The Department of the Interior, which supervises a number of Bureaus, the National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife, is not one of the federal Departments that comes readily to mind by most Americans. 
But its reach is wide, and the difference between the DOI of the Biden-Harris Administration and the past and potentially future DOI of the twice-impeached, one-term, convicted felon former President Donald Trump is night and day. As Americans prepare to go to the polls in (or before) November, we should know about DOI’s mission and leadership.
DOI under Trump
Many of us would love to forget much of what happened during the four tumultuous Trump years, but when we will probably remember at least something about Trump’s Secretary, Ron Zinke. Zinke was confirmed by the Senate as DOI Secretary in March 2017 but, according to an investigation by DOI’s Inspector General, as reported by NPR, abused his power and failed to comply with his ethics obligations, primarily by negotiating “with developers to build a commercial project on a portion of the foundation’s land in Whitefish, Mont. In addition, he ordered staff members to help with the project – a federal “no-no.” Zinke stepped down from his position at the end of 2018 under a cloud because of this behavior.
According to the Wilderness Society, Zinke “was the worst Interior secretary ever.” The Society outlined 14 ways – in just his first year – in which Zinke moved “the nation backwards on public lands issues and energy.” These included carving up national monument lands, weakening various wildlife protections, encouraging drilling and testing in sensitive natural areas, shirking transparency and attempting to cut the American people out of decision-making, failing to fill key leadership positions, and causing long-time dedicated staff members to resign in protest.
Americans need to be aware that none of this behavior seems to have hurt his career: it may actually have helped him. He was endorsed by Trump in his bid for Congress in 2022 and now serves Montana as US Representative from the first district. Unsurprisingly, in this role, he has “opposed the Affordable Care Act, various environmental regulations, and the transfer of federal lands to individual states.”
Zinke was not the only DOI Secretary under Trump who needs to be considered. David Longly Bernhardt, who had been serving under Zinke, was confirmed as Secretary in April 2019 and served until the end of Trump’s term. He continued following Zinke’s and Trump’s anti-environment, pro-fossil fuel initiatives. He also found himself under scrutiny for ethics and regulatory violations. Bernhardt, a lawyer from Colorado, was the subject of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in September 2019 that maintained that Bernhardt, as Acting Secretary, had violated federal law – twice – by directed the National Park Service to use park entrance fees for maintenance in keeping parks open during the government shutdown. The GAO report concluded that the [DOI] moved funds between accounts without authorization from Congress in violation of the Antideficiency Act and federal appropriations law.” (Of course the DOI claimed that no laws were violated.)
In a move that was quite disruptive to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Bernhardt relocated its headquarters from Washington, DC – where almost all other government agency headquarters are located – to Grand Junction, Colorado, in August 2020. While both Democrats and Republicans in Colorado supported the move, only 41 of the Bureau’s 328 employees stayed with the Bureau, meaning that 87 percent retired or found employment elsewhere. 
Haaland and the Biden-Harris Administration moved the headquarters back to DC in September 2021, arguing that BLM needs to have a leadership presence in DC to best carry out its mission; besides, BLM will continue to have a “robust presence in Colorado and across the West.”
Also in August 2020, Bernhardt announced plans for an oil and gas leasing program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clearing the way for drilling in the remote Alaskan area. (The Biden-Harris Administration later canceled these leases.)
Interestingly, other actions taken in August 2020 sound somewhat progressive. Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act, with Bernhardt declaring that August 4 would be designated “Great American Outdoors Day:” each year on that day entrance to national parks will be free. Further, Bernhardt “designated the site of the 1908 Springfield [Illinois] Race Riot for inclusion in the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network.” One has to wonder, however, in conjunction with their other regressive policies, what their true motivations might have been…
The Biden-Harris DOI
In stark contrast to Trump and his appointments, Joe Biden tapped Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, as the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary; she was confirmed by the Senate on March 15, 2021. Most Republicans voted against her because her stances were “too extreme” – which meant that she opposes fracking and drilling on public lands, and she co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a member of Congress.
One of these GOP Senators, Steve Daines of Montana, expressed his concern of her support of “several radical issues that will hurt Montana, our way of life, our jobs and rural America.”
