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Karen Budd-Falen, the Bundy familys lawyer, may be Trumps pick to manage federal lands
Now Trumpco is trolling anyone to the left of Rand Paul.
https://www.salon.com/2017/07/18/karen-budd-falen-the-bundy-familys-lawyer-may-be-trumps-pick-to-manage-federal-lands/
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump rejected the radical anti-federal land movement, made famous during the Bundy family occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Trump claimed to hold the more mainstream view that federal lands should stay in public hands and he picked former Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who likes to compare himself to conservationist Teddy Roosevelt, as interior secretary.
In the months since he took office, however, Trump has done nothing but defy the promise to protect and preserve public lands. That began with the president’s unprecedented executive order calling on Zinke to “review” the national monument designations of the Obama administration and continued with his nomination of energy industry lobbyist David Bernhardt as deputy interior secretary.
But always seems to be true with Trump, things could get even worse. Journalists who cover environmental issues in the western United States, along with some environmental activists, believe that Trump is considering a Wyoming lawyer named Karen Budd-Falen, who worked on the presidential transition team, as director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that controls almost 250 million acres of publicly owned lands.
The appointment of Budd-Falen at BLM would demonstrate that the Trump administration is embracing a right-wing fringe movement that is hostile to conservation efforts on federally owned lands and, in many cases, objects to the idea that the federal government has any right to own land at all.
In the months since he took office, however, Trump has done nothing but defy the promise to protect and preserve public lands. That began with the president’s unprecedented executive order calling on Zinke to “review” the national monument designations of the Obama administration and continued with his nomination of energy industry lobbyist David Bernhardt as deputy interior secretary.
But always seems to be true with Trump, things could get even worse. Journalists who cover environmental issues in the western United States, along with some environmental activists, believe that Trump is considering a Wyoming lawyer named Karen Budd-Falen, who worked on the presidential transition team, as director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that controls almost 250 million acres of publicly owned lands.
The appointment of Budd-Falen at BLM would demonstrate that the Trump administration is embracing a right-wing fringe movement that is hostile to conservation efforts on federally owned lands and, in many cases, objects to the idea that the federal government has any right to own land at all.