pandemic 

Today, the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources is holding a virtual hearing: Interior’s Royalty Cuts: Thoughtful Policy or Industry Giveaway? The hearing will focus on the public costs and lack of public benefits of the royalty cuts the Trump administration has offered oil and gas drillers operating on public lands during the coronavirus pandemic. Western Values Project published a detailed report on the program prior to the hearing. 

Last year, the top three Alaska Native Corporations (ANC) — two of which are either a former employer or a current client of the Sweeneys — have gross revenues in the billions. In just the past year, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation took in $3.7 billion in gross revenues, Bristol Bay Regional Corporation grossed $1.7 billion, and NANA took in $1.6 billion according to new reporting by Indian News Today. 

Many of the same ANCs that the Trump administration tried to deem eligible for tribal nation government funds received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding.  

The Bureau of Land Management has once again provided a bailout to a Big Oil corporation in deep financial trouble. Reporting in the Buffalo Bulletin, based in part on Western Values Project’s research, found that the bureau awarded US Realm Powder River a staggering 96% discount on 23 federal leases in Wyoming despite owing some $4 million in unpaid federal royalties and failing to pay local taxes for the last three years.  

President Trump officially nominated Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Since Barrett has only been a federal judge since 2017, not much is known yet about her environmental record. But from her views on corporations to women’s reproductive rights and health care, it’s fair to call her a devotee of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked in the late 1990s — far from a pro-environmental champion. 

Late last week, a federal judge in Montana clearly rebuked nearly four years of Trump’s temporary acting official’s legal charade that could have major implications across the administration. The judge removed Bureau of Land Management Acting Director William Perry Pendley’s authority and indicated that actions under his reign could be voided.  

One day was too long for an extremist like Pendley at the helm of America’s public lands and natural resources. It’s been four years of the Trump administration and corrupt Interior Secretary Bernhardt violating the law and ignoring the Constitution. While it’s a strong affirmation of the rule of law, it’s truly disappointing to see the majority in the U.S. Senate stand idly by as this administration flaunts it.

Voters in Six States Resoundingly Reject Acting Public Lands Manager Pendley’s Illegal Tenure New polling commissioned by Western Values Project, an Accountable.US project focused on public lands accountability, found that voters across six […]