Biden Promotes Climate-activist Interior Official Previously Rejected by Senate
- October 31, 2023
Michael Tennant, New American
President Joe Biden is promoting to the Interior Department’s number-two post an official who thrice failed to receive Senate confirmation to a lower position because of her climate activism.
According to a Tuesday Interior Department press release, Biden will name longtime Interior official Laura Daniel-Davis acting deputy secretary of the interior, effective immediately. Daniel-Davis, the current principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, will replace outgoing Interior Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau.
Daniel-Davis is also the subject of a 2022 ethics complaint from the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT). Before returning to Interior under Biden, Daniel-Davis served as chief of policy and advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), which sued to block aspects of the Trump administration’s oil and gas lease program in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). “Within six months at Interior, Ms. Daniel-Davis had exercised her official authority to achieve practically all of the legal remedies sought by her former employer in court,” PPT alleged. “Even worse, the legal arguments she relied on to do so were strikingly similar to those developed for and included in her former employer’s legal filings.”
“This latest move tells you all you need to know about the priorities of Secretary Haaland and the Department of the Interior,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Tuesday.
“Rewarding someone unable to achieve confirmation by the Senate, who is also under the cloud of a current ethics complaint no less, with a promotion to an even higher position, seems like a slap in the face to the American public, its elected representatives, and the Constitution,” he added. “Members of Congress are already demanding an audit of the ethics office at Interior and rather than treading lightly they [the Biden administration] appear to be doubling down.”