Trump 2.0 - Slash and burn

[T[he Trump administration is eager to begin a new era for the [US Foresst Service] and its public lands, with a [...] a mission that maximizes resource production and extraction while dismantling the administrative state and its role as environmental protector. Over the last nine months, the administration has issued executive orders calling for expanded timber production and rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, declared “emergency” situations that enable it to bypass regulations on nearly 60 percent of the public’s forests, and proposed slashing the agency’s operations budget by 34 percent.

The most recent move, which is currently open to public comment, involves a proposal by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to radically overhaul the entire US Department of Agriculture. Its stated purposes are to ensure that the agency’s “workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities,” and to consolidate functions and eliminate redundancy. This will include moving at least 2,600 of the department’s 4,600 Washington, DC, employees to five hub locations, with only two in the West: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Fort Collins, Colorado. (The others will be in North Carolina,Missouri, and Indiana.)

[...]

The plan is reminiscent of Trump’s first-term relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. That relocation resulted in a de facto agency housecleaning; many senior staffers chose to resign or move to other agencies, and only a handful of workers ended up in the Colorado office, which shared a building with oil and gas companies.

Though Rollins’ proposal is aimed at decentralizing the department, it would effectively re-centralize the Forest Service by eliminating its nine regional offices, six of which are located in the West. Each regional forester oversees dozens of national forests within their region, providing budget oversight, guiding place-specific implementation of national policies, and facilitating coordination among the various forests.

Rollins’ memo does not explain why the regional offices are being axed, or what will happen to the regional foresters’ positions and their functions, or how the change will affect the agency’s chain of command. When several US senators asked Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden for more specifics, he responded that “decisions pertaining to the agency’s structure and the location of specialized personnel will be made after” the public comment period ends on September 30.

  Mother Jones

That's five days from now. Rest assured they will do whatever they want no matter what the public says. Link to comment

The administration has been far more transparent about its desire to return the Forest Service to its timber plantation era, which ran from the 1950s through the ’80s. During that time, logging companies harvested 10 billion to 12 billion board-feet per year from federal forests, while for the last 25 years, the annual number has hovered below 3 billion board-feet. Now, Trump, via his Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production order, plans to crank up the annual cut to 4 billion board-feet by 2028. This will be accomplished—in classic Trumpian fashion—by declaring an “emergency” on national forest lands that will allow environmental protections and regulations, including the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to be eased or bypassed.

[...]

Emergency determinations aren’t limited to Trump and friends; in 2023, the Biden administration identified almost 67 million acres of national forest lands as being under a high or very high fire risk, thus qualifying as an “emergency situation” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Rollins, however, vastly expanded the “emergency situation” acreage to almost 113 million acres, or 59 percent of all Forest Service lands. This allows the agency to use streamlined environmental reviews and “expedited” tribal consultation time frames to “carry out authorized emergency actions,” ranging from commercial harvesting of damaged trees to removing “hazardous fuels” to reconstructing existing utility lines. Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to consolidate all federal wildfire fighting duties under the Interior Department. This would completely zero out the Forest Service’s $2.4 billion wildland fire management budget, sowing even more confusion and chaos.

The emergency is wildfires. We won't try to work on climate change, so we have to mow down the forests. Makes sense.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency fired about 3,400 Forest Service employees, or more than 10 percent of the agency’s total workforce, earlier this year. And the administration has proposed cutting the agency’s operations budget, which includes salaries, by 34 percent in fiscal 2026, which will most likely necessitate further reductions in force.

 

Pendley ordered to be removed

A federal judge on Friday ordered William Pendley to be removed as leader of the head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a role that typically requires Senate confirmation.

Judge Brian Morris ruled that Pendley "served unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director for 424 days" and enjoined him from exercising the authority of the agency's director.

[...]

Pendley has led the bureau in a temporary capacity since July 2019. His role at the agency has come under scrutiny because he has not been confirmed by the Senate.

He's also received criticism for advocating for selling off public lands, voicing skepticism about climate change and making comments about Islam, the Black Lives Matter movement and undocumented immigrants.

Pendley remained in his post first through a series of "secretarial orders" put forth by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and later, as reported by The Hill, through "succession orders," with which Pendley gave himself the authority to remain the temporary leader of the agency.

  The Hill

How very Trumpian.

Interior spokesperson Conner Swanson said in an email that the department will be appealing the decision "immediately."

Of course they will, but not before they're sure they get another Trump nominee on the SCOTUS bench.

After Bullock and environmental groups filed separate suits over Pendley's appointment, President Trump did formally appoint him to be BLM director.

