Department of Interior’s Dereliction of Duty
- October 10, 2024
Michael Chamberlain, RealClearEnergy
“A government of laws, not of men.” John Adams’s vision for the United States seems kind of quaint in these days when “mostly peaceful” demonstrations come with arson, body counts, and multi-million-dollar property damage. Our laws are enforced selectively — especially, it seems, when it’s the Department of the Interior (DOI) and its National Park Service (NPS) doing the enforcing.
When most Americans hear the words Department of the Interior, they think of the people in charge of managing our national parks and lands. While that is part of what DOI does, an equally important aspect of the mission of the department is preserving our cultural heritage through the NPS and the U.S. Park Police (USPP).
Unfortunately, under the current Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, NPS has failed in both of these missions, most spectacularly the latter. These failures by the agency drove Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) to file a complaint with the DOI inspector general’s office regarding multiple incidents of DOI’s dereliction of duty in protecting our nation’s cultural heritage, not to mention the safety of law enforcement and civilians, in the Washington, D.C. area.