Trump placed industry insiders in charge of public lands they sought to exploit

In what appears to be the most brazen revolving door operation in modern memory, the Trump administration has installed a team of longtime public lands opponents and energy industry veterans to oversee the very territories they previously lobbied to exploit, according to a new investigative report.

The analysis from Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project details how key positions at the Department of the Interior have been filled by individuals whose careers were built on challenging federal land management and advocating for expanded drilling, mining, and development on public property.

Leading this contingent is Karen Budd-Falen, now associate deputy secretary, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as having “spent her career fighting against the very existence of U.S. public lands.”

A fifth-generation Wyoming rancher, Budd-Falen has championed the fringe “county supremacy” movement that argues local officials should dictate what happens on federal lands within their borders.

She once claimed the Endangered Species Act is “used as a sword to tear down the American economy” and has represented anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy.

The report identifies William Groffy, a longtime oil and gas veteran, as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for managing oil and gas leasing on public lands.

Groffy previously worked for Marathon Oil and later served as a senior director at the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, where he testified against pipeline safety legislation and advocated for projects requiring trillions of gallons of water during drought conditions.

Perhaps most striking is the case of Katharine MacGregor, who has returned for a second stint as deputy secretary.

During the first Trump administration, an oil industry lobbyist famously joked that “We’ll call Kate” had become their solution to regulatory roadblocks.

Reveal News documented how MacGregor helped a former client of then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt secure drilling permits despite “deficient applications.”

These appointments represent the culmination of a decades-long project by anti-public lands activists to gain control of the federal agencies they previously sought to undermine from the outside.

The report suggests these officials are now positioned to execute what one think tank ally called for: turning national parks into “resort developments for the extremely wealthy and ticketed bison petting zoos for the general public.”

The consequence for ordinary Americans is that the lands they own collectively—the national parks, forests and wildlife refuges that form the backbone of the nation’s natural heritage—are now being managed by people who have built careers arguing against their very protection.

It’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, only in this case, the fox has been writing for years about why henhouses shouldn’t exist at all.