Burgum Must Renounce Interior Department Budget Cuts, Attacks on Renewables, National Park Censorship
WASHINGTON — Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum will testify today in front of a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, where he will defend President Trump’s reckless fiscal year 2027 budget request which slashes his department’s funding by almost 13% and cuts staffing levels by thousands.
Since his confirmation, Secretary Burgum has embarked on a revisionist history tour, implementing Trump’s policy of removing signage at national parks offering important history to visitors about slavery, climate change, Native Americans, transgender rights, and other issues deemed by the Trump administration to “inappropriately disparage” the country’s past. Under Burgum, the Interior Department has also reached an indefensible agreement to pay $928 million to energy giant TotalEnergies to cancel its wind farm projects off the Atlantic coasts. In exchange, Interior said TotalEnergies is agreeing to invest in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas, as well as oil and gas drilling projects.
In response, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
“Doug Burgum was a moderate governor of North Dakota but has become an extremist as Interior Secretary. He has been a disaster for the country and is destroying the Interior Department from the inside, slashing staff, rewriting history, working to undermine renewable energy, and selling off America’s public lands. Burgum is a key figure in the Trump administration’s hijacking of the 250th anniversary celebration for partisan purposes, actively censoring and whitewashing official accounts of our history.
“Under his leadership, Burgum has left the Interior Department’s management of parks and public lands weaker, instead spending his time attacking renewable energy by engineering a $1 billion payout to a French energy company just to cancel major wind farm projects. Burgum has spent more time doing TV appearances and traveling the globe to meet with fossil fuel executives than leading his department. Our nation’s national parks and public lands deserve far better.”
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