Trump Administration’s Public Lands Leadership Begins To Crumble

How an absent interior secretary, incompetence at the Forest Service, and proposed corruption for the BLM are colliding with low gas prices to throw public land management into chaos

Nothing in politics is more important than momentum. Now that the government shutdown is over, and the effects of the second Trump administration’s policies are beginning to be felt in people’s wallets, all eyes are on next year’s mid-terms, in which Republicans themselves fear a total wipeout. Why? Unpopular, incompetent leadership and policies are destroying the programs and places Americans hold dear. Programs and places like public lands.

An Absentee At Interior

Despite clear precedent from the last government shutdown warning that keeping national parks open without their usual staff would put both visitors and natural resources at risk, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum made the politically expedient decision to keep parks open again during this latest 43-day shutdown. And while immediate impacts weren’t as dire this go round, largely because the parks tapped their entry fee accounts in order to keep some limited visitor services running, doing so spent those accounts down to zero, derailing the maintenance projects that had been planning to use that money. The park service is still reeling from losing 24 percent of its staff to DOGE cuts earlier this year.

How’d Burgum spend his time off during the shutdown? Not volunteering in parks, or supporting his staff, but rather by jetting off to Europe and the Middle East to meet with fellow billionaires. When asked if these trips were funded personally, or by taxpayers, and whether or not they involved commercial or private air travel, a DOI spokesperson declined comment.

“As national parks are either closed or operating on skeleton crews, I can’t imagine anything more disconnected than for the secretary of interior to jet off to these places and schmooze with oil oligarchs,” Representative Jared Huffman (D-California) stated at the time.

Now that he’s back in town, how is Burgum addressing the crisis of staffing and budgets at the National Park Service? By raising prices. Next year, foreign visitors will have to pay an additional $100 per-person on top of the normal $35 per-vehicle entry fee in order to visit most popular national parks. Sources close to the regime state that this could raise tens of millions per-park, helping to not only reset accounts following the shutdown, but maybe even enough to begin to address the park service’s $24 billion maintenance backlog. Others, including people who run businesses reliant on tourism fear the extra fees could combine with the persecution of immigrants to further suppress foreign visitation, which is already bringing financial woes to many gateway communities near major national parks.

Meanwhile, Burgum has taken advantage of the DOGE cuts to transfer over 5,000 unrelated roles at Interior to the Office of the Secretary, tripling his personal staff. That’s while NPS remains without a Director, and all major decisions at the agency must be approved by Burgum himself.

“Doug Burgum is running the Interior Department like his personal fiefdom, using extraordinary governmental resources and tax dollars to ensure that his employees cater to his every whim, whether it’s staffing his dinner parties, baking him cookies, or using a U.S. Park Police helicopter as his personal transportation with no transparency and limited oversight,” says Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks.

Source: Grassroots Wildlands Firefighters

Forest Service To Americans: Hope You Like Wildfires

The U.S. Forest Service is an agency managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Back in July, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told a meeting of western Governors, “We are on track to meet and potentially exceed our firefighting hiring goals.” This was in response to fears that the 3,400 USFS employees RIF’d by DOGE would lead to lower fire preparedness.

Turns out Rollins was lying. According to an independent analysis, USFS has this financial year conducted fuel mitigation work on 38 percent fewer acres when compared to the average amount its achieved over the last four years. This includes five months of work done under the Biden administration, before all those staff were fired, so unless something is done, next year’s total could be even worse.

“Funding cuts have already led to a steep drop-off in forest mitigation projects across the West,” explains Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter with 45 years of experience. “This is basic work that must be done, year after year. Without the prescribed burns, fuel break and fireline construction, and brush clearing that the firefighters rely on, wildfires will be harder to contain, and our firefighters and communities will be at greater risk.”

Fuel reduction involves burning grasses and brush, that regrow each year. It’s intended to reduce the amount of stuff in which fires start and spread most easily. But, in order to be effective, it has to be repeated, as Scopa says, “year after year.” Leaving it undone will allow more fires to start and spread more easily, putting western communities at risk.

Remove the five months of work done under Biden, and the numbers look even worse:

“Between CY2021 and CY2024, the Forest Service completed hazardous fuels projects on an average of about 3.6 million acres of USFS managed land per year,” explains the report, which was put together by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. “In the first nine months of CY2025, less than 1.7 million acres were treated.”

The amount that USFS is behind varies heavily by state. Projects in Utah completed 90 percent of their target reduction in hazardous fuels, while projects in Idaho reached only 21 percent.