However, the White House later withdrew his nomination. It was not clear whether the Senate would have voted to confirm him, particularly as several Republican senators from states containing a lot of public land face tough reelection bids.

[...]

An initial Interior statement said that Pendley would continue to lead the bureau, but Swanson later clarified that the department would follow the court order unless it's overturned by a higher court.

The court said that unless the president temporarily uses powers under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to fill the role, only Bernhardt can carry out the duties of the BLM director.

It also said that certain decisions made by Pendley, including the issuance of some resource management plans, "would have no force and effect and must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of land management

The Trump administration withdrew the controversial nomination of William “Perry” Pendley to head the Bureau of Land Management on Saturday amid signs that the choice would hurt the reelection prospects of Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Steve Daines (Mont.).

[...]

Earlier this month, the Montana League of Conservation Voters put up an ad showing beautiful vistas behind signs saying “FOR SALE PUBLIC LAND.” The ad calls Pendley an “anti-public land zealot” and urges voters to “tell Steve Daines our public lands are not for sale.”

[...]

The nomination was controversial because Pendley, who previously was president of the right-wing Mountain States Legal Foundation, had once urged the sale of federal lands. And at the foundation, he had sued the Interior Department on behalf of an oil and gas prospector, sought to undermine protections of endangered species such as the grizzly bear, and pressed to radically reduce the size of federal lands to make way for development.

  WaPo

BTW, Pendley is still acting chief of the bureau.  If Trump doesn't nominate anyone else - and I don't see why he would - Pendley will be in charge.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Bac to the Future, Part II

Biff Tannen is president.

A few days ago, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees millions acres of public land under the Department of the Interior, swapped its homepage image of a beautiful park to a massive pile of coal at a mine in Wyoming.

[...]

[T]he coal photo gave a glimpse of the grim vision this administration has for public lands owned by all Americans. On March 28, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Interior to resume giving away tens of thousands of acres of public lands to the coal industry, overturning a coal-leasing moratorium put in place by the Obama administration. Less than 24 hours later, Earthjustice sued the Trump administration for overturning the moratorium on leasing public lands for coal extraction. More than one-tenth of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the pollution driving climate change, come from coal extracted from public lands. And internal Interior Department and independent Government Accountability Office audits have recently concluded that the current leasing system shortchanges taxpayers while subsidizing the coal industry.

[...]

Though Trump has been pretty clear that he doesn’t value the protection of our nation’s lands, the visual reminder about how Trump views our public lands as merely places to drill, mine and extract really hit home for the public.

[...]

After the public outcry, the Trump administration replaced the coal mine image to a man fishing in a river.

  Earth Justice

I guess Trump supporters don't take their children on hikes in the national parks.

But they do fish.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Only Just Begun - Part 2

In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

[...]

Essentially, the revised budget rules deny that federal land has any value at all, allowing the new Congress to sidestep requirements that a bill giving away a piece of federal land does not decrease federal revenue or contribute to the federal debt.

  The Guardian

Jesus, the fuckers.

Western states, where most federal land is concentrated, are already introducing legislation that pave the way for land transfers.

[...]

At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn each year in economic stimulus from recreation on public lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.

In addition to economic stimulus from outdoor activities, federal land creates revenue through oil and gas production, logging and other industrial uses. According to the BLM, in 2016, it made $2bn in royalty revenue from federal leases. The Outdoor Industry Association estimates federal tax revenue from the recreation economy at almost $40bn.

[...]

“We didn’t see it coming. I think it was sneaky and underhanded. It exemplifies an effort to not play by the rules,” said Alan Rowsome, senior director of government relations at The Wilderness Society. “This is the worst Congress for public lands ever.”

And other things as well. And they've just begun.

Republican voters in the 99% are going to be shocked when they get exactly what they've been voting for.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We Are Watching You

When more than 300 protesters assembled in May at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood, Colorado — the venue chosen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for an auction of oil and gas leases on public lands — several of the demonstrators were in fact undercover agents sent by law enforcement to keep tabs on the demonstration, according to emails obtained by The Intercept.

[...]

The emails, which were obtained through an open records act request, show that the Lakewood Police Department collected details about the protest from undercover officers as the event was being planned. During the auction, both local law enforcement and federal agents went undercover among the protesters.

The emails further show that police monitored Keep it in the Ground participating groups such as 350.org, Break Free Movement, Rainforest Action Network, and WildEarth Guardians, while relying upon intelligence gathered by Anadarko, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the region.

  Intercept

If you're old enough to remember the fifties (and even the sixties), you will remember how official propaganda attempted to make us all anti-communists by referencing Joseph Stalin's secret police, and how innocent people in communist countries had to be so careful about what they said for fear of being spied upon and reported.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.