Free Republic

The federal government has discovered a massive new reserve of oil and natural gas in Texas and New Mexico that it says has the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed.” “Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said of the new reserve, which is believed to have enough energy to fuel the U.S. for nearly seven years. In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday published documents detailing its plan to roll back Obama-era protections for the vast habitat of the greater sage grouse, a chickenlike bird that roams across nearly 11 million acres in 10 oil-rich Western states. The earlier proposal to protect the bird, whose waning numbers have brought it close to endangerment, was put forth under the Interior Department in 2015 and set out to ban or sharply reduce oil and gas drilling in 10.7 million acres of its habitat. The Trump plan, by contrast, would limit the grouse’s protected habitat to just 1.8 million...

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — It is the last great stretch of nothingness in the United States, a vast landscape of mosses, sedges and shrubs that is home to migrating caribou and the winter dens of polar bears. Aside from a Native village at its northern tip, civilization has not dented its 19 million acres, an area the size of South Carolina. There are no roads and no visitors beyond the occasional hunter and backpacker. But the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a federally protected place of austere beauty that during a recent flyover was painted white by heavy snowfall — is...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ripped into Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva on Friday and accused him of past “drunken and hostile behavior” after the lawmaker called for the Cabinet member’s resignation earlier in the day. In a remarkably scathing Twitter post, Zinke referenced past news reports that Grijalva in 2015 paid a female aide on Capitol Hill nearly $50,000 in a taxpayer-funded settlement after she complained about his drinking and office environment. “It is hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Zinke said of Grijalva. “This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000...

An Interior Department watchdog recommended the U.S. Geological Survey ratchet up internet security protocols after discovering its networks had been infected with malware from pornography sites. The agency’s inspector general traced the malicious software to a single unnamed USGS employee, who reportedly used a government-issued computer to visit some 9,000 adult video sites, according to a report published Oct. 17. Many of the prohibited pages were linked to Russian websites containing malware, which was ultimately downloaded to the employee’s computer and used to infiltrate USGS networks, auditors found. The investigation found the employee saved much of the pornographic material on...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the U.S. Navy can blockade Russia if needed to keep it from controlling energy supplies in the Middle East as it does in Europe. "The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open..." Zinke said on Friday at an industry event in Pittsburgh hosted by the Consumer Energy Alliance. He was there to explain why hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the shale energy boom has given the U.S. an edge over its rivals Russia and Iran, by making the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of energy....

Headquarter the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah? Absolutely. Just don’t start thinking it will be the Utah Bureau of Land Management.
With the encouragement of Rep. Rob Bishop and Gov. Gary Herbert, Acting Assistant Secretary of Interior Susan Combs came to town this week to discuss a possible move to either Salt Lake City or Ogden. Her boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, has pushed the idea of moving more of Interior’s work to the western United States where most federal lands are.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is moving two agencies and roughly 700 federal employees out of Washington, D.C., to save money and improve the department’s service to taxpayers. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Thursday that the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will be fully moved out of the nation’s capital by 2020, according to the USDA. A location hasn’t been picked yet.“It’s been our goal to make USDA the most effective, efficient, and customer-focused department in the entire federal government,” Perdue said in a statement. “In our Administration, we have looked critically at...

The changes that the Interior Department has proposed for managing endangered species would give 'greater discretion to states' focused on the recovery of animal species and avoiding lawsuits by environmental groups. The Interior Department confirmed the departure of Greg Sheehan, the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service ..Sheehan was appointed in June 2017 to be principal deputy secretary for the agency, a position carved out for him until a permanent secretary to head the agency was nominated. Sheehan had served on the Utah wildlife management service before coming to Washington. There , he oversaw the development of state-based management...

I share some of the sentiments of Jay Nordlinger’s Corner post expressing confidence that some day in the future there may be hope for California conservatism. That’s why I continue to live in the house that I grew up in, despite vast changes in the nature of the rural community I was born into. But I would take sharp issue with Jay’s statement that current critics of the direction of the state are somehow either prejudicial or dispirited: A lot of us conservatives have long written it off. California is too changed: too brown, too illegal, too bloated, too listless....

