Ryan Zinke exits Washington chased by ethics investigations but insists he'll be exonerated and says he's lived up to the conservation ideals of Theodore Roosevelt.
President Donald Trump, in tweeting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's departure, said the former Montana congressman "accomplished much during his tenure" and that a replacement would be announced soon. The Cabinet post requires Senate confirmation.
Boise, Idaho-based firm Advocates for the West had sued for 12 documents withheld from a public records request related to Trump's decision to reduce two sprawling monuments in Utah. Trump also is considering scaling back other monuments.
A House panel has narrowly voted down opening the books when it comes to senior Trump administration officials and their spouses' use of military flights to travel.
Findings by the Office of Inspector General follow a backlash over new jobs assigned to almost three-dozen senior employees in the months after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke took office last year.
Eleven former Interior Department officials with decades of experience in both Washington and in local offices say the agency already has a well-established system for decentralized decision-making.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said that his goal remains unchanged: decentralizing the Interior Department’s bureaucracy and creating 13 regional headquarters.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick of the Northern District of California ordered the Interior Department to reinstate the Obama-era regulation aimed at restricting harmful methane emissions.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s decision to give Florida a last-minute exemption while ignoring at least 10 other states that made similar requests may violate requirements of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs drilling in U.S. coastal waters.
The new five-year drilling plan also could open new areas of oil and gas exploration in areas off the East Coast from Georgia to Maine, where drilling has been blocked for decades. Many lawmakers in those states support offshore drilling, although the Democratic governors of North Carolina and Virginia oppose drilling off their state coasts.
Results released Thursday from an anonymous survey of the department’s 70,000 employees show that 8 percent report being victims of sexual harassment and 16 percent report harassment based on gender. More than 9 percent report harassment based on race or ethnicity.
The dispute pitting the GOP against a private company raised questions about use of taxpayer resources for political criticism and whether Republicans are trying to stop Patagonia sales weeks before the Christmas holiday.
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