https://www.huffpost.com/entry/project-2025-trump-blueprint-public-lands_n_660f001fe4b083254eab6ba5
Trump’s Second-Term Blueprint Would Take A Wrecking Ball To Public Lands
William Perry Pendley, an anti-federal land zealot, wrote the playbook for a
Republican-controlled Interior Department, with an assist from an oil buddy.
When it was time to outline their vision for managing America’s federal lands
under a future Republican presidency, pro-Donald Trump conservatives turned
to a man who has spent his career advocating for those very lands to be
pawned off to states and private interests.
William Perry Pendley, who served illegally
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judge-ruling-trump-public-lands-chief_n_5f6e911cc5b64deddeede22f>
as Trump’s acting director of the Bureau of Land Management for more than a
year, authored the Interior Department chapter of Project 2025, a sweeping
policy blueprint that the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other right-wing
organizations compiled to guide Trump and his team should he win in November.
The 920-page, pro-Trump manifesto
<https://thf-reports.s3.amazonaws.com/Proj2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_TEXT.pdf>,
titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” aims to dismantle
the federal government, ridding it of tens of thousands of public servants
and replacing them with “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared
conservatives to go to work on Day One” of a Republican administration.
Pendley’s dream for the more than 500 million acres of federal land that the
Interior Department manages is to effectively turn them into a playground for
extractive industries — the same interests he’s spent most of his career
representing in court.
In fact, when it came to the chapter’s section on energy production across
the federal estate, Pendley simply let Kathleen Sgamma ― the president of the
Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade association ― and two industry
allies write it for him.
Poll
<https://www.coloradocollege.edu/newsevents/newsroom/2023/state-of-the-rockies-2023-poll-shows-widespread-support-for-conservation-despite-a-rise-in-other-concerns.html>
after poll
<https://wildmontana.org/2022/05/03/insights/poll-huge-majority-wants-to-protect-public-lands/>
confirms that public support for protecting America’s public lands is broad
and bipartisan. Still, the most recent Republican Party
<https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/republican-party> platform, adopted in
2016, calls for transferring control of federal lands to the states. In
recent years, Republicans have largely abandoned brazen public calls for the
outright sale and transfer of federal lands, instead focusing on gutting
environmental protections and finding savvier ways
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/public-lands-day-2022_n_632dd2f0e4b0db74862a814d>
to give states more of a say in how public lands are managed.
That shift
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/public-lands-day-2022_n_632dd2f0e4b0db74862a814d>
is reflected in Project 2025. Rather than calling for pawning off federal
lands, as he has done throughout his career, Pendley writes that “states are
better resource managers than the federal government,” and argues that a new
administration should “draw on the enormous expertise of state agency
personnel” and “look for opportunities to broaden state-federal and
tribal-federal cooperative agreements.”
“It says a lot about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, that they chose
someone as far outside of the mainstream as William Perry Pendley to lead the
recommendations for our public lands,” said Dan Hartinger, senior director of
policy advocacy at the Wilderness Society Action Fund. “And it says a lot
about Mr. Pendley’s view of public lands that the first thing he did was hand
the pen to the oil and gas industry to write those recommendations.”
William Perry Pendley, the Trump-era acting director of the Bureau of Land
Management, speaks during an event in Idaho in 2020.
Keith Ridler via Associated Press
In his 22-page contribution to the project, Pendley writes of an Interior
Department that he says has lost its way and grown beholden to “radical”
environmentalists, and that is now “abusing” U.S. laws to “advance a radical
climate agenda.”
He condemns what he describes as the Biden administration’s “war” on fossil
fuels, ignoring the fact that U.S. production of crude oil and exports of
natural gas have continued to soar
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-lng-exports-natural-gas_n_660aea66e4b007c08f9e6c36>
during Biden’s tenure. And he calls for the restoration of so-called
Trump-era “energy dominance” — a catchphrase that is rooted in myth
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-biden-fossil-fuels_n_622a1a5be4b0e01d97a7ae8d>
— and the annihilation of numerous environmental safeguards.
“No other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative
President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the
nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons,” Pendley writes.
Pendley’s blueprint for Trump, if he should win in November, includes holding
robust oil and gas lease sales on- and offshore, boosting drilling across
northern Alaska, slashing the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to
drill on federal lands, expediting oil and gas permitting, and rescinding
Biden-era rules aimed at protecting endangered species and limiting methane
pollution from oil and gas operations.