This kind of rhetoric, however, belies the fact that Haaland’s views “fall well within the mainstream and fairly represent many of her constituents, I would say the vast majority of her constituents,” according to Democratic New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich. In addition, her record and previous service were lauded by progressives, environmentalists, and climate activists. The daughter of two military parents and a student in 13 public schools, she became a single parent as an adult and knew the hardship familiar to many similar Americans: relying on food stamps at times, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and struggling to attend college. She ultimately earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico (UNM) then a JD from UNM Law School. She “ran her own small business producing and canning Pueblo Salsa, served as a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo, and became the first woman elected to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors.” At her urging, the Laguna Development Corporation created policies and commitments to environmentally friendly business practices.
In 2018, she was elected as one of the two first female Native Americans in Congress and focused on environmental justice, climate change, missing and murdered indigenous women, and family-friendly policies.
The accomplishments of the DOI under Secretary Haaland are impressive – and a far cry from the backward-looking policies (not to mention ethically-questionable actions) of the Trump secretaries. According to the Center for American Progress (CAP), Secretary Haaland “has cemented her legacy by elevating the untold stories of American history, making groundbreaking progress to strengthen Tribal and Indigenous communities, and delivering historic conservation policies. Through overseeing record-setting investments, leading new co-stewardship agreements, issuing directives to include Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, and following through on Tribal and Indigenous consultations, Secretary Haaland has done more than any of her predecessors to support Tribal nations and Indigenous communities’ stewardship of lands and waters.”
In addition:
- Secretary Haaland “established the Missing & Murdered Unit with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to ensure cross-departmental and interagency work pursuing justice in the epidemic of missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.”
- She “established the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate the history of American Indian boarding schools” and “launched the ‘Road to Healing’ tour to provide solace to Indigenous survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system.”
- She signed Secretary’s Order 3404 establishing a Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force, which reviewed 660 geographic features containing a particularly offensive ethnic, racial, and sexist slur and made recommendations for replacement names.
- She has “played a leading role in driving the ‘America the Beautiful’ initiative, the first-ever national conservation goal committed to improving access to nature for all Americans, fighting climate change, and protecting 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.”
- Secretary Haaland has “overseen a long-overdue overhaul of the management of 250 million acres of public lands” under the jurisdiction of the BLM. The overhaul makes progress in the areas of land stewardship, oil and gas development, responsible clean energy development, and support of outdoor recreation.
- Furthermore, BLM recently secured protections for more than 13 million acres in the Western Arctic.
Secretary Haaland has not been immune from criticism from allies. She has walked a policy tightrope on such issues as the Willow Project – an oil drilling initiative in Alaska – when she has advocated for stances on which Biden has followed a different road. To illuminate the complexity of these kinds of disagreements, “Mario Atencio, of Diné CARE, a Navajo environmental group, said he understands that the Interior Department faces pressure from GOP lawmakers to increase drilling, as well as conflicting court rulings on a pause ordered by Biden on oil leasing on public land.” Such is the reality of being almost any Department Secretary who sometimes disagrees with his or her boss.
In April 2024, Secretary Haaland praised the Biden-Harris Administration’s “all-of-government approach to developing a robust and sustainable clean energy economy and commitment to strengthening Indian Country.” 
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a major source: the Bureau of Reclamation, whose mission is to manage, develop, and protect water and related resources, primarily in the American West, is investing over $8 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects. Since the Infrastructure Law was signed in November 2021, Reclamation has announced almost $3 billion for 430 projects – another way in which the Biden-Harris Administration has invested generously in major initiatives that help all Americans.
The Choice
Illuminating the work of the Department of the Interior shows again how crucial the November election is for determining what we want as a nation. In the areas overseen by DOI – federal lands, wildlife, mining and minerals, climate change, Indigenous affairs, national parks, and ocean energy – we can continue to put our trust in DOI’s current philosophy and leadership or elect Trump and his cronies. What that radically regressive group wants to do is no secret: all we have to do is to look at Project 2025 (even though Trump has lied about not knowing what this radical right-wing manifesto is all about…). The MAGA crowd promises to:
- roll back Biden-Harris initiatives,
- return BLM headquarters to the American West,
- expand onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales,
- restart the federal coal leasing program,
- reverse protections for areas like the White River National Forest in Colorado,
- and reinstate Trump-era limitations on the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
These initiatives, if allowed to come about, would almost certainly undermine efforts to combat climate change, reduce or eliminate protections of public lands from overexploitation, and halt recent progress in the lives of Indigenous people.
As has become a rallying cry of the Harris-Walz campaign, if we choose wisely, “we’re not going back.”