This decision was born out of the same corruption and cronyism that has dominated the Trump administration from the start. The revolving door, shady lobbyists, and disregard for the wishes of Alaskans and Indigenous communities are everything that’s wrong with how President Trump has managed our nation’s public lands and forests.

Over the past four years, the Trump administration has unilaterally ushered in the largest reductions to public lands protections and scrapped the largest habitat protection agreement in history, discredited science and climate science, issued countless rollbacks to bedrock environmental protections for corporate special interests, and repeatedly run afoul of the law.

Trump’s latest comments regarding science, climate change, and the raging fires across the West exemplify the apathetic ignorance of his administration whose obsession with the polluting fossil fuel industry is only making it worse. President Trump’s outlandish comments underline the administration’s climate denial policy objectives that started the day after the 2016 election when Trump implored swamp creatures like corrupt former lobbyist David Bernhardt to assist with the transition.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration has prioritized bailing out Big Oil and extractive resource corporations over assistance for workers, struggling small businesses, and the unemployed, but new reporting by the Casper Star-Tribune, based on research by Western Values Project, further highlights the windfall for oil and gas producers in Wyoming after the Interior Department’s unilateral decision to grant royalty relief and suspend leases.

A new ticker on WilliamPendley.org finds that Pendley has served as the bureau’s acting director for over 409 days, well beyond the limit established in law. Western Values Project released PendleyOvertime on Twitter and complied additional research on of some of the most salient examples of why senators must demand a pink slip for Pendley.

Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, both former extractive resource lobbyists, will be attending an event in Arizona to make an announcement about the Rio Salado Urban Waters Partnership. Both Trump administration cabinet members must answer for their dirty water policies.

Corrupt Administration’s Objectives Of A Bureau Brain-Drain And Special Interest Access Achieved  Following the Interior’s Office of the Inspector General report that concluded that Interior officials misled Congress, Western Values Project Director Jayson O’Neill issued the following response:  As this investigation rightfully concludes, […]

The Associated Press is reporting that Trump’s extremist and racist Bureau of Land Management ‘acting’ director William Pendley wrote the succession order that put him in charge of America’s largest land managing agency. This news comes after the Interior Department claimed for months that Pendley was operating under a secretarial ‘succession order.’

Trump’s Interior Department political appointee Karen Budd-Falen has serious conflicts of interest concerning her ownership stake in a ranching empire spanning across hundreds of thousands of acres overlapping prime sage-grouse habit.

In a desperate attempt to cover up a record that is unequivocally the worst for America’s public lands, the Trump administration withdrew anti-public lands nominee William P. Pendley. While this is sure to make headlines, this is just another sad chapter of incompetence and mismanagement by this administration. Unfortunately, this changes little to nothing – Pendley is still overseeing the bureau and the Trump administration is still violating the U.S. Constitution.