“Biden’s DOI is hoarding supplies of energy and keeping them from Americans
whose lives could be improved with cheaper and more abundant energy while
making the economy stronger and providing job opportunities for Americans,”
reads a section titled ”Restoring American Energy Dominance.” “DOI is a bad
manager of the public trust and has operated lawlessly in defiance of
congressional statute and federal court orders.”
If that reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, it’s because it is.
Rather than personally calling for the keys to America’s public lands to be
turned over to America’s fossil fuel sector, Pendley let the head of a
powerful industry group do it for him. An author’s note at the end of his
policy directive discloses that the entire energy section was authored by
Sgamma, as well as Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the American
Energy Alliance, and Katie Tubb, a former senior policy analyst at the
Heritage Foundation.
Sgamma’s trade and lobbying organization, Western Energy Alliance, represents
200 oil and gas companies. The American Energy Alliance and the Heritage
Foundation both have deep
<https://energyandpolicy.org/institute-for-energy-research-american-energy-alliance/>
ties <https://www.desmog.com/heritage-foundation/> to the fossil fuel
industry.
“I guess it’s refreshing that they are being so transparent that the oil and
gas industry is literally writing the transition playbook for them,” said
Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Colorado-based conservation group Center
for Western Priorities. “Saying the quiet part out loud — thank you for that.”
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas
industry trade and lobbying group, is a fierce critic of President Joe
Biden's energy and environmental policies.
Mariam Zuhaib via Associated Press
In his author’s note, Pendley also writes that he “received thoughtful,
knowledgeable, and swift assistance” from several other Trump-era Interior
officials. Those include Aurelia Giacometto, the Trump-era director of the
Fish and Wildlife Service and a former Monsanto executive; Casey Hammond, who
served as Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and
minerals; and Tara Sweeney, the former assistant secretary of Indian Affairs
who now works for oil giant ConocoPhillips.
Other contributors to Project 2025 include Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), a
leader of the pro-land transfer movement, and Margaret Byfield, executive
director of American Stewards of Liberty, a fringe, right-wing organization
that championed a disinformation campaign
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pete-ricketts-nebraska-30x30-american-stewards_n_6261dcd5e4b0ea625c04f0fa>
against Biden’s conservation goals. The American Legislative Exchange
Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, two corporate-backed think
tanks that advocate handing over control of federal lands to states, are
members of the Project 2025 advisory board.
“Beyond posing an existential threat to democracy, Project 2025 puts special
interests over everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of
Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group that shared its research on
Project 2025 with HuffPost. “The dangerous initiative has handed off its
policy proposals to the same industry players who have dumped millions into
the project — and who will massively benefit from its industry-friendly
policies.”
Accountable found
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/leonard-leo-koch-networks-pour-millions-prep-potential-second-trump-ad-rcna144360>
that the Koch network, led by billionaire oil tycoon Charles Koch, funneled
over $4.4 million to organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board in 2022.
The Heritage Foundation and Pendley did not respond to HuffPost’s requests
for comment.
Pendley’s contribution to Project 2025 is his latest act in a five-decade
crusade
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-lyndon-larouche-environment_n_5db34813e4b079eb95a33d3e>
against the federal government and environmental protections. His first
stint at the Interior Department was under James Watt, President Ronald
Reagan’s Interior chief, who is widely considered one of the most
anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history. The Washington Post once
described Pendley as “Watt’s ideological twin
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/10/11/well-just-continue-to-carry-on/e32c689f-51a7-4ebf-8dff-300de20f5473/>.”
Pendley calls himself a “sagebrush rebel,” a reference to the Sagebrush
Rebellion movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to remove lands from
federal control. For decades, he led the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a
right-wing nonprofit that has pushed for the government to sell off millions
of federal acres. In a 2016 op-ed published by National Review, Pendley wrote
that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government
to be sold.”
Pendley has compared environmentalists to communists and Nazis
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-lyndon-larouche-environment_n_5db34813e4b079eb95a33d3e>,
immigrants to “cancer
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-climate_n_5da0bcffe4b087efdbaddc0b>,”
and the climate crisis to a “unicorn
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-climate_n_5da0bcffe4b087efdbaddc0b>.”
