President Trump has tapped Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt for the agency’s top job. Bernhardt is shown speaking here last summer at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. @DOIDepSec/Twitter
Michael Doyle reports for E&E News:
President Trump today announced his plans to nominate acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt for the department’s top job, elevating a savvy manager known for both his policy expertise and his background as a lawyer and lobbyist for oil, gas and Western water interests.
A 49-year-old Colorado native, Bernhardt has years of Interior Department experience in several administrations. He’s far more familiar with the department’s inner workings than was outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke at the outset, though their policy preferences are similar.
“I can’t think of an instance in the past year where I’ve done something where I would not be very confident that he and I were 100 percent on the same page on,” Bernhardt told E&E News in an interview earlier this year.
“I am pleased to announce that David Bernhardt, Acting Secretary of the Interior, will be nominated as Secretary of the Interior,” Trump tweeted this afternoon. “David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!”
Stylistically, the often soft-spoken Bernhardt can strike a marked contrast to Zinke, the former Navy SEAL whose combativeness recently flared when he publicly proclaimed a top House Democrat to be a drunkard.
But Bernhardt’s alignment with Zinke on issues including endangered species protections, public lands and energy development also guarantees the policy clashes that dominated Zinke’s rocky 23-month tenure will continue. His selection shows the Trump administration is not backing down.
