Free Republic

The White House on Sunday condemned a conservative social media activist for ridiculing an openly-gay Interior Department official on the site X, describing her posts as “cruel and unacceptable.” Chaya Raichik, who created the @libsoftiktok account on X, formerly known as Twitter, sparked a debate online this week after posting and reposting several times about Tyler Cherry, Interior’s principal deputy communications director. The posts appeared to criticize his appearance, referred to him as one of the “total weirdos” the Biden administration has hired, laughed at photos of him in a dress that the New York Times published in a piece...

President Joe Biden reportedly yanked another nomination to his administration after moderate Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska objected to the pick, Politico reported on Monday. Biden had nominated Elizabeth Klein, a former Obama administration official, to be the deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior. Biden had previously pulled the nomination of liberal think tank president Neera Tanden for the directorship of the Office of Management and Budget earlier in March. Tanden's nomination was tanked after several senators objected to "toxic" tweets she had sent denigrating some Republicans and also Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Murkowski had reportedly opposed...

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...

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...

President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced Thursday the rescission would take effect Friday. The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied to drilling on federal lands located mainly in the West. They were set to take effect in 2015 but a judge in Wyoming sided with petroleum industry groups and blocked them at the last minute. …

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday that nearly one-third of employees at his department are not loyal to him and President Donald Trump, adding that he is working to change the department’s regulatory culture to be more business friendly. Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, said he knew when he took over the 70,000-employee department in March that, “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag.” In a speech to an oil industry group, Zinke compared Interior to a pirate ship that captures “a prized ship at sea and only the captain and the first mate...

Trump’s Interior Department Secretary, Montana rancher and former Navy Seal Ryan Zinke, is proving to be more than just a dramatic contrast to Obama’s Interior chief, liberal Democrat recreation industry exec., Sally Jewell. Zinke’s getting to work unraveling her legacy–and that of previous progressive predecessors–in short order. Beyond the Obama monument land grabs, which are currently under review as ordered by President Trump, with significant reductions and reversals in the works, Zinke is breaking up the bureaucratic status quo in his department’s upper echelons. On June 16, Greenwire reported: Dozens of Senior Executive Service employees — career officials within the...

These are the American Indian reservations the Department of Interior plans to focus on in the next phase of a $1.9 billion buyback program of fractionated land parcels to turn over to tribal governments. The program is part of a $3.4 billion settlement over mismanaged money held in trust by the U.S. government for individual Indian landowners. …