He has said the Endangered Species Act has been used as a tool to “drive
people off the land” and into cities where they can be “controlled,” and
seemingly voiced support
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interior-department-officials-endangered-species-act_n_5d54627ae4b083855066faca>
for killing imperiled species discovered on private land. Some of his most
extreme anti-environmental screeds were published in 21st Century Science &
Technology, a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster
and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, as HuffPost previously reported
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-lyndon-larouche-environment_n_5db34813e4b079eb95a33d3e>.
Asked about some of his radical views during a conference in 2019, Pendley
said that his “personal opinions are irrelevant” to the job of overseeing 245
million acres of public land <https://www.huffpost.com/topic/public-land> as
the head of the BLM.
But those views are no doubt the reason he was tapped to write the Interior
playbook for a future Republican president, particularly one that falsely
casts Biden as the enemy of the fossil fuel industry.
“At the end of the day, they know that the land disposal position is deeply
unpopular and a nonstarter across any Western state, no matter how
conservative,” Weiss said. “That just leaves them with this false narrative
about Biden’s war on oil and gas. That’s also a lie, of course, but it’s one
they have to keep telling because otherwise there is no way to justify what
is in this Project 2025 agenda.”
President Donald Trump signs the hat of Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan
County Commission, on Dec. 4, 2017, after signing a proclamation to shrink
the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments
at the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake City. President Joe Biden has since
restored the boundaries of the monuments.
Rick Bowmer via Associated Press
Along with a series of actions to boost drilling and mining across the
federal estate, Pendley calls for a future Republican administration to not
only dismantle existing protected landscapes but limit presidents’ ability to
protect others in the future. He advocates for vacating Biden’s executive
order establishing a goal of conserving 30% of federal lands and waters by
2030; rescinding the Biden administration’s drilling and mining moratoriums
in Colorado
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-designates-first-national-monument_n_6324d6bee4b046aa023f5e5e>,
New Mexico
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/drilling-mining-ban-chaco-canyon_n_6479fae5e4b0047ed780c71a>
and Minnesota
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-administration-boundary-waters-20-year-mining-ban_n_63d28ca8e4b0c2b49adad587>;
reviewing all Biden-era resource management plans, which cover millions of
acres of federal lands; and repealing the Antiquities Act, the landmark 1906
law that 18 presidents have used to designate 161 national monuments
<https://www.npca.org/resources/2658-monuments-protected-under-the-antiquities-act#sm.0001ow137kydyecsra52hugabbv3l>.
“Donald Trump <https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/donald-trump> is an
unapologetic climate denier who called climate change a ‘hoax’ and slashed
environmental protections while he was in office,” Biden campaign senior
spokesperson Sarafina Chitika told HuffPost in a statement. “Now, Trump and
his extreme allies are campaigning to go even further if he wins a second
term by gutting the Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy programs,
shredding regulations for greenhouse gas pollution, and serving the fossil
fuel industry at the expense of our families and our future.”
The Trump administration positioned itself as an opponent of selling or
transferring federal lands, but on several occasions, it proposed public land
sell-offs
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blm-ryan-zinke-federal-land-sale-california-limestone-quarry_n_5c11a809e4b002a46c13f3f7>,
hosted anti-federal land zealots
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ryan-zinke-public-lands-sale-transfer_n_5c0048b1e4b027f1097be381>
and installed fierce critics of federal land management in powerful
government positions. It also weakened protections
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/analysis-trump-public-lands-rollbacks_n_5ec59af1c5b6df8b159bf287>
for millions of acres of federal land and famously shrank the size
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-national-monuments-utah-proclomation_n_5a25478ee4b03350e0b7fa85>
of two sweeping national monuments in Utah — the largest rollback of
national monuments in U.S. history.
Pendley argues Trump didn’t go far enough with his attack on national
monuments, and that protected sites in Maine and Oregon should have also been
on the chopping block.
“The new Administration’s review will permit a fresh look at past monument
decrees and new ones by President Biden,” he writes in Project 2025.
Weiss views Pendley’s antipathy for the Antiquities Act as an acknowledgement
of how successful the law has been in protecting public lands. And he says it
speaks volumes that Project 2025 organizers tapped Pendley for the job of
crafting the Interior blueprint.
“They could have found any number of mainstream conservatives to write their
agenda for them. They didn’t,” Weiss said. “They picked the notorious
anti-public lands extremist, because that is at the end of the day what they
want. They don’t want someone who is going to come in and follow the last 50
years of legal precedent.”