An operative for American Bridge 21st Century (Founder DAVID BROCK), a pro-Democrat political action committee, has been charged with assaulting a staffer working for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to the Associated Press. Wilfred Stark was charged with simple assault after he allegedly approached Zinke, yelling at him, outside of a hearing. Stark then “used his full body to push” Zinke's spokeswoman, Heather Swift, as she moved to leave the room, according to the police report cited by the AP. “He is a big guy. He came up behind me fast, aggressive and very physical,” Swift said in a statement...

WAYNESBORO — President Trump's national infrastructure plan announced Monday that calls for a $1.5 trillion investment in roads, bridges and the rest of America's crumbling infrastructure, provides for about $200 billion in federal funds. The remainder of dollars would have to come from state, local and private sources. For the Shenandoah Valley, the good infrastructure plan news includes funding to help with the maintenance backlog in the national parks, including Shenandoah National Park, where there is a $56 million maintenance backlog. However, a couple of local government officials and one of Virginia's U.S. senators interviewed expressed doubt about the trickle...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is pressing ahead with a massive overhaul of his department, despite growing opposition to his proposal to move hundreds of public employees out of Washington and create a new organizational map that largely ignores state boundaries. Zinke wants to divide most of the department’s 70,000 employees and their responsibilities into 13 regions based on rivers and ecosystems, instead of the current map based mostly on state lines. The proposal would relocate many of the Interior Department’s top decision-makers from Washington to still-undisclosed cities in the West. The headquarters of some of its major bureaus also would...

Alaskan tribal members have fought for decades to win approval for a 12-mile road between their remote Aleutian fishing village and a critical all-weather airport, and the federal government’s shutdown wasn’t going to get in their way. At an emotional ceremony Monday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an agreement for a land exchange that will allow construction of a road between King Cove and an all-weather airport in Cold Bay. The Obama administration blocked the project because of concerns about its impact on a wildlife refuge. Signing the deal on behalf of the King Cove Native Corp. was finance manager...

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke joined Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM where he downplayed a report that President Donald Trump has turned on him after his controversial decision to remove Florida from consideration for his agency’s offshore oil and gas leasing program. That report, from Axios, claimed Trump is “angry” about the move and described it as a “mistake.” A former Interior Department official is quoted calling Zinke’s decision “clumsy” and an “unforced error.” Zinke countered the unnamed source’s characterization of the incident, describing his relationship with President Trump as “great,” telling Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, following President Donald J. Trump's executive order to break America's dependence on foreign minerals, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke signed a secretarial order directing the initial steps to producing the first nationwide geological and topographical survey of the United States in modern history. The order also directs Interior bureaus to begin work on identifying immediate domestic sources for critical minerals. "Right now the United States is almost completely reliant on foreign adversaries and competitors for many of the minerals that are deemed critical for our national and economic security. As both a former military...

President Trump ordered the U.S. military and the Interior Department to take immediate action to "break" the nation's dependence on Russian and Chinese supplies of critical minerals as a matter of national security. "This dependency of the United States on foreign sources creates a strategic vulnerability for both its economy and military to adverse foreign government action, natural disaster, and other events that can disrupt supply of these key minerals," read an executive order signed by the president on Wednesday.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday proposed a $9 billion plan to widen three of the state’s most congested highways — the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — in what he said would include the largest public-private partnership for highways in North America. The projects would add four toll lanes each to Maryland’s portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) and to I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. It would also widen the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (MD 295) by four toll lanes after taking over ownership from the federal government. Because of private-sector involvement, Hogan said, the plan would...

On Fri., Sept. 15, Secretary of the Interior (SOI) Ryan Zinke signed Secretarial Order 3356, continuing the Department of Interior’s (DOI) efforts to support sportsmen and women and enhance conservation stewardship. The order seeks to improve wildlife management and conservation, increase access to public lands for hunting, shooting and fishing and puts a greater emphasis on the promoting outdoor activities among youth, veterans and minority communities. -----SNIP----- As noted in the DOI press release, SO 3356 directs bureaus within the department to: 1. Within 120 days produce a plan to expand access for hunting and fishing on BLM, USFWS and...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended scaling back 10 of the 27 national monuments under a review directed by President Trump. The scale of the monument changes was disclosed in a draft memorandum obtained by several news services on Sunday night. The White House said in a statement that it does not comment on leaked documents. According to the memo, Zinke would shrink 4 of the monuments on the list, and significantly alter the rules of land use for the remaining six. The memo went to President Trump last month but the administration would not disclose which monuments would be...