Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN), Ranking Member of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, busted Trump on his secret plan to use our public lands for private exploitation, “This secret report lays bare the Trump administration’s real agenda: opening up our public lands to private exploitation through coal mining, commercial logging, and oil drilling.”
“Our National Monuments protect America’s natural history and preserve our cultural heritage, including the sacred sites of our Native American brothers and sisters. It is a travesty that the Trump administration wants to abuse these treasured places for private profit,” the Democratic Congresswoman said in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA.
“President Trump should reject Secretary Zinke’s misguided recommendations, which go far beyond the authority granted by Congress in the Antiquities Act,” McCollum continued. “If he does not, I strongly support the efforts already underway to challenge the Trump administration in court and ensure that America’s public lands are protected for today and for tomorrow.â€
The Washington Post busted the Trump administration through yet another leaked secret report in which Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s urged President Trump to modify and or shrink national monuments so as to open up U.S. public land for private exploitation via logging, coal mining, commercial fishing, and grazing, including recommendations to reduce boundaries for Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou.
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The Post reported, “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that four large national monuments in the West be reduced in size, potentially opening up hundreds of thousand or even millions of acres of land revered for natural beauty and historical significance to mining, logging and other development.
Zinke’s recommendation, revealed in a leaked memo submitted to the White House, prompted an outcry from environmental groups who promised to take the Trump administration to court to block the moves.”
“The Trump Administration does not comment on leaked documents, especially internal drafts which are still under review by the President and relevant agencies,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in a statement to Reuters.
Representative Ruben Kihuen (D-NV) went so far as to call the process “rigged”, “This decision will not only be detrimental to Nevada’s economy and shared cultural heritage, but it is further proof that the monument review process has been rigged from the start. Secretary Zinke promised that Nevadans’ voices would be heard. Instead, we got half-hearted attempts to meet with stakeholders and secret memos cooked up behind closed doors, all when the outcome was predetermined from the beginning… Secretary Zinke should look Nevadans in the eye and give it to us straight, rather than hide behind the administration’s continued shroud of secrecy.â€
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