Trump's Toxic Int. Appointee Crimps GOP; Pendley Called BLM "Cancer", Wants 2 Sell All Public Lands

[hatrack]

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Pendley — a conservative lawyer who as president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation often sued the Interior Department and its bureaus on behalf of private property owners — was drawing fierce criticism from the time Interior Secretary David Bernhardt last year added "exercising the authority of director" to his job title of BLM deputy director of policy and programs. Since being nominated to formally lead the agency in June, Pendley's record has been further scrutinized. Until joining BLM last summer, he frequently posted to Twitter under the handle @Sagebrush_Rebel, where he was known to mock climate science, Democratic lawmakers and the Endangered Species Act.

Earlier, in 2017, Pendley wrote an op-ed in the Washington Examiner in which he dismissed the Black Lives Matter movement as based on a "lie that spread like cancer through inner cities" and imperiled law enforcement (Greenwire, June 29). Many Senate Democrats and environmental groups have taken Pendley's past statements and actions to be disqualifying and say Republicans have no choice but to oppose him — even if it means alienating the White House.

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Republican Sen. Steve Daines, another vulnerable 2020 incumbent and Tester's fellow Montanan, said in the past he would support Pendley if Trump nominated him for the post (E&E Daily, Nov. 8, 2019). But yesterday, his Senate challenger, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, further politicized the Pendley nomination by filing a federal lawsuit claiming Pendley's yearlong stint as BLM's de facto acting director violates federal law (Greenwire, July 21).

Tester said he has not yet spoken to Daines about the Pendley nomination, but "hopefully that will change" as the process moves forward, referring to Daines' earlier statements of support. Daines' office did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News regarding the lawsuit or the senator's position on Pendley.

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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063606027

[2naSalit]

1. KICK!!

[2naSalit]

2. Another article...

Unfit-to-lead-and-unqualified-to-serve-why-william-perry-pendley-cannot-be-the-head-of-the-bureau-of-land-management

Amid the COVID-19 crisis and the uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism, it is understandable if many Americans overlooked the Trump administration’s continued attacks on the management of public lands and the Constitution’s mandates about how our leaders are appointed.

The most recent attack of this type came with President Trump’s June 30, 2020, nomination of William Perry Pendley to be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has kept Pendley “exercising the authority of the director” in the role of Deputy Director of the Bureau since last July, in an illegal end-run around the federal law and the Constitution that limits the roles of “acting” directors. Now the administration is trying to get Pendley officially confirmed.

Even in normal times, Pendley would be a terrible choice to lead the Bureau, whose mission is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” He’s a self-described “sagebrush rebel” who has a long record of opposing the very existence of the public lands he now oversees. Writing in 2016, Pendley said, “The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.” He has overseen the Bureau’s highly-politicized move from Washington, D.C. to the agency’s new western Colorado headquarters, losing critical long-term staff and creating vacancies in key positions.

Pendley not only approves of selling off the public lands but also selling out federal laws. In 2014, he complained that the Obama administration was waging a “war on the West” in its higher scrutiny of fossil fuel operations on public lands, and he claimed that environmental groups use the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act to “prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.”

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More at link...

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2020/07/21/unfit-to-lead-and-unqualified-to-serve-why-william-perry-pendley-cannot-be-the-head-of-the-bureau-of-land-management/