The Interior Department’s top boss, and her second-in-command, say they will continue grinding away at the agency headquarters on Washington’s C Street until noon Monday, when President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in and officially takes control of the government.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis were in President Joe Biden’s first tranche of leaders, tasked with rolling back the first Trump administration’s era of “energy dominance,” which meant prioritizing fossil fuel development.
Their appointments were a signal that public lands would be managed with a new focus on environment protection and climate resilience. Haaland was a former New Mexico congresswoman who had championed the Green New Deal. Daniel-Davis’ last job before joining the Biden administration was as a policy chief for the National Wildlife Federation.
In a recent interview with POLITICO’s E&E News, the two women spoke with pride of building out renewable energy on federal lands and waters, restoring the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Washington — the Trump team had moved the agency’s headquarters to Colorado, losing 87 percent of the reassigned staff in the process — and curtailing the prominence of the nation’s oil and gas industry.
