Trump To Tap North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum For Interior Chief
President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday announced that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) is his choice to lead the Interior Department, an agency responsible for managing 500 million acres of federal land ― roughly one-fifth of the United States — including 63 national parks.
Trump made the announcement during a gala at his Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida.
“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic,” Trump said, adding that he intended to make a formal announcement Friday.
Burgum, a billionaire businessman and two-term governor, hails from a state with little federal land, but it’s a top producer of oil. He briefly ran against Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination but dropped out before the primaries, throwing his support behind the former president.
Trump’s return to the White House promises another four years of unfettered fossil fuel development, and will herald the dismantling of environmental rules and protections. An analysis in mid-2020 found that, by the numbers, Trump was the most anti-conservation president in U.S. history, having weakened safeguards for some 35 million acres — nearly 1,000 times more than it protected.
On the campaign trail, Trump — who does not believe that human-caused carbon emissions are heating the globe, despite widespread scientific consensus — pledged to “drill, baby, drill” and to “free up the vast stores of liquid gold on America’s public land for energy development.” He and the Republican party writ large have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of being “at war with” fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that under Joe Biden, oil and gas production soared to record highs.
At the helm of the massive Interior Department, Burgum — who has personal financial ties to GOP mega-donor and oil billionaire Harold Hamm — would play a key role in advancing Trump’s pro-development, anti-conservation agenda.
At the Republican National Convention this summer, Burgum slammed Biden’s energy policies and accused him of “acting like a dictator.”
“Teddy Roosevelt encouraged America to speak softly and carry a big stick,” Burgum said. “Energy dominance will be the big stick that President Trump will carry.”