The next time stuff starts burning, remember this number comes in addition to other pro-fire measures achieved by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will also increase both the frequency and severity of wildfires. And it will be harder to recover from those more likely, worse fires, since that same bill also cut $10 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In response, a group of ten Democrat Senators have written to USFS Chief Tom Schultz (who has no prior experience at the agency) demanding answers. That letter reads:

“The steep decline in hazardous fuels reduction efforts on Forest Service lands poses a serious risk to public safety, public health, and the economy. It is imperative that the Forest Service works closely with Congress to address shortfalls in wildfire mitigation and ensure staffing and budgetary resources are sufficient to fulfill the agency’s mission.”

Look for a Congressional hearing, and likely rolling heads, in the near future.

Make Land Management Corrupt Again

The Bureau of Land Management is in crisis. Republicans in Congress have voted to entirely break the permitting process for that department, leaving it with no clear way to administer either existing or new projects on the lands it’s supposed to manage. At the same time, the President is working with Saudi Arabia to artificially suppress gas prices (the national average just fell below $3.00 for the first time since the pandemic) below the point where American drilling can turn a profit. But, the administration is demanding that the agency dramatically increase lease sales.

Let’s make that as clear as possible: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandates that the BLM hold quarterly oil and gas lease sales, but Congress has passed laws since then that prevent the BLM from legally permitting those leases. And as prices and tariffs have made drilling for oil domestically unprofitable, the industry itself has stated it intends to take its investments abroad. Meanwhile, legal challenges are inbound for virtually ever single permit written as part of a resource management plan put in place since 1996.

Local governments across the West are reliant on royalties drawn from oil and gas operations on BLM land to fund most of their services, including firefighting, public schools, police departments, waste disposal and more. If those payments are reduced or become unreliable, expect major financial repercussions that will be felt by virtually every western community.

Into that picture, the administration is introducing the most corrupt, incompetent nominee possible: Steve Pearce.

How bad is this guy? I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible, which as you’re about to see, is a challenge:

• In 2016, while representing New Mexico in the House, Pearce co-sponsored a bill that would have sold off massive amounts of both BLM and USFS land across the West.

• In 2012, Pearce introduced a proposal to sell off National Parks.

• Pearce has given speeches criticizing Teddy Roosevelt and challenging the very notion of public land.

• Pearce has embraced the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, an extremist movement led by white supremacists.

• Pearce has promoted a conspiracy theory that the federal government doesn’t actually own federal land, because…reasons.

• Pearce once tried to bulldoze the Gila National Forest.

• Pearce once tried to privatize 60,000 acres of public land in New Mexico by fiat, a failed effort that led to the creation of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.

• In 2006, Pearce introduced a measure that would have permitted roads to be paved over any mapped hiking trail in any western national park.

• In 2003, Pearce sold his oilfield services business to an oil company while serving in the House. He failed to report the multi-million dollar sale on his financial disclosure, and appears to have concealed at least $6 million of the windfall from the government entirely.

• In 2007, Pearce was listed as one of the “20 most corrupt members of Congress.”

• Pearce once wrote a book in which he stated, “the wife is to voluntarily submit to the husband.”

• In 2005, Pearce was caught plagiarizing the Heritage Foundation in a newspaper column. (As a journalist who has been plagiarized too many times to count, this is the deal breaker for me.)

Yeah, that guy is going to have the BLM’s legal crisis handled. Every oilman who donated to the Republican Party can totally relax now. It’s also worth noting that Pearce is the second nominee for BLM so far this year, and likely the second failed one.

“Steve is a great pick,” stated Montana Senator Steve Daines, who has also led the charge to break public lands permitting.

Talk of the mid-terms if relevant here because the administration is asking Republican Senators to vote to confirm this loser at the same time as they’re doing everything possible to repair their image here in western states after their attempt to sell off millions of acres of public land failed last June. These guys are really good at speaking out both sides of their mouths, but good enough to cover up a confirmation vote that might help defund the very communities they’re supposed to represent?

The thing is, they haven’t left themselves many good options. By voting to break BLM’s permitting process, those same Republican Senators are ensuring significant negative outcomes for Western states no matter if BLM gets any sort of director, corrupt or ethical, crazy or sane. A vote for Pearce will be a stain on their record next November, and could start to hurt them doubly in 2028. Payments in Lieu of Taxes (the share of oil and gas royalties apportioned to communities) have already been appropriated for next year, and will be paid out in June like normal. But in 2027, and five months before the next Presidential election? A lot is riding on the outcome of the legal chaos they themselves have created. And into that picture we’re also going to see the strain put on gateway communities by suppressed foreign visitation and reduced staffing in national parks. We’re also staring down one climate change-worsened, incompetent management-exacerbated wildfire season between now and the mid-terms, and three before we vote for our next President.

All of this is already starting to go pretty bad for public opinion of Republican legislators. It’s going to be hard to pin all this on “woke” once western communities start facing the disastrous outcomes of this terrible decision making.

Top photo: USFS

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