MILWAUKEE — If U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) gets her way, she will be the next Interior Department secretary in another Donald Trump administration.
“I think Lauren Boebert needs to be the secretary of the Interior. President Trump, I would like to be secretary of the Interior,” she said on Native America Calling on Wednesday — the third day of the Republican National Convention.
She would replace Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna), who is the current leader for the department under President Joe Biden. Haaland was celebrated as the first Native American cabinet secretary, and she has ushered in more knowledge on issues affecting tribal governments.
Speculation on potential cabinet positions is early with the presidential election still a few months away.
Boebert has never publicly stated her interest in the job, her campaign confirmed, and the idea appeared to be spontaneous.
As Boebert walked by the Native America Calling radio show booth during its live broadcast Wednesday afternoon, she was quickly asked if she supports tribal sovereignty and her thoughts on the Interior Department’s policies.
Boebert said she would reverse Haaland-led efforts, like expanding Bears Ears National Monument, and she spoke in favor of expanding coal and “drilling” projects.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is responsible for managing public lands, mineral rights and all programs that meet the U.S. Trust obligation to Native American tribes for things like health care, schools and economic development.
Boebert said she supports tribal sovereignty. And she wants to move Bureau of Land Management offices out of Washington, D.C., and into other states, a fight that would continue where the last GOP Interior secretary, William Perry Pendley, left off.
She did not directly address any type of support for tribal nations that would want to work on land conservation projects or environmental protections measures. Instead she tried to argue that “drilling” on tribal lands is a means of environmental land management for tribes.
“I believe that that is a cleaner way to take care of the environment and extract those resources that we have been blessed with to use what’s given to us by the earth to produce this energy in a clean and efficient way, rather than just covering it up with solar panels and wind turbines.”
When she was asked about the Antiquities Act, an executive action that created the expansion of Bears Ears and other national monuments, she said “Ugh, the Antiquities Act, nope.”
“There’s been a lot of things through the Antiquities Act where we have had land grabs by the federal government. I do not want any land grabs. I do not want more wilderness areas. I don’t want these, these areas where we are unable to actually manage the land,” Boebert said.
The message goes directly to Boebert’s consistent position on energy exploration in the West, something that also aligns with Trump policies in his first term.
Boebert’s family has had financial ties to the oil and gas industry, according to reports during her first term in Congress. She has one of the lowest-rated records on the environment. Recently she blasted a new BLM rule meant to promote conservation as a “misguided land grab meant to prevent oil and gas production at a time when sky-high gas prices and inflation are looting the pocketbooks of the American people.”
“I am pro fossil fuels, oil and gas, and I especially want to explore nuclear,” she said during the interview. “But I think that our tribal lands are impacted severely when we are shutting down our coal-fired energy plants.”
This story is part of a collaboration between Koahnic Broadcasting, ICTNews.org and States Newsroom covering the Republican National Convention in 2024 with a focus on Native America.
This article is republished from Source New Mexico, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com.
